Les Misérables Essay Example for Free

Les Misà ©rables Essay Victor Hugo – Les Miserables BACKGROUND : Victor Marie Hugo was the son of a general in Napoleon’s army, and much of his childhood was therefore spent amid the backdrop of Napoleon’s campaigns in Spain and in Italy. The first three years of his life were spent in Elba, where he learnt to speak the Italian dialect spoken in the island in addition to his mother tongue. Victor got a little education in a small school. At the age of eleven, Hugo returned to live with his mother in Paris, where he got a little education in a small and where he also became infatuated with books and literature. By the time he was fifteen, he had already submitted one poem to a contest sponsored by the prestigious French Academy. There he learnt much from an old soldier, General Lahorie, who, obnoxious to Napoleon for the share he had taken in Moreaus plot, lived secretly in the house, and from an old priest named Lariviere, who came every day to teach Victor and his two brothers. In 1815, at the age of thirteen, he was sent to a boarding school to prepare for the Ecole Polytechnique. But he devoted himself, even at school, to verse-writing with greater ardour than to study. He wrote in early youth more than one poem for a prize competition, composed a romance which some years later he elaborated into the story Bug Jargal, and in 1820, when only eighteen, joined his two brothers, Abel and Eugene, in publishing a literary journal called Le Conservateur Litteraire. Hugo published his first novel the year following his marriage (Han dIslande, 1823) and his second three years later (Bug-Jargal, 1826). By the end of 1822 Victor Hugo was fully launched on a literary career, and for twenty years or more the story of his life is mainly the story of his literary output. Because of his successful drama Cormwell, the preface to which, with its note of defiance to literary convention, caused him to be definitely accepted as the head of the Romantic School of poetry. The revolution of 1830 disturbed for a moment his literary activity, but as soon as things were quiet again he shut himself in his study with a bottle of ink, a pen, and an immense pile of paper. For six weeks he was never seen, except at dinner-time, and the result was : The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). During the next ten years four volumes of poetry and four dramas were published in 1841 came his election to the Academy, and in 1843 he published Les Burgraves, a drama which was less successful than his former plays, and which marks the close of his career as a dramatist. In the same year there came to him the greatest sorrow of his life. His most famous poem was ‘Demain, des l’aube’ in which he describes the crucial moment where he visits his daughters grave. As Hugo grew older, his politics became increasingly leftist, and he was forced to flee France in 1851 because of his opposition to the monarch Louis Napoleon. Hugo remained in exile until 1870, when he returned to his home country as a national hero. He continued to write until his death in 1885. He was buried with every conceivable honor in one of the grandest funerals in modern French history. The Book – Les Miserable : Hugo began writing Les Miserables twenty years before its eventual publication in 1862. His goals in writing the novel were as lofty as the reputation it has subsequently acquired; Les Miserables is primarily a great humanitarian work that encourages compassion and hope in the face of adversity and injustice. It is also, however, a historical novel of great scope and analysis, and it provides a detailed vision of nineteenth-century French politics and society. By coupling his story of redemption with a meticulous documentation of the injustices of France’s recent past, Hugo hoped Les Miserables would encourage a more progressive and democratic future. Driven by his commitment to reform and progress, Hugo wrote Les Miserables with nothing less than a literary and political revolution in mind. Les Miserables employs Hugo’s style of imaginative realism and is set in an artificially created human hell that emphasizes the three major predicaments of the nineteenth century. Each of the three major characters in the novel symbolizes one of these predicaments: Jean Valjean represents the degradation of man in the proletariat, Fantine represents the subjection of women through hunger, and Cosette represents the atrophy of the child by darkness. In part, the novel’s fame has endured because Hugo successfully created characters that serve as symbols of larger problems without being flat devices.

The Use of Symbolism in Goldings Lord of the Flies Essay -- Lord of t

The Use of Symbolism in Golding's Lord of the Flies    "His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit like a pig after it has been killed" (217). This is what can happen to someone when all signs of civilization, order and power disappear and have no more meaning to members of a group or society. In the writing of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), the symbol of power and civilization is the conch. Once that is lost, all bets are off. When the novel begins, two boys are talking about what has happened and why they are on this island. While walking on the beach, the main character Ralph then proceeds to find a shell which the two boys call the conch. Blowing on this shell Ralph calls a meeting where the boys lay out rules and decide they need a signal fire to be rescued from this island on which there are no adults and no females. During the meeting Jack, a choir boy, decides to organize a group of hunters to hunt for food. As the story progresses, Ralph finds himself and Jack to be enemi es. Then the "lord of the flies" begins to emerge within the group, many of whom begin to take on savage behavior, and end up killing Simon. Jack then decides to go and start his own tribe; he and a lot of the others do so. Even as the conflict increases between the two rivals, there is ongoing respect for the conch. The same savages later kill the character Piggy who was not doing anything to them except trying to get his glasses back that were stolen to make the fire. Then they try to kill Ralph; however, in the end all are rescued before they are ever able to reach Ralph. Throughout the story, civilization is being more and more withdrawn from the boys' consciousness, and yet the conch has th... ...the end the conch is destroyed and all hope seems to be lost for the one called Ralph. The conch is all the power he has, but it is killed along with Piggy. Fortunately for Ralph, the boys don't get to kill anymore, for another symbol of civilization, an adult, arrives to replace the power of the conch on their island. The adult asks what is going on and if there are any dead. The conch, which had the power to unify and civilize this abandoned society for a short while, proved to be ineffective and powerless. Just as it was an empty, lifeless shell, which contained no life, it could not bring life and order to the world of these lost boys. It took a living symbol, another human, to rescue and restore sanity to those who survived this island experience.    Work Cited Golding, William. The Lord of the Flies. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1962

Characters’ Transformation Essay

Pride and Prejudice is one of the most popular novels written by Jane Austen which was foremost published in 1813. It is more than a narrative of love which revolves around the lives of the Bennett household and the affluent male visitants of Hertfordshire. The broad assortment of personalities in the narrative contributed to the novel’s attractive and compelling characteristics to day of the month. However. the novel seemingly portrayed several transmutations in relation to the chief characters. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy were clearly different sorts of people who subsequently proved themselves to be the ideal lucifer for each other. Clearly. the transmutation of Elizabeth and Darcy’s characters were made possible by their ain pride and biass against each other. This fact. hence. illustrates the thought that the character transmutation would most probably non happen without the defects and headlong judgements of the two chief characters of the Jane Austen’s celebrated novel. Character Transformation Thoroughly reexamining the whole context of the narrative. the diverse personalities of the characters are what made it possible to get in a certain character transmutation. Each character is provided a characteristic that is distinguishable to other characters. Elizabeth Bennett. an interesting character so. possesses traits which are really much different from her sisters. Here is one of her statements to Darcy included in Chapter 19 where she rejects him the first clip he proposed to get married her and considered to be one of the polar bends in the narrative which caused the alteration in both Elizabeth and Darcy’s character: I do assure you. Sir. that I have no pretense whatever to that sort of elegance which consists in torturing a respectable adult male. I would instead be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you once more and once more for the award you have done me in your proposals. but to accept them is perfectly impossible. My feelings in every regard forbid it. Can I talk plainer? Do non see me now as an elegant female. meaning to blight you. but as a rational animal. talking the truth from her bosom ( Austen 97 ) . Elizabeth Bennett’s character speaks much of a strong personality which is highly opinionative and bold. Unlike her younger sisters. she does non let societal position and wealth to interfere with her criterions for love. However. in her statement. biass toward Darcy are apparent for she has already judged him without cognizing him good foremost. However. at the terminal of the narrative. she regrets holding misjudged the adult male upon cognizing the existent Fitzwilliam Darcy. On the other manus. Darcy’s character besides reveals pride and bias on his first feeling towards Elizabeth. His statement where she declared Elizabeth as tolerable but non beautiful plenty to involvement him because of her hapless societal position discloses how proud he was to avoid being acquainted with such a adult female ( Austen 9 ) . Similarly. he took back his word when he found out how interesting and intelligent Elizabeth was which led him to squeal his feelings and offer a matrimony proposal. Unfortunately. his first proposal was rejected. Upon the terminal of the novel. it is sensible to reason that Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy really have similar features which can be considered dry. Both are intelligent. witty. opinionated. and proud. There are besides cases when they have exposed Acts of the Apostless of biass towards some characters in the narrative. chiefly themselves. Elizabeth deemed Darcy to be an highly chesty and proud adult male when she by chance heard him state that he was non interested in her due to her hapless position in the society. She thought him to be a spoilt affluent adult male who is unsociable and selfish. In return. Darcy besides showed his biass towards her by thought that she was non right for him because she belonged to the lower category portion of the society. Hence. the state of affairs indicates how their unprompted and superficial judgements of each other led them to take back their words and eliminate their pride and biass towards each other. They bit by bit transformed into low existences who were capable of acknowledging and accepting their defects. Harmonizing to Christopher Booker. writer of The Seven Basic Plots: What we see here is a narrative wholly shaped by the implicit in signifier of Comedy. but in a new sort of intervention where the conventions about misinterpretations. camouflages. failure to acknowledge individuality and ‘dark’ figures acquiring caught out are no longer presented in the footings of the old phase devices. but instead more subtly. in footings of the gradual disclosure of people’s true character from behind first misguided feelings. and the find of true feelings. in a manner which corresponds more to our experience of life ( Booker 134 ) . Therefore. two people. even with similar features may non hold similar end products and can still be regarded contradictory in footings of beliefs. Like the characters in the narrative. all have distinct personalities which enabled them to make up one's mind the manner they did. If Elizabeth did non hurriedly judged Darcy in the first topographic point which led her into rejecting his first matrimony proposal. Darcy would non hold humbled himself into farther prosecuting Elizabeth despite her initial rejection. He would non hold rescued her household from societal shame and uncover his true nature. Simply put. Elizabeth would non hold alteration her sentiment about Darcy and most likely reject him still. She would non hold fallen in love with him and alter her ways of being filled with biass. The undermentioned scenarios created a immense impact in the adulthood and development of the characters in the narrative which proves that the transmutation is so dependent on the characters’ actions and determinations. Harmonizing to Nhu Le’s on-line article entitled. The Individualization of Elizabeth Bennet. she points out that: Although Elizabeth comes to hold that Darcy’s old actions were so justified. . . this transmutation â€Å"disables† Elizabeth’s capacity to get at. and act upon. her ain judgements. On the contrary. Darcy’s missive strengthens Elizabeth’s independency of head. By accepting the fact that she has misjudged Darcy. Wickham. Jane. and Bingley. Elizabeth sharpens her ability to spot character. In bend. she develops a solidly based assurance ( Le ) . As one critic puts it. â€Å"Both Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy develop an consciousness of their topographic point in the community and a acknowledgment of the effects of their ain speech† ( Colebrook 158 ) . Conclusion Clearly. the statements stated above place the construct that Elizabeth and Darcy’s character transmutation would non hold been possible without their errors and initial false feelings of each other. This validates the fact that their development as persons is extremely rooted from their determinations and headlong judgments—or instead their ain pride and biass. Works Cited Austen. Jane. Pride and Prejudice: A Novel. London: R. Bentley. 1853. Booker. Christopher. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. 2005. Colebrook. Claire. Irony. London: Routledge. 2004. Le. Nhu. The Individualization of Elizabeth Bennet. 16 December 2008. & lt ; hypertext transfer protocol: //www. Colorado. edu/pwr/occasions/articles/lizbennet. hypertext markup language & gt ;

