I walked the streets of the Dark City aimlessly, hungry and desperate.
I couldn’t see three metres ahead of me; I couldn’t see my trench coat and large hat; I couldn’t see my own fingers as I spread them out in front of me.
How long do I have to live in the Dark City?
The stench drives me to tears.
Everything had changed.
For once, he wasn’t lying in his bed under the bridge, wallowing with hunger and coldness. For once, he wasn’t wasting away from alcohol and weed. For once, his hair wasn’t oily and almost entirely knotted together like a muddied carpet.
He had first come to the lake two years ago.
None lived around the dense forest – not all were lovers of hermetic life. But the popular but mysterious poet Fern Edelweiss was. In 1978 he had fled from London (where there were too many people for his comfort), all the way to a small city, then to a small hamlet, and finally to a small forest that clung halfway up the side of a mountain. The closest hamlet was around a mile away, and the inhabitants called it Dún Mánmhaí. He didn’t know what it meant and unfortunately, the old man who had told him the name did not either. Perhaps it was just a piece of mock Irish.
Everything was black; everything had been black since the beginning of his life. His mother had told him that perhaps it was for the best: the grime and crime in the small but packed town would disgust him. But Ailen didn’t believe her: all the teachers at his school kept propounding one sentiment into this heart: love. Love for the government that ruled over all corners of the land and ensured all inhabitants lived in safety. Love for the rules the government implemented, ensuring that disabled people - like Ailen - could live in peace and prosperity.
Abstract
This paper analyzes literature as a means of embodying the notion of the Other in the light of possible synthesis of perspectives of philosophers such as Hegel, Bakhtin, and Levinas, and highlights the possible uses of mirrors in literature, not only as descriptive elements but as symbols with far deeper meanings than that. To achieve this goal, several aspects of three pieces of literature from different ages were selected and analyzed: Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White”, Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”, and Kenneth Branagh’s film “Hamlet”. The paper elucidates the fact that mirrors enable plot exposition in these works by serving as little, compact scenes in which characters address their inner worlds in the eyes of others and their own. The narrative conclusion of this critical essay, therefore, states that the use of the concept of otherness in other works of literature has been stigmatized. Mirrors are put into practice not only as artifacts within the drama. Instead, they are integrally treated as antagonists who have a noticeable effect on the self-development or self-image of others or both.
SCIE G2 History students went on a field trip to Prague and Berlin during the National Day Holidays. Students wrote three articles for this trip, which we have combined here.
Tristan Tzara's Dadaist Poem style:
Notre Dame de Paris:
Paris, Phoebus, beheld this,
The poet became an architect.
Submerged, pagoda, on his knees,
A great needlework tapestry.
Magnificent, grooved, but little affected,
A tower of Babel
They always say “great minds think alike”, and I think we’d both count as great men, but he and I have never thought alike. Never. He looked upon me as a youth drenched in the black mists of profit and gold coins, and I saw him as one lost in the stars and the moon. While I pondered over profitable red lines, he cried and laughed with small volumes that he read like how the fire burns the flesh. Such an extraordinary youth he was.
Gold
No matter where her raiment glitters,
A sheen of beautful gold.
Namë, some call her, Armo, others,
Differing from what they were told.
No matter what, no matter where,
The youthful beauty and light of her smile,
Her silver hair, her amber eyes,
Malice never bears.
Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics” presents a starkly challenging and moral scenario. As a metaphor, he produces the dilemma of a lifeboat designed for fifty people, having room for ten more but facing one hundred drowning swimmers. Hardin discusses three options that he thinks are available in the situation. Despite being only a metaphor, “Lifeboat Ethics” provides a view of current global affairs concerning migration issues, however, it can only provide a corner of the situation and cannot completely represent global affairs.