... Ultimately, 18th century Science Fiction uses satire and alienation while 19th century Science Fiction deals mainly with a parody of the ‘Oedipus Complex’. In Micromegas, Voltaire uses science to present the philosophic notion that there is an absurdity to human beliefs and actions. His work suggests that our main faults and vices are inherent to our inaccurate and misguided rationality. By mocking and belittling these faults using sarcastic and ironic devices which logically and scientifically support each other, Voltaire’s work allow people to see the incoherence of their own though. He demon ...

... predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed finger as a trophy ...

... she would pay for a new dress. Lena began her journey to wealth by becoming one of the many hired girls in the town of Black Hawk. There she was apprentice to a dressmaker and before long began to show great potential. She soon began making money with her newfound talent, and used this money not to help herself, but to benefit her family. Lena spent her free time buying clothes for them, and paid some of their bills. She also went to many dances over the summer months. With all of her beautiful dresses, many of the young men began to notice her as they never had before. Soon Lena began to get ...

... At her late age of fifty she sees herself as Mrs. Dalloway, not even Clarissa. She portrays her sense of happiness as something not monstrumental or graniose, but rather quite simple. She can be happy throwing a party, she can escape reality: Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that everyone was unreal in one way; much more real in another. …it was possible to say things you couldn’t say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper. But not for her; not yet anyhow. (Woolf 171) Kramer 2 With Septimus, seeing his best friend Evans ...

... identically as brutus only changing one word, but it made an obvious difference, and it sent out more compassion towards the crowd. He then says act 3 scene 2 line 81, “the noble brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious, if it were so it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answered it”. This meant that because Caesar was ambitious he deserved to die. He then says act 3 scene 2 line 91”Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captures home to Rome, whose ransom did the general coffers fill. Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor hath cried, Caesar hath we ...

... served as a combat bombardier in the Twelfth Air Force and was stationed on the island of Corsica where he flew over 60 combat missions. That experience provided the groundwork for this novel. (Way, 120) (Usborne) The protagonist and hero of the novel is John Yossarian, a captain in the Air Force and a lead bombardier in his squadron, but he hates the war. During the latter half of World War II, Yossarian is stationed with his Air Force squadron on the island of Pianosa, near the Italian coast and the Mediterranean Sea. (Heller) The squadron is thrown thoughtlessly into brutal combat situations and bombing runs on w ...

... his invisibility to such things as "the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows." He later explains that he is "neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation," but rather is "in a state of hibernation." (p.6) This invisibility is something that the narrator has come to accept and even embrace, saying that he "did not become alive until [he] discovered [his] invisibility." (p.7) However, as we read on in the story, it is apparent that the invisibility that the narrator experiences, goes much further than just white people unwilling to acknowledge him for who he ...

... a person can prevent it from happening in his or her personal life. It is much easier to learn something from someone else’s mistakes than from your own. So it is possible that people who really enjoy tragedy do not really enjoy it, but use it to prevent their future misfortunes, if there are any. Otherwise, how can someone enjoy the pain and the suffering of others? But like everything else tragedy has laws. One of the laws is Hubris. A Rose for Emily, by William Faulkner, can easily be classified as a tragedy. It is a repulsive story about a woman, who died just as she lived: lonely. Emily Grierson w ...

... as they are prophetic. We are introduced to this idea of the belief of supremacy in the opening of the novel. The fact that "no one would have believed in the last years of the 19th century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligence greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own" enforces this indestructibility of European culture. The beginning of Mars' assault on Earth is watched with little wonder other than a displaced curiosity. No concern or worry enters the minds of the locals, even after they discover that the sphere that has landed is extraterrestrial. Indeed, even after th ...

... goes along with what is gone or lost. For example, states, “Ah, love, let us be true To one another! For the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, Stockburger 2 So various, so beautiful, so new Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ...