The Prince

     The Prince offers political instruction about conquering local competitors and maintaining control over them. He recommends employing any means possible as exemplified in some of the more violent passages like:

"And having taken this for his opportunity, he [Cesare Borgia] had him [Remora de Orco, a very loyal supporter of Borgia] placed in the square in Cesena, one morning, in two pieces with a piece of wood and a bloody knife beside him. The ferocity of which spectacle left those peoples at once satisfied and stupefied."²¹

and

"...he [Oliverotto de Fermo] made a most solemn banquet, where he invited Giovanni Fogliani and all the first men of Fermo. And once the foods were consumed and all the other entertainments which are customary in similar banquets, Oliverotto artfully moved certain grave arguments, speaking of the greatness of Pope Alexander and of his son Cesare, and of their enterprises. Giovanni and the others answering which arguments, he at once rose up, saying that these things [were] to be spoken of in a more secret place; and he retired to a chamber, whereinto Giovanni and all the other citizens followed. Neither had they seated themselves before soldiers came out from its secret places who killed Giovanni and all the others. After which homicide, Oliverotto mounted horse and ran the land..."²²

       The Prince is also an extremely practical book because it does not tell the reader what the ideal prince and principality is, but it explains to the reader what actions and qualities have enabled a prince to best rule a certain principality. The book is also important because of Machiavelli's vision of a united Italy, an idea 350 years ahead of its time.
       Machiavelli's reasoning was right for his time because his time was a time of frequent war and advice on the art of war was needed.  An issue of debate is whether Machiavelli is still relevant or merely of historical interest.  This is answered by the 500 years of wars, treachery and genocide.  These traditions were disliked by Machiavelli, but he recognized them as inherent to human interaction.  People have not changed, and governments, although giving lip service to justice and rule of law continue to turn against their neighbors and their own people with regularity.  Machiavelli is just as relevant as ever, some details may need updating, but the essence remains vital/ 

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a touching tale of the friendship between two men--set against the backdrop of the United States during the depression of the 1930s. Subtle in its characterization, the book addresses the real hopes and dreams of working-class America. Steinbeck's short novel raises the lives of the poor and dispossessed to a higher, symbolic level.

Its powerful ending is climactic and shocking to the extreme. But, we also come to an understanding of the tragedy of life. Regardless of the sufferings of those who live it, life goes on.

Overview: Of Mice and Men

The novel opens with two workers who are crossing the country on foot to find work. George is a cynical, irresolute man. George looks after his companion, Lennie--treating him like a brother. Lennie is a giant man of incredible strength, but has a metal disability that makes him slow-to-learn and almost child-like. George and Lennie had to flee the last town because Lennie touched a woman's dress and he'd been accused of rape.

They begin to work at a ranch, and they share their dream: they want to own their own piece of land and farm for themselves. These people--like them--feel dispossessed and unable to control their own lives. The ranch becomes a microcosm of the American underclass at that time.

The climactic moment of the novel revolves around Lennie's love of soft things. He pets the hair of Curley's wife, but she gets scared. In the resulting struggle, Lennie kills her and runs away. The farmhands form a lynch mob to punish Lennie, but George finds him first. George understands that Lennie cannot live in the world, and he wants to save him the pain and terror of being lynched, so he shoots him in the back of the head.

The literary power of Of Mice and Men rests firmly on the relationship between the two central characters, their friendship and their shared dream. These two men are so very different, but they come together, stay together, and support each other in a world full of people who are destitute and alone. Their brotherhood and fellowship is an achievement of enormous humanity.

They sincerely believe in their dream. All they want is a small piece of land that they can call their own. They want to grow their own crops, and they want to breed rabbits. That dream cements their relationship and strikes a chord so convincingly for the reader. George and Lennie's dream is the American dream. Their desires are both very particular to the 1930's but also universal.

Triumph of Friendship: Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men is a tale of friendship that triumphs over the odds. But, the novel is also extremely telling about the society in which it is set. Without becoming dogmatic or formulaic, the novel examines many of the prejudices at the time: racism, sexism and prejudice towards those with disabilities. The power of Steinbeck's writing is that he treats these issues in purely human terms. He sees society's prejudices in terms of individual tragedies, and his characters attempts to escape from those prejudices.

In a way, Of Mice and Men is an extremely despondent novel. The novel shows the dreams of a small group of people and then contrasts these dreams with a reality that is unreachable, which they cannot achieve. Even though the dream never becomes reality, Steinbeck does leave us with an optimistic message. George and Lennie do not achieve their dream, but their friendship stands out as a shining example of how people can live and love even in a word of alienation and disconnectedness.

