Martin Luther King Jr.’s last speech before he died was “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”. In this speech, King passionately discusses his view on human equality. He believes that all humans should have the same rights and be treated equally. Martin Luther King Jr. convincingly argues for equal rights by using many literary devices throughout his speech such as foreshadowing, allusions, motifs, and themes. Although all of these devices work well in his speech, through allusions to past events such as slavery in Egypt, Martin Luther King Jr. most strongly influences listeners of his beliefs to the point that people will reflect upon these allusions, and change their own views about them.
Reagan and MJ Thesis
Ronald Reagan and Michael Jordan were two very notable individuals of their times. As President of the United States, Reagan was notorious for his Reaganomics ideology. Michael Jordan is dubbed as one of the greatest athletes of all time and is still compared to great basketball players of this era, such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Although both of these men were known for the work they did in their respective careers, we know little about the problems and devils they faced as individuals on a daily basis. Some of the innerconflicts which each of these men dealt with are brought to light in their respective farewell speeches and help reveal a similar thought process.
AP Jerome Delay Photojournalism
http://apphotocontests.ap.org/AP_ContestSlidshows/atlanta_2014/index.html
Thesis
Both Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Sylvia Path’s poem “I am Vertical” share the commonality of lack of verticalness. With this lack of verticalness, both narrators are looking from the ground up in search of some sort of escape. However, both pieces differ in the type of escape the characters are looking for. In Jacob’s excerpt, the narrator is looking for an escape from captivity. But in Path’s poem, the narrator is looking for an escape from the world, ultimately desiring death.
Zach Introduction
On August 24th, 1953, Sylvia Plath, Age 20, crawled into the basement of her house, ingested a lethal dosage of sleeping pills, and waited to die. This marked her first suicide attempt, which she ultimately survived, but it would not be her last. She continued to attempt suicide multiple times over the next ten years, until finally succeeding on February 11, 1963, in London. Five years later, and four thousand miles away, a sanitation worker’s strike brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis. After one failed assassination attempt, another succeeded in ending Dr. King’s life on April 4, 1968. Two influential writers, separated by only a few years and a short distance, both had very intimate experiences with death. In fact, they both knew that they were going to die before they actually did. However, even though they were similarly aware of their upcoming demise, their respective approaches toward death were drastically different. Compared to Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech “I’ve been to the Mountaintop”, “I am Vertical” by Sylvia Plath seems like a more nihilistic and depressing view of the world, which highlights how people view the ongoing struggle of life in different ways.
Introduction
When one lets go of the past, only then can one truly connect with nature and understand it. It is necessary for one to do so and look at nature in a new way in order to be able to appreciate it as it is. Nature is usually overlooked even though there are endless interactions between society and nature. Sylvia Plath’s poem, “I Am Vertical,” and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s piece, “Nature,” both include the communication between the narrator and nature. Although both pieces deal with the narrator’s connection with nature, the way that Plath views nature and the way that Emerson views are significantly different.
Plath’s “I am Vertical” and Eminem’s “Not Afraid” Thesis
Eminem’s song “Not Afraid” and Sylvia Plath’s poem “I am Vertical” both use imagery of nature to illustrate where they find strength in verticality; Eminem shows how he finds strength high up through the appearance on high surfaces and supernatural powers in his music video whereas Plath uses imagery of plants to demonstration how strength is rooted from the ground.
Intro Ray
Ronald Reagan was the president of the United States of America from 1981 to 1989. He is beloved by conservatives today, and this is no accident. Reagan worked hard to control the legacy he would leave behind after he was no longer president, often working very subtly to do so. One striking example of this is in Reagan’s farewell speech – he repeatedly mentions the word “freedom,” often linking it with other concepts Americans love, such as money. In doing so he subtly links his presidency not only to freedom, but to a lot of other positive concepts as well, even things not directly linked to him or freedom. Reagans popularity shows that Americand have an idea of freedom that doesn’t match the standard- it is so much more than that to Anericans. to the people of 1989 (at least the ones Reagan was focusing upon) freedom was the embodiment of everything good in the world, and relatedly, it was also quintessentially American to them.
Thesis
In the work The Vertical: The Fundamental Principle of Classic Dance by A.K Volinsky, the author’s elaboration of verticality accentuates the hidden extraordinary in the ordinary. He does this by first introducing the topic of dance. At first, dance may not seem to be extraordinary at all. However, like a dancer who may consider their practice as a hobby or their vocation, comes much controversy. While dancing in itself may come out as ordinary, there are many aspects to it which express its uniqueness. Volinsky introduces dancing, makes references and then ends with some insights to delineate his interpretation that almost anything that seems ordinary may sometimes simply be amazing.
Introduction
Bipedalism is what distinguishes man from his fellow primates and the very ability, to walk upright, carries a lot of significance. This form of locomotion has allowed man to transition from his primitive ancestors to what he is today, a modern human or homo sapiens. As an essential part of the evolutionary history of mankind, it is expected that this topic would be frequently mentioned in literary works and such is the case in the following essays. At first glance, both “The Vertical: The Fundamental Principle of Classic Dance” by A.K Volinsky and “The Physiology of Walking” by Wendell Holmes seem to be very similar as they revolve around this concept of verticality; both essays discuss how walking upright is a step towards progress in humans, but the way in which they approach this issue is profoundly different. Each essay leaves a very different impact on the reader: the former leaves us with a notion of superiority while the latter leaves us in awe.