#englisha

When people talk about geniuses, the first images that comes to their mind are about logical-thinking subjects, like science and math. Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, and Stephen Hawking are some of the most remarkable geniuses in this type of knowledge. However, we also know about people that can be considerate geniuses in some other areas: in music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johann Sebastian Bach are some of the greatest exponents; in Literature, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra are some examples of geniuses.

Although we might think that geniuses are usually famous in their subjects, this tends to be far beyond the truth. The reality is that many of the geniuses, no matter which subject they developed, are forgotten as the time passed by. Some of them are later remembered by someone, allowing them another opportunity to be recognized by the society. If this situation does not happen, they remain in the shadows an indefinite amount of time. One example of a genius that was forgotten many years, and was later “rediscovered” is the English poet John Donne.

John Donne is considerate one of the greatest writers of English prose, nevertheless, he was only acknowledged with this title until the 20th century. He was born in 1572 and died in 1631, sharing a historical context with William Shakespeare. As a genius of prose, John Donne was still important for some thirty years after his death, inspiriting other English poets of that time. Notwithstanding, during the 18th century and most part of the 19th century, he was little read for being considered inept and crude.  It was not until the 20th century that Donne’s poetry was rehabilitated. Critics like T. S. Elliot and William Butler Yeats discovered in Donne’s poetry the rare, but beautiful, artistic fusion of intellect and passion.

Schindler's List is an American historical period drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Zaillian. In this film, the Holocaust is portrayed as the ultimate expression of the cruelty unleashed during World War II. However, Schindler's List takes another perspective to this historical event: the film presents a German protagonist that saved more than a thousand Polish Jewish lives.

 This humanization of the main character during the most intense part of the conflict enables the film to develop complex characters with a well-developed interactions between them. This allows the plot to reach deeper levels of interpretation, so the complexity of the film is enriched, but also more difficult to understand. So, the use of black and white in the shots can serve as a delimitation for the viewer. This way, the lack of bright, intense colors allows readers to concentrate in the plot, instead of minor details like notorious colors, like reds, that can attract attention due to its nature.

The human nature is one of the most controversial concepts a person could ask. Philosophers have tried to answer what is the human nature since the creation of philosophy. On simple terms, thinkers have divided the human nature in two opposite concepts: good and evil. Some philosophers think that humans are good by nature, but the society corrupts them. Other state that the human nature is evil, selfish, and destructive, and the society is the entity that guides the people away from that primitive behavior. However, if we search through the history of mankind we notice that there are not isolated behaviors: the human nature works as a day, having its brightest days and its darkest nights. Elie Wiesel portraits an episode of human history that can be considered as the darkest night: The Holocaust.

 Night, the book written by Elie Wiesel, is a work about his experience in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Together with his father, Elie impregnates in the pages the horrors that he and his father suffered, as well as the psychological effects that this situation creates in his youthhood. Wiesel also talks about faith and how it is dissolve in the sea of violence and blood in which the Jews were trapped from 1939 to 1945.

Night and Fog is a 1955 documentary short film directed by the French film director Alain Resnais. It was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. Something important to mention is that the title is taken as a translate from the Nacht und Nebel, a program of abductions and disappearances decreed by the Nazis in 1941. The documentary uses shots of abandoned concentration camps, as well as real footage of Nazi soldiers and Jewish prisoners during the time the camps were “operating”.

The question here is: why did the Nazis film the deportation and extermination of the Jews? And what consequences did the Nazis expect from filming these events? I cannot answer these questions objectively, but it is probably that the Nazis filmed that events because they thought they were making history (and in a twisted way they did) so they had to recorded to be available for the future generations. The answer of the second question can be that Nazis expected that the films were used as propaganda and as an example of their military power. Whatever the reasons they may had to film the horrors of the Holocaust there is something true: it is an important piece in the history of humankind.

Academic integrity is a moral code that reflects the set of values that an academic institution tries to teach to its students, workers and, in a more general point of view, the way the institution wants to be seen and acknowledge by the society. It states the way anyone should use information in a fair, ethical way: this includes the prohibition and sanction of cheating and plagiarism. Academic integrity includes values like commitment, honesty, justice, respect, responsibility, and liberty. They are the base of the behavior that the academic integrity enhances.

