Weekly Challenge #2

Universal Theme -- Visual Presentation

This week you are challenged to create the BEST visual representation of universal themes in literature.

To be considered for the weekly competition (and to see if you are declared the winner), your project must be completed and submitted before the end of the day on Friday, November 9th.

Select one of the topics from the list provided, then research poems, novels, plays, and other examples of literature that have illustrated some aspect of your chosen topic. Include a statement of THEME, a CITATION, an EXPLANATION, and list any LITERARY DEVICES for each example.

REMEMBER, themes are not single words - they have a TOPIC + OPINION.

For example, if you chose AMBITION as your topic, you would have to include an explanation of the THEME in each of your references. Here's one that I'll do for you:

THEME: Unchecked ambition brings destruction and ruin.

CITE: MACBETH [aside] "The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step/ On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, / For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires. / The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be / Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see." (1.4.55-60)

EXPLAIN: In Macbeth, the protagonist murders a whole bunch of people in the name of ambition. He wants to be king, and sees those people in his way as "steps" - he either needs to go over them (i.e. get them out of the way, i.e. kill them), or he will be blocked from his desires. It is interesting that even though he is doing these foul acts, he knows that they're wrong. We can see this when he asks the starts to hide their light so that no one can see his "black and deep desires". In this way, his ambition is "unchecked" because he isn't listening to his conscience.

LITERARY DEVICES: metaphor (step as obstacle to power), synecdoche (the eye wink at the hand as complex metaphor for the conscience (in our head) knowing that the hand (our body) is doing and act that the brain/conscience would actually be appalled to think properly about), apostrophe (directly addresses an inanimate force (Stars)