Anne Frank: The Young Girl and the Writer
When Hitler began his long rise to power in 1919 and promoted anti-Semitism across Europe, the world was devastated by the horror that ensued. Amongst the approximately 60 million people killed during the war, 11 million of them were Jews.
Where the Road Ends
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road explores the bleak and barren post-apocalyptic world of a father and his son and their journey to find sanctuary. As the father and son travel throughout the novel they travel farther and farther down the road.
The Person in the Picture: The Image and the Self of Esther Greenwood
Throughout The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood is photographed many times. Sometimes the act of being photographed is equated with the objectification of Esther, which is to say, the photographer takes away Esther’s personhood […]
Backstreets: Shadows, Violence and Queerness in Watchmen
The visual language of queerness in 2010s America is defined by brightness—rainbows, glitter—declaring a queer existence fully saturated with light. But the torture and death of the only gay characters in popular TV shows […]
Opposing Oppenheimers
Heinar Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer recounts the trial of one of the most prominent physicists in history. Oppenheimer, often called the father of the atomic bomb, was summoned before the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 […]
We Didn’t Start the Fire
“Are you one of the good guys?” (McCarthy 282). The father-son odyssey of The Road is consumed by constant searching for food, shelter, or safety. The father is searching for something else, as well, something intangible […]
Mulvey vs. Carter: The Power of the Gaze
Both Laura Mulvey and Angela Carter are well-noted female writers in the 1970’s that have talked about feminism through their writings.
The Communist Manifesto and its earlier drafts: Further explanation, or simply an ignorance of the truth?
Inspiring a movement is not only a difficult, but a lengthy process. The perfect combination of motivation in the population, necessity for change, as well as belief that a particular movement will improve the peoples’ lives […]
Voices Rolling in the Deep
In writing Austerlitz, Sebald endeavours to tell a story that, in its scope and controversy, is harrowing to tell. Faced with the barbarism of the Holocaust and the impossible challenge of bringing its victims’ histories back from the dead […]
“He’s Coming To Steal My Eyes”: Vision, Survival, Connection, and Existence in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Sight is a profoundly important sense. Vision helps one navigate through the world, but it is also intensely emotional. It matters what we choose to look at, as well as what we allow to look at us […]