ASSIGNMENT

Assignment



Assignment

Question 1

In William Cullen Bryant s early nineteenth century poem Thanatopsis, a collage of imagery and ideas surround a central theme of the cycle of life. Within this poem lies a story of great wonder and hope. The story is that of the afterlife in which Bryant conveys a lot of the same ideas of a majestic and heavenly paradise that are present in the Christian Bible. Since Bryant was schooled heavily in theology, is Thanatopsis based on the ideas that the Christian Bible holds of the afterlife? Bryant immediately introduces his notion of spiritual unity among humans and nature in the first line of the poem(Gioia 2003).

Whatever point of view the reader construes out of this work, the theme is the same. The evidence that Bryant based Thanatopsis on the theological teachings of death and resurrection, found in the Bible, is apparent throughout the poem. The ideas that have stood the test of time are still living in another form of literature, Thanatopsis. Perhaps this was Bryant s intention. To create an everlasting work that would convey the ideas of Christian theology, and teach readers across the globe about the death, resurrection, and a glorious afterlife.

Question 2

The key quality in Emerson is enthusiasm. The commonest feelings in his work are wild delight, rapture, ecstasy, especially in nature even when we can hardly say why. He writes: “Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. Emerson knew a lot of darkness, but the keynote of his mind and writing is still: enthusiasm! I call us modern Emersonians “ecstatic melancholics.” (Parks 1992)

Question 3

The most famous acts of civil disobedience in recent US history happened back in the 1950s and 1960s -- during the Civil Rights Movement.

The "Freedom Riders" who rode buses through the South and broke segregation laws in 1963. Most of the Freedom Riders were black, many of them came from the South, and none of them were registered voters. They took to the nation's highways in the early 1960's to protest the walls of white segregationist practices in the Deep South. The first Freedom Rides of 1961 were unplanned affairs, which triggered violent reactions by many of the whites. A perfect example of this occurred Mother's Day of ...