Foster deplores ovrtly politicl writing, saying it "can be one-dimentional, simplistic, reductionist, preachy, dull" (110). However, political writing can also be great because it "engages the realities of its world...[it] thinks about human probles, including those in the social and political realm...[it] addresses the rights of persons and the wrongs of those in power..." (110).
NEARLY ALL WRITING IS POLITICAL ON SOME LEVEL because writers are men and women who are interested and engage in the world around them.
Here is where you may need to do your research. What is going on socially and politically when the authors of the texts you are reading were writing? And what do their works say about these social and political situations? Feel free to attch links to other sites that may help in understanding.
At first you tell yourself that it's all a dirty joke, or that it's due to the "political situation." But deep down you come to suspect that you're yourself to blame, and you stand naked and shivering before the millions of eyes who look through you unseeingly. That is the real soul-sickness, the spear in the side, the drag by the neck through the mob-angry town, the Grand Inquisition, the embrace of the Maiden, the rip in the belly with the guts spilling out, the trip to the chamber with the deadly gas that ends in the oven so hygienically clean -- only it's worse because you continue stupidly to live. But live you must, and you can either make passive love to your sickness or burn it out and go on to the next conflicting phase.
Title of Work and Author
Social and/or Political Issues of that time
Possible comments (by the author using the work) on these issues (please use quotes to prove your points)
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Stalin and communism
After seeing first hand just how low the communists were willing to go to protect the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell wrote Animal Farm to show the world that while the October Revolution may have been just at the beginning, Stalin and his bureaucracies had corrupted it, effectively becoming the very thing they set out to destroy. As the one commandment on the side of the barn said "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Animal Farm exists as a warning to all of those who seek to overthrow a tyrant. As Fredrick Nietzsche once said : "He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Jane Eyre by Charlotte
Bronte
Feminism and Gender roles
Jane Eyre is widley considered the first feminist novels. It was extremely radical at time of publication because portrayed women as independent, free thinkers, who could stand on their own two feet. The main character Jane struggles throughout the novel trying to overcome men who want to keep her in a submissive position, Mr. Brocklehurst Rochester and St. john are a few examples. Even though Jane ends up marrying Rochester, she does so for love and makes sure they will become equal when married.
Jane opens up about her views on feminism in chapter 12 "Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."
NEARLY ALL WRITING IS POLITICAL ON SOME LEVEL because writers are men and women who are interested and engage in the world around them.
Here is where you may need to do your research. What is going on socially and politically when the authors of the texts you are reading were writing? And what do their works say about these social and political situations? Feel free to attch links to other sites that may help in understanding.
At first you tell yourself that it's all a dirty joke, or that it's due to the "political situation." But deep down you come to suspect that you're yourself to blame, and you stand naked and shivering before the millions of eyes who look through you unseeingly. That is the real soul-sickness, the spear in the side, the drag by the neck through the mob-angry town, the Grand Inquisition, the embrace of the Maiden, the rip in the belly with the guts spilling out, the trip to the chamber with the deadly gas that ends in the oven so hygienically clean -- only it's worse because you continue stupidly to live. But live you must, and you can either make passive love to your sickness or burn it out and go on to the next conflicting phase.
Animal Farm exists as a warning to all of those who seek to overthrow a tyrant. As Fredrick Nietzsche once said :
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Bronte
Jane opens up about her views on feminism in chapter 12
"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."