The Speckled Band Essay Example for Free

The Speckled Band Essay Dr Roylott is presented as a menacing figure through various references in the story. He has a nerve and he has knowledge. This man strikes even deeper. Also We heard the hoarse roar of the Doctors voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clenched fist, this suggests that Dr Roylott may not be able to control his anger but he is clever despite this. Another way in which the arch villain is presented to the reader is the way he speaks and what he says. In The Speckled Band Dr Roylott uses forceful language to intimidate Holmes and to make him feel uncomfortable and powerless. I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See that you keep yourself out of my grip showing the reader that Dr Roylott does not like other people interfering with his business and that he does not mind using violence. Another factor of being the arch villain. The way the arch villain is presented in the Engineers thumb is similar to the speckled band as we find out the arch villain through the victims telling their story. However the arch villain in the Engineers thumb is not particularly revealed until the end where he tries to kill Mr Hatherly. Throughout the story the villain plays a mysterious character from the beginning where he is questioning Mr Hatherly and swearing him to keep it a secret. The villain seems a suspicious of the victim when it should be the other way around. The character Colonel Lysander stark is presented as mysterious, dangerous but the obvious suspect, although he is the stereotypical arch villain by his looks and his aggressive manner. Sherlock Holmes is shown often the central character and is shown as the best detective in the field with every skill that is needed as a detective. He has a good instinct that enables him to draw the correct conclusion from small observations. For example, in the Red Headed League, by looking at john clays worn wrinkled and stained knees he is able to realize the John Clay has been digging a passage to the bank. On the other hand, he is shown as a lonely man with no family life. This persuades the reader to like him because some might feel jealous for his investigating skills, so they pity his lonely life. Holmes again demonstrates a good instinct, which enables him to retrieve the facts before actually knowing them. This is shown when he gathers the facts that Mr Hatherly hasnt traveled as far as he thinks when he comments that One horse? Fresh or glossy? By the answer that Mr Hatherly gives him he able to notice that as the horse was not tired and was still clean then he had not traveled the 12 miles that the villain had told him he had. He here has the wit and knowledge to make him the best detective. Dr Watson is important in the stories because he is the narrator. Doctors are one of the most trusted professions as they have an image of being rescuers or saviors. I think the reason why Dr Watson is shown as a doctor is to make the readers trust him and therefore make the story believable. He is show as less skillful than Holmes, which makes the reader trust him even more because they can feel at the same level as him. Also he has great skills of observing and describing which aids the reader to recreate the events that happened whilst reading it. The setting in The Speckled Band makes the story seem scary and exciting by the use of adjectives. There are many quotes that add to the atmosphere of stoke Moran and that emphasis that Dr Roylott is a suspicious character in the story. Indian animals wander freely over his grounds and are feared greatly shows that Stoke Moran is possibly a dangerous place to be because of the exotic animals roaming it and it makes the setting seem mysterious. We had no feeling of security unless the doors were locked, The windows were blocked by old fashioned shutters with broad iron bars show us that stoke Moran and the setting around it gives a sense of unease and insecurity. The windows being blocked with iron bars gives a feeling of entrapment and it is almost like a prison. The descriptions of Stoke Moran add to the scariness of the story. All was dark in the direction of the manor house this suggests that only that area was in darkness and places around it were shadowed by its eeriness. The weather also plays an important part in the story. It was rainy, dark and stormy. This makes the story more interesting because you know that something bad is about to or has happened. The setting in the Engineers thumb creates just as much tension as the speckled band because of the mysterious way Mr Hatherly is taken in the train and he has no idea of where he is going. Along with the Speckled band the weather creates an atmosphere because its raining dark and in the middle of the night. This makes the mood scarier and the story is again frightening. Other factors that produce tension in the story is not just the stories that the victims tell but the way they tell it. They create a chilling atmosphere as they tell their almost unbelievable story to Holmes and Watson that then they can investigate. Helen Stoners narrative helps create tension by the way she builds up weird events and how she relates to where they took place. She relates back to her story at stoke Moran where the weird event of her sisters death took place. Here she comments that It was a wild night. The wind was howling outside and the rain was beating. This suggests that things were out of control and unusual at the manor house. As she continues to tell her story it becomes even more unusual and strange for the reader leaving you puzzled and with having to unravel the mystery. Doyle uses different techniques to add to the feeling of the story, an example being flashbacks. He gets the victims to tell their story to him and when they do odd facts appear, especially about the villains. Flash backs help the reader to feel more involved in the story because it gives them specific events that happened making it feel like you are there, as well as understanding it and trying to solve the mystery yourself. In conclusion, The Speckled Band, The engineers thumb and the Red Headed League build up the tension well and make the reader feel fully involved in trying to solve the mysterious stories. The Speckled Band and the Engineers Thumb are equally as exciting and gripping because they both make the reader feel aware of the atmosphere, plus the setting that the victims describe are well explained and are easily imaginable. Other Sherlock Holmes stories I have read also are well written and fast paced but are longer and the stories have more detail. This could leave the reader feeling that the story is unsolvable and so the reader would not want to continue with the story. However, The Speckled Band is the right length to be a good story and enchanting descriptions within it makes it exciting overall. Feminist criticism interprets womens experience as depicted in various kinds of literature- especially novels. It attacks the male notions of value in literature- by offering critiques of male authors and representations of men in literature and also by privileging women writers. Reading Arthur Conan Doyles stories (especially Sherlock Holmes) there is a sense of long-standing, dominant and phallocentric ideologies that contribute towards the patriarchal attitudes and male interpretations in literature. The detectives in Conan Doyles stories are always male and Conan Doyle only seems to cast women in stock character roles i. e. the victims are always female and powerless. Conan Doyle writes in a typical masculine style. He interprets females in the stereotypical type of how women are supposed to feel, act and think. This I feel is why many female readers may not be able to relate to any characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories because the stock character roles that Conan Doyle produces. Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Arthur Conan Doyle section.