But that is the boring, standard, old-fashioned way of explaining a concept: defining it. Let’s talk about something that really matters in a practical sense: it is important to us? Why should we care about academic integrity? The first question has a short answer with a long explaining: academic integrity is really important to us because it is based on the principle of justice. Some people might not understand that, and they think it’s just a work, either way, they (the authors) are not going to get paid if I cite it (the work) or not.

Well, if you are one of them, imagine the next situation: you spend your last three years of your life studying an ant colony for a class project: you did not go out on holidays because you had to observe the ants. At the end of the class period you must deliver your investigation, however, a classmate used your work without your permission in order to deliver his/her project, and he/she did not even mention you in the work. Your classmate and you get the same grade, but he/she did not have to do anything and your effort and time used is not appreciated. How would you feel about it?

Lady Windermere’s Fan is a comedy written by Oscar Wilde, an Irish-born writer. The story is about Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is cheating on her with with another woman. She confronts him with it, not only denying it, but inviting the other woman, Mrs. Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Confused and furious by her husband's supposed unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere decides to leave her husband for another suitor, her friend Lord Darlington. After discovering what has happened, Mrs. Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband but, in the course of this, Mrs. Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. This is when it is revealed Mrs. Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs. Erlynne sacrifices herself and her reputation to save her daughter's marriage.

This play is a critic to the Victorian English society in which Oscar Wilde lived. Victorian Era was a period in which ethics and moral values were strict to follow in public, however, it is also known to be a time in which society broke that moral values in secret, and not so secret, ways. For example, sex before marriage was considered illegal, nonetheless, prostitution was common at that time. This hypocrisy is shown in Wilde’s play through several themes. One of the first themes that appeared is gossip. The play’s problems starts with a gossip. Although gossips were seen as a despicable action, it was frequent that rumors spread easily through that society, causing people to lose their reputation and/or their lovers.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play written by the English playwright William Shakespeare. Unlike many of his best known plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream is not a tragedy, such as The Jew of Malta, Hamlet, or Romeo and Juliet. Instead, Shakespeare write a comedy in which three different stories converge at one point: the love conflict between two couples in Athens, the representation of a play by craftsmen, and the conflict between the King and the Queen of Fairies. It is important to mention that this play uses the magic as the engine that will resolve all the conflicts presented. Despite being an old play, A Midsummer Night's Dream is not as hard to read as other Shakespeare’s plays. This is probably due to the constant use of humor to make the story more pleasant.

The vocabulary used in this play is pretty similar to the tragedies William Shakespeare wrote. However, the language is less “poetic”, instead, he (Shakespeare) gives the characters a different way of talking depending on which story the character belongs more. This gives a break to the reader (yes, the reader, because we are talking about this play as a Literary text, not as a play per se) from the poem-like language we are accustomed to read in almost every popular Shakespeare’s plays. Nonetheless,   the use of the theme of love as the engine of a play remains in both this case and in some of his tragedies, such as the well-known Romeo and Juliet.

In conclusion, besides having the “Shakespearian” essence, if we can call it like that, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a unique play among its author texts. This is not only because it is a comedy, which is pretty weird since we have not a single joke in Shakespeare’s tragedies, but because of the use of some rhetorical devices that are not found in other plays of its author.

 SPOILER:

One cannot fully understand how a system works, like a machine, if you do not analyze the several compounds that it has. For example, a steam machine that does not have water in its boiler is totally useless because an important part of the mechanism is missing. This analysis of the parts of an object or system allows us to comprehend how the things works and the importance that it has within the functioning. Although many examples of the performance of machines can be describe to ensure the mentioned sentence, this type of analysis can also be applied, and it is applied, in many fields others than physics or engineer.

In the specific case of Literature, this analysis has its own name: character analysis. Character analysis allows us to comprehend better the literary work by inspecting the physical and psychological characteristics a fictional character has, as well as its role and its importance for the work. By using character analysis, it becomes possible to figure out why an author decides to make character with specific features, enabling the readers to know the reasons why he/she wrote that written work.

In the case of “The Jew of Malta” by Christopher Marlowe, character analysis helps us to understand in an efficient way the play. At first sight, this play does not have much to tell that has not been seen before in other works: a story about a Jew that loose his money unfairly and wants revenge for it. However, if you look at it (”The Jew of Malta”) closely, you can notice two significant characteristics that are not common in other kind-of-similar texts: the first, and the easiest to notice, is that no character gets what they desire. The second characteristic, whose analysis belongs to character analysis, is that there are no heroes nor villains in the play: there are just people who fights for what they want/need.