Essays on The Plague

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Introduction Oedipus Rex is a play written by Greek dramatist Sophocles. It is among the most celebrated classical plays in the world. Oedipus Rex belongs to the genre of tragedy, as the central characters of the play undergo hardships at the hands of the fate, despite their integrity of characters and honest of intentions. The play follows all the components of an ideal plot outlined under classical dramatic structure – exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. The current essay discusses the presence of each of these components within the plot narrative of Oedipus Rex.

Exposition

Before the plot begins, ...

Pandemics and epidemics are terms related to the outbreak of any disease on a large

scale, anywhere in the world. Any society, community or locality can be affected by the outbreak of a disease at a particular time, which may cause death or result in a large population of people becoming critically ill. Any outbreak of a disease can last from days and even remain for years. This will depend on the intensity, kind of disease and extent of the outbreak. A disease of such nature, which affects a lot of people simultaneously, can be considered contagious. It might also be a new kind of disease, which might be previously unknown to the population ...

The Fate of Greenland's Vikings by Dale Mackenzie Brown.

In 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian missionary discovered that the Norse were no longer inhabiting the two settlements that they had established around 1000 A.D. Since then there has been many debates on the cause of their disappearance and decline. For long, the theories about their disappearance centered around the oral traditions of the Inuits. The Inuit tradition held that the demise of the Norse was due to the contact between the Inuit and the Norse which was often aggressive (Seaver 1996, 119). In recent years however, owing to expanding archaeological findings and other limited documentary evidence there have ...

1. In the first chapter of the novel the author uses specific imagery with a certain aim, but it is only understandable after reading a couple of chapters of The Lathe of Life. By giving a detailed description of the landscape at the beginning, LeGuin creates a contrast between nature and urban scenery, between animal and human life in future of 2002. After a further reading of the text it becomes understandable that the jellyfish, the ocean and the continent are symbols and bear some meanings. The jellyfish is associated with the main character George Orr, the ocean symbolizes ...

Chaucer sets The Canterbury Tales in a period of economic evolution in England, so it is unsurprising that social strata is an important theme. It is perhaps most significant in the representations of members of the new middle class. A central question this new social grouping rears is what constitutes power in society, especially within the context of their specific community. As seen in The Tales, wealth isn’t the only factor influencing power struggle among the classes. The late 1380s and early 1390s England experienced a period of significant social turmoil. The plague was responsible for the deaths ...

There are many historical pieces of literature that continues to be read, studied and analyzed in order to understand the characters and events in, both, broader and focused, respects. Who are the heroes and who are the villains? What is the lesson to be learned? Is the ending happy and just or is it simply tragic. In the case of “Oedipus the King” the story has very taboo subject matter, dark foreshadowing and an entirely tragic ending. Oedipus’s choice to blind himself is not a selfish act and the story does not really have a just ending. It ...

Everyone desires to understand the significance of life, to unveil the importance of human beings and reconcile that importance to the surroundings. Many philosophers, alive and dead, from Descartes to Eve Cole, have indulged in the question of the significance of a human life, and the relationships that people form. In real life situations, many leaders; religious, political and academic, push forwards thoughts about life. Professional counselors and psychologists make a lot of money by telling people how they can achieve their full potential. In the literal works; Doll House by Ibsen, The Plague by Albert Camus, Ikiru by ...

Introduction

The significance of life is an existential question that many people find troubling through the course of their lives. People engage in different activities in the pursuit of what is significant in their lives; the meaning of life; the one thing that surpasses all. The subject has been explored extensively in many scholarly and works of film. The subject of the significant in one’s life has been explored extensively in the Woman in the Dunes, a film directed by Teshigahara, The Plague, a novel authored by Camus, Ikiru, a film by Kurosawa, and A Doll House, a play ...

Question 1

In A Journal of the Plague Year, the narrative depicts a nonlinear description of the Great Plague that took place around 1665 in London. The novel highlights common experiences during the. The influence of Defoe’s experience as a newspaper editor can be seen through the combination of journalistic and literary writing skills and Defoe’s own understanding of fictional writing. It can be argued that Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year depicts an extraordinary literary work since it portrays a mix of data and statistical representation of reality and a fictional narrative. The graphical details presented ...

The Black Death was a plague that flowed over the continents of the world over a period of , but the major outbreak in Europe was a three year time span from 1347 to 13501; there were further resurgences of the epidemic with complete eradication not occurring until the 19th century. Had the initial devastation of demographics been isolated, Europe would probably have recovered fairly quickly. However, repeated surges of decimating epidemics continued to inflict damage for years. For example, England continued to suffer from large numbers of citizen deaths for approximately another 30 years. The population was depleted by ...

The 1348 emergence of Black Death in Europe marked significant changes in the social, economic, and even the psychological wellbeing of European nationals. Apparently, the plague was swift to spread. In Europe alone, there were cases in “Italy, France, Spain, and the Balkans” before the infection made its way into “Switzerland, Austria, England, and perhaps Denmark.” In other words, every nation by the end of the first half of the fourteenth century was aware of the same. Now, while the social and economic outcomes of the bubonic plague (another name for Black Death) are well explored, the circumstances under ...

Oedipus the King is an ancient drama set in Athens and written by Sophocles. The drama explores the events that take place in a kingdom called Thebes. The major character in this book is King Oedipus, who succeed King Laius. When a plague strikes Thebes, the people of Thebes ask King Oedipus to save them from them from the sufferings brought by the plague. At this time, Creon, who was the brother-in-law to King Oedipus, returns after visiting the oracle of Apollo and says that the plague that was experienced was a punishment for the death of King Laius ...

According to Procupius, the plague in the Justinian empire stared in Egypt and moved in several directions in a way that it almost caused the complete annihilation of the human race. He observed that the plague moved in a calculated manner, so that at certain times it lingered longer in one region. There were instances when it appeared to have spared some lands, only to come back at a later time. It was observed that the plague often starts near coastal areas, then eventually moved inland. Procupius has a close encounter with the Plague, “ in the second year it ...

The study of infectious diseases has always been crucial to mankind because of the devastating effects it has had on the human race. The influenza epidemic, for example, occurred repeatedly in the 20 th and 21st century, spreading across large regions and multiple continents. Influenza in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people world wide. This was higher than the amount of people that died in World War I. About 500,000 fatalities occurred in the US which was approximately 28% of the US population at that time. The number of deaths that took place in 1957 and 1968 ...