The Truth Of Dreams :: essays research papers

Dreams, what are dreams? For many years I have wondered what dreams are made of. After much thought and deliberation I have stumbled upon three possible answers to this question. First of all, I think it could be a period of total escape from reality and all of the problems that reality brings with it. Second, I believe that dreams provide a time of contemplation of past mistakes and what would have been the outcome if a different choice would have been made. Third, I think dreams may contain the simple answers to difficult problems which the mind overlooked and disregarded as to basic of a solution for such a complex problem.The day is stressful, and through the day one does not always have a time to rest and relax. Dreams provide a way to relive this stress. It does this by allowing the mind to escape to anywhere it desires. Thus allowing eight hours to be anything one’s heart wants and needs. Dreams may be the only way for one to live out their â€Å"dreams.†We all know we make mistakes, we can not help but to make mistakes, it is human nature. Dreams provide us with an open opportunity to look back and analyze the mistake and choice. Looking close at a mistake and its eventual consequences along with the choices one did not make and consciences one did not receive provides us with a golden opportunity to not make the same mistake again.Answers, everyone needs answers to one’s problems to live. Problems from where one will find one’s next meal to what sort of life is in the outer most part of the solar system. All day long the brain thinks of very complex answers to these highly complex problems. Sometimes, and only sometimes the simple answer is better than the complex answer, but if one is looking for the complex answer how can one find the simple answer? Dreams, while asleep one’s brain can not function on the same level as when one is awake. Therefore, when one is asleep and is still looking for the answer one will not have any other except the simple answer to think about. This will show one the correct answer so one will have it when one wakes up the next morning.

