Right-click and do a "Save Target As..." to download the tips to your computer
Sample essays :: Book Review
Book Review
1. Black Elk
The book "Black Elk speaks" was supposed to become a truly Indian book, the author wanted to create a good novel and Black Elk’s reason for doing it was to make and save the records about the culture, life style and traditions of his people. This characterizes Black Elk as not a person concentrated upon himself, but as really a kind of a soul and mind of his tribe, as humanist and really important historical figure. The author had his own attitude to the "other" world and his main idea concerning this was presented in the second paragraph of the story already: "It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit".
The doubts about life and his choice in life of Black Elk are a little alike with those of the main character of Goethe’s novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther"– Werther. But the great difference is the fact that Black Elk was trying to take care and felt responsible for the whole tribe, and Werther couldn’t even cope with some problems about his mother’s household. He created his own "paradise" getting to know some "nice" people. It is hard to be really critical about his shooting himself, as he was suffering from his love to Lotte, the question whether suicide is a weakness of a human’s nature or the result of his power as he could decide to kill himself is still without concrete answer.
There is an opinion that the story of Werther has some autobilogical characteristics, it comes from the statement of Goether in his letter to C.F.Zelter: "Werther hardly leaves anyone doubting that all of the symptoms of this wonder- ous, as natural as unnatural disease have once roamed within me, too. I still remember quite well what efforts it has cost me to escape the waves of death back then..."
2. Magical Realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude
(abstract)
...The mysticism starts already with the setting for the events, it is a strange village, called Macondo – "it was a truly happy village where no one was over thirty years of age and where no one had died", at least at the beginning. Realism and magic seem to be the opposite notions, but in this novel they are used to convey the author’s message and conception. The reality in the novel is presented not "as if it experienced by one observer, but as it is individually experienced by those with different backgrounds." (Bell – Villada, Gene H. Garcia Marquez: The Man and His Work. Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1990 pp.2-3) It is also connected with the unique reality of Latin America - it was between modernity and the stage of pre- industrialization, after a civil war and attacked by imperialism. Thus this was a strategy used by several authors of those times – magic going through ordinary lives, mixing up the reality and fiction.
Another feature of mysticism in the story is lack of division into past, present and future, at least lack of strict one. Some characters have even amnesia, when they can not see the past at all, some are able to see even the future clearly, as for example the end of the story is seen by Melquades from the very beginning. The past is united with the presence when the ghosts of Melquades and Jose Arcadio Buendia appear....
Hi, thank you very much for the
work that you did for me, I
really liked the style of the
writer and all the facts were
presented in the concrete and
precise form, it was absolutely
not difficult to cope with huge
amount of information for
the topic!
Leo, USA
My friend told me about this
service, at the beginning I didn't
want to try it, but when the
paper was really urgent, I asked
for help here and I received my
paper just in time not to fail the
exam. Thank you, sorry, don't
know the name of the writer.
