Guy de Maupassant and Ambrose Bierce are linked through the ambiguity of the monster of their stories. “The Horla” and “The Damned Thing” involve a hunt of sorts. “The Horla” is a subtler hunt, where the creature does not seek out opportunities to harm the narrator. “The Damned Thing” is a tangible hunt, as the reader witnesses the recounting of Hugh Morgan’s death. While both stories are both plausible and implausible, “The Horla” is about a creation of the mind, which is inherently scarier, while “The Damned Thing” is, in fact, a tangible monster. “The Horla” and “The Damned Thing” have an invisible being at the center of the story. In “The Horla,” the being is very humanistic. The narrator notes the Horla drinks water, and picks flowers, and the narrator believes the Horla reads, just as he does. “[His] armchair was empty, appeared empty, but [he] knew that [the Horla] was there, He, and sitting in [his] place, and that He was reading… But before [he] could reach it, [his] chair fell over as if somebody had run away from [the narrator]” (Maupassant, 14). This is just one example of the narrator feeling the Horla’s presence and challenging him, only for the Horla to slip out of the narrator’s grasp. Unlike in “The Damned Thing,” the Horla does not seem to have malicious intentions towards the narrator, simply mimicking the actions which the narrator demonstrates. In “The Damned Thing,” the monster is just that: a monster. William Harker recounts the Damned Thing thrashing in the bushes, and he sees “[Hugh Morgan], down upon one knee, his head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side to side” (Bierce, 883). The Damned Thing, in behavior, is far more animalistic than the Horla, and seems intent on attacking the two men. “A scream like that of a wild animal” supports the animalistic tendencies, and the injuries Hugh Morgan sustains show an animal attack (Bierce, 883). While both creatures have plausible and implausible characteristics, the stories utilize these characteristics in different ways. The plausibility of the two creatures affects the terror the reader experiences. The narrator of “The Horla” and William Harker both note
In the gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley weaves an intricate web of allusions through her characters’ expedient desires for knowledge. Both the actions of Frankenstein, as well as his monster allude to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Book eight of Milton’s story relates the tale of Satan’s temptation and Eve’s fateful hunger for knowledge. The infamous Fall of Adam and Eve introduced the knowledge of good and evil into a previously pristine world. With one swift motion sin was birthed, and the perfection of the earth was swept away, leaving pain and malevolence in its wake. The troubles of Victor Frankenstein begin with his quest for knowledge, and end where all end: death. The characters in Frankenstein are a conglomeration of those
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is a non-fiction book about an architect who led the Chicago World Fair of 1893; a serial killer used the fair to lure people to him. Blocks from the fair, the killer built a hotel with equipment ready to use. This book known for incorporating some of America’s history also had very dramatic and entertaining story behind it. Erik Larson wrote in third person. He wrote this book to inform people on what happen in Chicago. Erik uses a great amount of imagery and diction to inform people of this event. ”The lake was grey, darkening to a band of black at the horizon “was just one of his many spots of imagery. His tone also comes across as objective and neutral limits from using any language that
The term genocide means terminate an entire race or group. In the Holocaust, millions of people were murdered by the Nazis under the order of Adolf Hitler. The main target during the Holocaust were Jewish people, or more specifically those who did not fit into the Aryan race (Adolf Hitler’s picture of how a person should be). Adolf Hitler and his army the Nazis tried to commit genocide by eradicating the Jewish race, but luckily they were not successful in doing so. The story “Terrible Things” by Eve Bunting and the poem “The Hangman” by Maurice Ogden show in very different ways a lot of the same themes about the Holocaust.
The Devil in the White City a novel written by Erick Larson, a book that consisted of a national wonder in the Chicago World Columbian Exposition of 1893 or better known as the Chicago world fair, as well with the fair-goer predating murders committed by the famous serial killer Dr.H.H.Holmes. Larson uses contrast between Chief architect of the Chicago World Fair Daniel Hudson Burnham and serial killer H.H.Holmes. Larson then brings out juxtaposition between the White City and the Black City (World fair vs. Chicago). Larson uses detailed imagery on the visual of the fair.