Voice and Language in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Voice and Language in Their Eyes Were Watching God Oprisor Maria 1st year American Studies Voice and Language in Their Eyes Were Watching God In this paper I would like to focus on point of view and some aspects of stylistics in Zora Hurstons’ work Their Eyes Were Watching God. In particular, I will address the issue of narrative voice, the shifts between first person and third person, and I will also include in my analysis some aspects related to types of language variety and style variation. I have chosen this text because generally it is considered Zora Neale Hurston's most important piece of fiction, and because it is a proof of her ability to master language and voice. To illustrate my analysis I have selected some fragments which can be found at the end of the paper. I will make references to them whenever is necessary. The novel presents, in a combination of first and third person narration the story of Jamie Crawford and her three successive husbands. At several points in the text, Janie Crawford is prohibited from speaking, while at other points she chooses not to speak. Silence, then, is sometimes used as a tool of oppression and at other times as a tool of power. Even from the beginning of the novel it can be easily noticed the shifting narration; the viewpoint has moved from â€Å"every men† to â€Å"men† to â€Å"women† to â€Å"a woman† all these under the form of gossip of the front porch (see quote 1). While the earliest feminist interpretations put forward the idea that Janie achieves selfhood by claiming her voice, Barbara Johnson asserts that it is by accepting the inevitability of self-division that Janie gains the power of speech. She shows how Janie’s discovery that â€Å"she had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them†(Johnson: 50) has implications for Janie’s ability to speak. There are two paragraphs that highlight this aspect of inside and outside in Their Eyes Were Watching God (see quote 2). It can be noticed the image of Jody as an insider and in the second quote her image but this time as an outsider. Now she realizes that †looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams†. This proves that the inside and outside are never the same. When reading the novel the reader is introduced into a world where perspective and voice are in a permanent shift but it does not give the impression of unreliable narrators. The view point is controlled through a linguistic indicator of viewpoint, namely deixis. This is proved by adverbials of place like there and verbs like come. (see quote 2). Moreover through the novel we can mention the presence of social deixis_: Mr. and Mrs. _Turner or _Mrs. _Bogle: â€Å"Mrs. Bogle who was many times a grandmother, but had a blushing air of coquetry about her that cloaked her sunken cheeks. †(p. 230) When speaking about types of language variety we certainly can include dialect when analyzing Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Hurston manages, with great literary craftsmanship, to represent not only the speech and thought of her protagonist but also of the collective black community. She succeeds in doing this through free indirect speech. In the novel’s frame tale, Janie returns to Eatonville after a long absence. Townspeople sit on porches exchanging words full of drama and metaphor. In this context it is to be mentioned that phonetic changes as well as morphological changes exist at the level of the language. (see quote 3) Through all novel there are wonderful examples of dialogues that show literary craftsmanship of the twentieth-century Southern black vernacular speech. In terms of style variation, this is obvious at almost every page. It is easily detectable the â€Å"Systematic variation from one identifiable kind of language to another within the same text†(Short:1996)/ (see quote 3). All these demonstrate, without error, the way in which Zora Neale Hurston masters language and voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston's great accomplishment is the creation of a literary language equivalent to the oral performances she admired as a child and studied as an ethnographer. Vernacular voices speak in and through the novel and the novel's words â€Å"[walk] without masters. † Their Eyes is a singular achievement. Quote 1: â€Å"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his drams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget†¦So the beginning of this was a woman, and she had come back from burying a dead†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (p. 175) Quote 2: â€Å" So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned how to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church. The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired. † (p. 232) ~~~~~~~~~~ â€Å"Janie stood where he left for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them. † In the first paragraph the â€Å"marriage† moves outward from the bedroom to the parlor, replacing itself with the image of virginity. The second paragraph represents her image of Jody, but an image of an outsider. Know she realizes that â€Å"looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams†. Both paragraphs are an externalization of Janie’s feelings onto the outer surroundings. In figurative language, Barbara Johnson observes, â€Å"inside and outside are never the same† and she asserts that â€Å" Far from being an expression of Janie’ s new wholeness or identity as a character, Janie’s increasing ability to speak grows out of her ability not to mix inside with outside†¦Ã¢â‚¬ . (p. 233) Quote 3: â€Å"Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song. What she doin coming back here in dem overhalls? Can't she find no dress to put on? — Where's dat blue satin dress she left here in? — Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her? — What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin' wid her hair swingin' down her back lak some young gal? Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid? – Thought she was going to marry? — Where he left her? — What he done wid all her money? — Betcha he off wid some gal so young she ain't even got no hairs — why she don't stay in her class? â€Å"(p. 175) References: Barbara, Johnson, Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God, in Wall, 2000, ZORA NEALE HURSTON’S Their Eyes Were Watching God, New York: Oxford Un iversity Press. Short, M. , 1996, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, London, New York: Longman. Zora, N. , Hurston, 2002, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Library of America.

How Environment Affects Middle Childhood Development

How Surrounding environment affect Middle childhood development The process of development of human from birth to death is life long, multidimensional and multidirectional and affected by multiple interacting forces. He passes from various stages of process throughout his life cycle and felt different experiences, learn something new and improved himself. Before birth, human passed from various physical developmental stages during his fetus period and after birth he tries to adjust in his outdoor environment and acquired new skill to survive in new surrounding environment. As he is passing from infancy to childhood which is period of birth to age of 2 year, he gets physical as well as somewhat mental development and then he crosses the early childhood which is from age 2 to 6 year and then he enters in middle childhood. (Laura E. Berk, page 5and 168, (2013) Middle childhood is the stage start when children actually start to develop rapidly, fast physical growth, uneven growth of musc les and bones and organs start. The period of middle childhood is from age of 6 to 11 or 6 to 12 of life cycle. This is stage where child’s physical, emotional, social and mental development occurs rapidly, and his outdoor environment as well as his genes affected his development. (Laura E. Berk, page 234-235, (2013) I also passed from this period of development and here I want to share some experience during my middle childhood development. I was born inShow MoreRelatedChildhood Development And Childhood Stages1633 Words   |  7 PagesChildhood, is a period characterised by significant cognitive, emotional, social and biological development. 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