Madama Bovary & Anna Karenina Essays (1512 words) -

Madama Bovary & Anna Karenina Reading provides an escape for people from the ordinariness of everyday life. Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, dissatisfied with their lives pursued their dreams of ecstasy and love through reading. At the beginning of both novels Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary made active decisions about their future although these decisions were not always rational. As their lives started to disintegrate Emma and Anna sought to live out their dreams and fantasies through reading. Reading served as morphine allowing them to escape the pain of everyday life, but reading like morphine closed them off from the rest of the world preventing them from making rational decisions. It was Anna and Emma's loss of reasoning and isolation that propelled them toward their downfall. Emma at the beginning of the novel was someone who made active decisions about what she wanted. She saw herself as the master of her destiny. Her affair with Rudolphe was made after her decision to live out her fantasies and escape the ordinariness of her life and her marriage to Charles. Emma's active decisions though were based increasingly as the novel progresses on her fantasies. The lechery to which she falls victim is a product of the debilitating adventures her mind takes. These adventures are feed by the novels that she reads. They were filled with love affairs, lovers, mistresses, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely country houses, postriders killed at every relay, horses ridden to death on every page, dark forests, palpitating hearts, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, skiffs in the moonlight, nightingales in thickets, and gentlemen brave as lions gentle as lambs, virtuous as none really is, and always ready to shed floods of tears.(Flaubert 31.) Emma's already impaired reasoning and disappointing marriage to Charles caused Emma to withdraw into reading books, she fashioning herself a life based not in reality but in fantasy. Anna Karenina at the begging of Tolstoy's novel was a bright and energetic women. When Tolstoy first introduces us to Anna she appears as the paragon of virtue, a women in charge of her own destiny. He felt that he had to have another look at her- not because she was very beautiful not because of her elegance and unassuming grace which was evident in her whole figure but because their was something specially sweet and tender in the expression of her lovely face as she passed him. (Tolstoy 76.) In the next chapter Anna seems to fulfill expectations Tolstoy has aroused in the reader when she mends Dolly and Oblonskys marriage. But Anna like Emma has a defect in her reasoning, she has an inability to remain content with the ordinariness of her life: her marriage to Karenin, the social festivities, and housekeeping. Anna longs to live out the same kind of romantic vision of life that Emma also read and fantasized about. Anna read and understood everything, but she found no pleasure in reading, that is to say in following the reflection in other people's lives. She was to eager to live herself. When she read how a heroine of a novel nursed a sick man, she wanted to move about the sick room with noiseless steps herself. When she read how Lady Mary rode to hounds and teased her sister-in-law, astonishing everyone by her daring, she would have liked to do the same. (Tolstoy 114.) Anna Karenina was a romantic who tried to make her fantasies a reality. It was for this reason she had an affair with Vronsky. Like Emma her decisions were driven by impulsiveness and when the consequences caught up with her latter in the novel she secluded herself from her friends, Vronsky, and even her children. Anna and Emma both had character flaws that made them view the world as fantasy so that when their fantasy crumbled they resorted to creating a new fantasy by living their lives through the books they read. Books allowed Emma Bovary to withdraw from her deteriorating life. They allowed her to pursue her dreams of love, affairs, and knights; from the wreckage of her marriage with Charles. Emma's, experience at La Vaubyessard became a source of absurd fantasy for Emma, and ingrained in her mind that the world that the

Legalizing drugs or not essays

Legalizing drugs or not essays The question to legalize drugs is not a hard one. Drugs are one of the most common used illicit items in the United States today. Legalizing drugs or not has been questioned and discussed so often on television, books, and newspapers. Gore Vidal noted in Drugs Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. However, simply because of the lack of researching and the misunderstanding of the usage and effect of drugs, the writer misdirected his readers on the issue of drug legalization. First of all, writer pointed out that marijuana is actually not dangerous. However, earlier research has found that smoking marijuana increases the chance of developing cancer of the head or neck. In fact, marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke does. People who smoke marijuana inhale more deeply and hold their breath longer than tobacco smokers do, which increases the lungs exposure to carcinogenic smoke. These facts suggest that, unquestionably, smoking marijuana may increase the risk of cancer more than smoking tobacco and cause great damage to the body which rejects the writers idea of marijuana is not dangerous. The writer also stated that marijuana is not addictive. Experts who worked on the Center for substance Abuse Treatment project consider however consider marijuana both psychologically and physiologically addictive. Over 52 percent of the youthful marijuana users who were involved in this project were shown to have dependence problem after using marijuana which rejects writers idea of marijuana as non-addictive substances and proves that the writer is misleading his reader on the drug legalization issue. As many would probably point out that the United State was the creation of men who believed that each man has the right to do what he wants with his own life ...

The Classification of Films in Specific Genres Literature review

The Classification of Films in Specific Genres - Literature review Example In his article, Film/Genre, Rick Altman strives to explain the need for the classification of films in specific genres. In doing this, he outlines some of the common film genres thus investigating the unique features of each genre that helps distinguish the numerous genres. He explains that classification is vital in the study and growth of the film industry. He alludes to the numerous other classifications in the contemporary society in underscoring the need to classify films. Among the film, genres are comedy, thriller, epic, and horror among many others. The film critic contends that people may classify films differently thus validating the existence of numerous genres. Despite the relativity of the classification system, the author further outlines numerous markers of a genre thus helping in the identification and classification of films in the industry. Key among the factors he presents is that â€Å"genres have clear stable identities and border†. Such is a fundamental e xplanation that film developers and critics consider in order to understand both the industry and the specific films. Every film genre is unique to the thematic issues represented and the tools used by the developers in representing the themes (Schatz, 2003). Altman, therefore, alludes to the features of film to develop the boundaries and identities of every film. This enhances the classification of films thus the consumption of such vital media products. In classifying films, the critic, therefore, explains that people must investigate the generic blueprint of films this implies that each film genre has a specific attribute, which he explains as the boundaries and clear stable identities. Every film must, therefore, portray the features attributed to every film (Tudor, 2006). This enhances the consumption of films thus the growth of the industry. Finally, the critic refers to the audience as the most influential party in the consumption of film. He, therefore, explains that the aud ience must identify and recognize that the film belongs to a specific genre.