American Culture And Its Impact On Aboriginal Culture

On June 11th, 2008 former Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to the Aboriginals saying â€Å"today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm and has no place in our country† (CBC news). The Aboriginals, waiting for this moment to occur in Canadian history responded with sorry is not enough. Assimilation is defined as absorbing a culture or adapting to a nation. The wrong in what happened in the historical past was assimilation was attempted in very wrongful unforgiving way, actions indeed do speak louder than words. The real question could be why was assimilation such a key goal? Did it play a part into why Aboriginals culture slowly is eroding? Some may say that the lack of Aboriginal Culture in our days, today was caused by a reason that had nothing to do with the Government of that time. With the White Paper being rejected, it lead to Canadians thinking that Aboriginals denied a â€Å"great offer†. But none of the canadia ns came to realize how unfair the terms the Aboriginals received were. The Indian Act was a way the government used to be successful in assimilation in a lot more secretive manner. Whereas the Residential Schools practically were screaming out â€Å"assimilation†, their goal was made a lot more clear after the Residential Schools came out. This essay will argue that Indian Act, Residential Schools, and the White Paper was an assault to their culture and an erosion of their values/practice . The Indian Act of 1876 was aShow MoreRelatedThe Negative Implications Of Cultural Appropriation1718 Words   |  7 Pagesdominant westernized cultures. The cultural appropriation of minority cultures in order to construct the Grand Narratives of dominant cultures has a negative effect on those who are apart of the oppressed minorities. 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