The idea of what a monster is and how it pertains to modern day society has fascinated readers and writers for decades. Before taking this class, I was aware of what a monster is and the function it served in today’s society. Furthermore, after taking this class, I am now aware of what a monster truly is, and what really separates a monster from a regular person. The piece of text that I mainly chose to focus on and elaborate closely to demonstrate the aspects of a monster is appropriately named, Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. The reason I chose this piece of literature is because, Monster thoroughly elaborates what a monster is in todays society and how it functions in the modern day world. In this essay I will elaborate on
Monsters are challenges that the human race must overcome. In Jeffrey Cohen’s essay “Monster Culture,” Cohen reasserts the presence of the monstrous within society, and its relation to different cultures in a specific time period. All of Cohen’s seven thesis makes sensible arguments that gives the audience a glimpse on what his purpose is. Each thesis are presented differently, but Cohen correlates his ideas to explain the monster’s true existence. The convergence of intellectualism makes a strong connection between Cohen’s appeal to pathos. Cohen utilizes emotion in his writing to mainly appeal to his audience, and give them an idea on what goes on behind the monster’s identity. The final thesis “The Monster Stands at the Threshold of Becoming”
Howard Thurman removes the window dressing in the African American experience of segregation in America. Thurman in his book, “The Luminous Darkness” paints an obscure portrait that delved deep into the consciousness of Black men, women and children freshly freed from chattel slavery. Two hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of darkness seeping into each soul perpetuated by an evil explained only through the Word of God. Although this book was published in the 60’s, the stigma segregation continues resonate in the souls of those who remember and perhaps even in the souls of those who do not.
In his article ‘the awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer’ for the Guardian newspaper, Peter Wilby seemingly argues that the current downward economic trend of the western world is almost an irreversible occurrence. He argues that for the past 30 years ‘traditional forms of state intervention such as subsidies and tariffs ’ have failed to protect the jobs of western people from being exported overseas. Wilby explains that instead of using traditional methods, governments now believe education is the solution to keeping the western world employed. However, this so called ‘Knowledge Work’ is also increasingly being outsourced to developing countries, Wilby gives various examples to this outsourcing such as ‘Analysing X-rays,
A little girl screams in fear for her parents as she envisions a green, three-eyed monster lurking under her bed, waiting to get her until she finally closes her eyes. A little boy scares fellow trick-or-treaters as he’s dressed as a vampire for Halloween brandishing his pointy teeth with blood dripping out of his mouth. Both of these examples of monsters focus on the physicality of a creature and undermine the weight which the word ‘monster’ actually carries. In Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, and in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, there are characters that perfectly fit the description of a tangible monster. However, monsters are more than their somatic features. Monsters are created within based on circumstances, decisions that are
"We need scarcely say, that these volumes have neither principle, object, nor moral; the horror which abounds in them is too grotesque and bizarre ever to approach near the sublime, and when we did not hurry over the pages in disgust, we sometimes paused to laugh outright; and yet we suspect, that the diseased and wandering imagination, which has stepped out of all legitimate bounds, to frame these disjointed combinations and unnatural adventures, might be disciplined into something better. We heartily wish it were so, for
In the novel, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault the protagonist, becomes drawn into a “senseless” murder that has to face the absurdity of life and because of his actions, Meursault is presented as a danger due to his lack of “morality” to society. Meursault who is not able to take control of his life but respond to what life offers him believes in the simplicity of life. He tries to understand the living through logic and objectivity, which ultimately turns futile, as he himself cannot maintain proper control over his thoughts and emotions. From the interactions between Marie, to the murder of the Arab, and the meeting with the Chaplain, Meursault overcomes his indifferent views to form an opinion about what life really means. The central theme presented by Camus is how the threat of mortality becomes a catalyst for understanding the significance of life.
In The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce the horror he tries to display is that people will try to put logic to something illogical. Bierce not only makes the characters think this way but also makes the reader themselves think about it. Throughout the story we never see “The Damned thing”, we barely have any descriptions of “The Damned Thing”, the Author doesn't let us have any information of it, letting our minds wander to the most logical explanation. When I first read the story and was put into the place of William Harker, I didn't jump to the conclusion that it was an invisible beast, I went to the next most logical answer which was a wild animal. After William Harker sees Hugh Morgan, his hunter friend, become startled by a noise he says,
It explores the uses of internal horror. It also sets the scene, which is one of disgust and anguish. A rhetorical question is used in the first paragraph; it is used to make the reader build a picture of just how hideous the monster is.
The results indicated that the Cronbach alpha for climate for sexual harassment measure was well above 0.70 as recommended by Nunnally (1978) i.e. 0.934. The corrected item-total correlation for all the items within the scale was positive and exceeded the value of 0.3 by a wide margin (Pallant, 2005). An examination of the scale’s inter-item correlation matrix indicated that the scale showed a moderate to strong positive correlation between all the items within the scale (Gliem & Gliem, 2003). The result determined that all items within the scales were stable enough to assess the intended construct.
Currently, as we have seen in our class studies, there are many diverse topics and issues related to today’s changing workplace. These include advancements in technology, global markets, social media, evolution of unions and human resource, and Public Private Partnerships.