Books

Stuff I've read that others should read:

Sigurd Poetry Cycle

Exodus

The Very Lonely Gatsby

The Very Lonely Gatsby

This is a project I did with two classmates for The Great Gatsby. I think it turned out wonderful.

Edna Pontellier and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Before someone can gain comforts in life, they must first achieve the basic biological requirements to survive. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the fulfillment of these needs allows for the development of other needs, then the achievement of desires, and ultimately the perfection of the human being. In Kate Chopin’s realistic novel The Awakening, Edna Pontellier has only accomplished the second level of the hierarchy, and she is forever stuck between the second and the third level of love. Although she has a family, she lacks the proper emotions that signify a feeling of belonging. There is not much in her life that prevents her from reaching the third level, but instead she herself is the one that is at fault. Furthermore, she shows no signs of ever reaching this level, but instead she continues to stay at the same level with no motivation to move higher.

On the Use of Negative Representations of Deformities in Literature

Physical deformities have been looked at as grotesque for a long time. While things such as “freak shows” and discrimination have ended, there still remain some mentionings of deformities associated with somethings negative in pop culture. Once in awhile a movie will come out with a witch suffering from hunchback, or maybe there’ll be the evil giant, a much more menacing figure than Gulliver to the Lilliputians. One medium that makes strong use of physical deformities is literature. In literature, physical deformities are commonly associated with negative things, such as moral twistedness or periods of darkness. While physical deformities are used to evoke sympathy at times, the negative representation of them or their association with the negative is commonly used as its own literary device, utilized to characterize or to create a setting that’s dark and twisted.