TOP INTERESTING ESSAYS

Fullness of Being “Didn’t this place used to be bigger?” My question goes unanswered as my mother continues to haggle with the assistant over the price of the money plants. I look around at the local nursery I hadn’t visited in over ten years, and which is the last stop on our shopping trip that day before going home. The last time I had been here, the ferns and ficus had towered over me. I had walked down the raised mud path, making my way through rows and rows of flower beds, dodging bees and mosquitoes, and pushing away large cactus leaves from my path. I had looked up at the dark green sky above me, suffusing the area around me in a subdued shadow of mystery. Yet, I followed the mud paths round and round, gazing at the ants on the bark of a tree next to me here, plucking the feathery leaves of a fern there, following the path as it meandered its way back mysteriously to Mama when I had been sure I was lost. Hours, which felt like years, would pas...

Do Public Opinion Polls Taint the Spirit of Democracy? The modernization of the democratic society in the last century has revolutionized the nature of discourse and interaction between political workers and the voters. The introduction of electronic voting machines and the wide spread use of media during election campaigns by both the electorate and political parties has transformed the nature of voting behavior. The public opinion poll is another mechanism that has dramatically influenced the democratic institution. A public opinion poll is defined as “a type of survey…designed to measure the public's views regarding a particular topic…” ("What Is Public Opinion Polling and Why Is It Important?"). The first known public opinion poll was conducted in 1824 by The Harrisburg Pennsylvania in the run up to the U.S Presidential Elections. Since then, public opinion polls have been widely used to predict the outcome of elections. Although pu...

Conman Bob The name’s Bob. But some folks also know me as Frank Pulley, Bill Butler, Gregor McGregor, Dr. Martin Stans and so on and so forth. I planned on livin’ my life like a decent chap in our wee dirt-road town in Nashville,Tennessee. But then one day my Ma says to me, she says, “Bob, don’t go runnin’ after that Daisy. You a cobbler’s son and unless the Lord think it fine to send us over some miracle, that’s all you’ll ever be.” Daisy was the prettiest girl in my school. Her Pop was the editor of the local gazette and her Ma had the prettiest linen and the freshest cakes, they said. My Pop was old, wrinkly and hunchbacked, and he was missing half his left index finger ‘cuz he nailed it in to a heel once. The only linen my Ma had she used as curtains for the sitting room. So Daisy and I could never be. Another time my Ma caught me sewing a pair of ballet slippers for Daisy and she said to me, she said, “Bob, you ever try running after a lad on a ...

Comparing The Princess of Clèves with other The Princess of Clèves, Red and Black, Dangerous Liaisons and The Pastoral Symphony have all dealt with women who became attracted to men who were not their husbands and, in the case of Gertrude from The Pastoral Symphony, their father figure. The characters of the Princess, Madame de Rênal, Madame de Tourvel and Gertrude are all hailed at numerous points in their respective novels as virtuous and largely noble women. Yet with the exception of the Princess all the other female characters indulge in affairs with the men they are attracted to when ironically it is the Princess herself who can legitimately conduct an affair or even get married to the Duke de Nemours at the end of The Princess of Clèves due to her husband's death. The Princess instead does not follow her heart's desire and remains single after the death of the Prince of Clèves and spends part of every year at a convent with the remainde...

The Pastoral Symphony is a study in self-deception. The Pastoral Symphony is an ironical novel, written as a book of criticism and one of it’s greatest criticisms seems to be the conduct of the Pastor, a character who is not only immoral, inconsiderate and selfish but is also a harsh, judgmental hypocrite of a man. The Pastor’s continued inconsiderate behavior even in the face of the immorality and injustice of his actions is the height of blindness and although Gertrude is the one who is physically blind, the Pastor’s self deception leaves him as the one who is truly blind. The first aspect of self deception in the novel arises from the Pastor’s status as a pastor: A man of religion. The Pastor chooses to believe what he wants, in spite of being a Pastor, he believes in some parts of the Bible and conveniently avoids others, showing that even his faith is one of ignorance and convenience. Arthur E. Babcock asserts that “The pastor’s dishonesty is...

Unfaithful Bodies He is soft, like a child. I have to be careful not to press too hard or hold too tight, and I am constantly careful the way you have to be careful to not touch the soft spot on a baby’s head. Everything has to be lukewarm, mellow, muffled. I bathe him with water that is close to the temperature of blood. I don’t want to surprise his body with something too starkly different. My spine makes popping sounds and my blood rushes to my head and makes it pound painfully when I bend down to soap his feet, but I can still stand and he cannot which is why I’m the one sliding my soapy fingers between his toes even though he doesn’t really go anywhere barefoot. He doesn’t really go anywhere. His skin feels thin like the yellowed paper in old books and I think that maybe if I scrub too hard I will scour it right off his bones. His bones feel oddly close to the surface of his body as if his blood and flesh have been compressed into thinner layers,...