The Metamorphosis

" This is not a horror story, but it is the story of the horror of a man who, asleep in bed in the family home, wakes to find that overnight he has turned into a beetle. He retains the mind and soul of a man but in his repulsive form the family confine him to the bedroom. The story is told entirely from the beetle's viewpoint - not so much in the 'first person' as in the 'first beetle'. He has to get up to go to work, he is the only wage-earner in the family; yet he cannot go, trapped in bed on his back, his little legs waving in the air. The vividness of the prose, even in translation, makes you feel that this would no doubt be exactly what it would be like for a man to live in the body of a beetle. Kafka's work has excited much critical comment from the literary world, who have published whole books discussing it's symbolism. The true horror of the story is how quickly the family adjust to this waking nightmare. As he no longer supplies all their needs, they must act. They take in lodgers. He sees his father, previously declining into his dotage after his business crashed leaving humiliating debts, pull himself together and get a modest job. His mother, ever too ill to work, finds strength to take in skilled hand-embroidery work at home. His sister, the best of the three and a delicate young lily with ambition to be a violinist, gets secretarial work and blossoms into a young woman. A certain habit of mind will cause the reader to try to categorise the story as science fiction, yet this will not do: the story is as far from sci-fi as you can get. The Fly had a genetic matter-transmat accident. The Hulk had a radiation accident. Captain Kirk had a transporter beam accident. No such event is offered here to 'suage the imagination. (Yet categorised it has to be, so here it is in the sf/fantasy section.) It is fantastical, but it is not fantasy. In a Greek legend there would be a disgruntled sorceress to bewitch the man. It is not a dream (that over-worked cliché), he starts by waking from his dreams. It is a sober realist story of a horror. But why should we suspend our disbelief? Here is the story's fatal weakness - there is no reason in or for the transformation, nor any sop to the intellect. There is no moral to the tale. It is meaningless and it goes nowhere. The universe is not so arbitrary and idiotic as this, else how would we able to read the stories, let alone write them?" Michael JR Jose, Resident Scholar

"In 1912 Prague, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find he has turned into a large beetle. Employed as a traveling salesman, he has been the sole support for his family, but of course he can't go to work now. Apart from their fear and disgust, his family does its best to pretend nothing has happened: his retired father goes back to work, they take in lodgers, and his 17-year-old sister Grete takes a job as well as feeding the creature in their apartment. Kafka's spare, simple language conveys the horror of a situation in which a sensitive, thoughtful creature is surrounded by vulgarians interested only in the material side of life. Gregor's beetlehood distorts and degrades his body, but brings out all his humanity, while his family turn out to be the real spiritual insects. Wrote Nabokov, "If Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers."" David Loftus, Resident Scholar

"Gregor wakes up and finds himself turned into a bug. The major theme of this story is alienation, not only from the human society experienced by the main character, but also from his family, which only needed him for monetary support. " irina, Resident Scholar

"Gregor Samsa, the breadwinner of his family, has worked five years as a travelling salesman in order to pay off his parent's debts and allow his family to enjoy life. However, he wakes up one day transformed inexplicitly into a giant insect, and gets increasingly alienated from his family. Met with horror, repulsion, and grudging love from his family for this strange turn of events, this short story shows the slow degeneration of these feelings into a more brutal conclusion. Gregor increasingly becomes a burden to his family who found jobs in order to keep up the family's finances, and having outlived his usefulness he is relegated to being locked in his room and fed by his sister, who gradually forgets the brother who so loved her and begins to treat Gregor the insect as a hateful object." Yuffie.K, Resident Scholar

On the Road

"On the Road" is a novel that makes the reader want to go out there, seize the day, and live, live, live! Jack Kerouac, creator of the "beat generation" best sums up his philosophy as "everything belongs to me because i am poor". The failure of ideology and of the American Dream in the 1960s gave young dreamers who were eager to live just one way out: the road.    Kerouac presents Sal Paradise, a young and innocent writer, and Dean Moriarty, a crazy youth "tremendously excited with life" racing around America, and testing the limits of the American Dream. Their journeys consist of scenes of rural wilderness, sleepy small towns, urban jungles, endless deserts-all linked by the road, the outlet of a generation's desire and inner need to get out, break its confinement, and find freedom, liberated from any higher belief, notion, or ideology. The desperation and the lack of fulfillment made these youths feel that "the only thing to do was go", searching for their personal freedom, and finding pleasure in sex, drugs, and jazz.    It seems that the "beat generation" had one and only ideology, and that was life. As Sal Paradise says: "life is holy and every moment is precious", which explains why Dean" seemed to be doing everything at the same time". The fear of death subconsciously followed the gang around America, as expressed by their visions of a spirit following them across the desert of life.    Wasn't the "beat generation" a particularly wise and enlightened one then? Isn't it true that every human being's greatest fear is that death will come too soon, before he/she has time to do what he/she had always wanted to do? Isn't it always too soon?    Even though the gang feared that "death will overtake us before Heaven" they did all in their power to experience as much of Heaven as they could while still alive. They were wise enough to see that there was no point in conforming with the materialism of the American Dream: "the mad dream-grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City".    It is for this reason that Kerouac presents the "beat generation" as a "holy" generation: because it was liberated from the peril of ambition, materialism and ideology, and was in a constant search for some greater truth that life would teach them. Ed Dunkel, the tall, silent, lost boy is described as "an angel of a man". Dean Moriarty, the personification of the road was a "holy con-man" with a "holy lightning" gaze. By the end of the novel, Dean achieves so high a level of saintliness that "he couldn't talk any more".    "On the Road" is a novel of experience; it tells tales of madness played out by all kinds of strange characters, in settings as diverse as a Virginia small-town diner, a New York jazz-joint, and a Mexican whore-house. What connects these adventures is the characters' refusal to miss out on life,and their determination to get the most out of now. -Anna Hassapi

LOLZ

http://wimp.com/funnyfail/

Laughed for a good 10 minutes, check it out.

So...

Apparently this blogging thing is all the rage, now (ie 5 years ago).

Guess I'll give it a shot...