Kirjahaku

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Flensburg (Englisches Institut), course: Projektarbeit Anglistik, language: English, abstract: The Road is set in an apocalyptic scenario in which most of humankind and the environ-ment seems to have been destroyed by an unspecified catastrophe. Still the few survivors, including the two main characters, have to eat something in order to stay alive. They nourish themselves from whatever edible they find on their way as they travel along a road in the hope of finding a warmer and more liveable place in the ruined country. But as the story develops they learn that not all survivors of the disaster are willing to live from the mostly insipid leftovers of the destroyed civilization but have instead developed an unholy desire for fresh human meat. In this project work I would like to deal with the role of food in McCarthy's novel and furthermore examine the parts that display cannibalism. Therefore I divide my project into two main parts of analysis. Firstly I m going to highlight how and for which reasons McCarthy uses the topic of normal food in his novel. Which stylistic devices does the author use to emphasize the role of food and how does McCarthy integrate the topic into the novel? And what role plays the absence of food? Secondly I would like to focus on the cannibals. How are they described, what role do they play in the book and how is their appearance used by McCarthy to evoke fear and tension throughout the novel? In addition to that I m trying to find out whether the author may have had any examples in mind when he conceived those bestialized creatures. Has he been influenced by other writers, real cannibalistic occurrences in extreme situations or within history? Where did his get his preference for violent topics from?

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1, 3, University of Basel (Englisches Seminar), language: English, abstract: Hurricane sandy, which raged over the Eastern United States last autumn and caused widespread damage and claimed the lives of over hundred people, was a reminder of how relevant the first quote still is. And Goethe was also right in writing that nature goes its own way. His last sentence, however, is not true anymore. Humanity influences nature, causes these exceptions, and is affected by the results. In this paper, I am going to examine Tim Parks' novels Dreams of Rivers and Seas and Rapids from this point of view. In both novels the protagonists try to gain control over nature and to overcome the hardships which it imposes upon them, but finally have to recognize that it has not only prevailed, but has also altered them and their lives profoundly. As nature has a wide-ranging meaning in literature, the term needs to be narrowed down at first. While the lexical definition is understandable, describing it as "the phenomena of the physical world collectively" (OED 2013), the debate in philosophy is more complex, discussing whether nature exists in reality or only as a social construction in our heads. Dingler (2005: 29-30) concludes that in modern thinking humans consider nature to be a "Teil der Realit t ...] der vom Menschen unabh ngig ist." Only through knowledge is it possible to acknowledge the reality of nature. This theory is based on the Cartesian dualism, which distinguishes between the sphere of nature and the sphere of culture (31). As humans we live in the sphere of culture, yet we are also inhabitants of nature, and existed in it before we even developed a noteworthy culture. Humans are considered as being born wild and egoistically, and only through cultural influences such as education and norms do we develop the ability to live together (Borghini 2013). In the course of this paper I am now