Jay Hitherton's Blog

Emotional Intelligence is vitally needed for us to function better than other people in our society. Emotional Intelligence is also a key to success. Some suggest that to improve one's EQ (emotional Intelligence), reading literary fiction was a way to do just that. Compared to popular fiction and non fiction texts, literary texts are able to evoke the audience's thoughts and make them go into deep thoughts. Complex thoughts can be accesses through various experiences that we are able to experience in our lives. This enables us to improve ourselves to become a better human than we are today. This commencement speech can be related to Alice Munro's short stories she has written over the years. Munro, a well decorated writer with a Nobel Prize for Literature and many other accolades,  writes her stories according to her personal life and personal issues that had happened to her throughout the course of her life. Women Literature has been on a rise lately and Alice Munro'...

Honourable guests and residents of the Committee, Over the past few years there has been a significant increase in the loss of our Igbo culture and practices that was once important to all of our lives. Once a society who lived in harsh conditions of the West African environment have changed to a more "Eurocentric" society with European beliefs and a European mindset with no recollection of the Igbo culture.Not long ago people would live peacefully. People would practice their religion peaceful. People would mingle with each other peacefully. That was what our lives were like until Christian Missionaries infiltrate our land. The Church Missionary Society were the first to enter Igboland at the beginning of the Conquest of Africa . Our people thought that such actions would not be harmful to us. We did not know that they would exploit our manpower and resources. The annexation of Igboland to the British Empire truly changed the future of the rich Igbo culture in a way that i...

The most meaningful takeaway from the interview was mostly about Achebe's purpose in writing "Things Fall Apart". He had mentioned somewhere on the interview about the great disadvantages of believing in single story. This means that a person inly believes that one idea about something in the world is the truest from constant exposure of the idea. Another thing that I found interesting in the interview was when he said the reasons of how he tried to integrate his local beliefs into the story to integrate his beliefs with the dangers of a single story belief. From the quote " What the universal civilization I dream about would be, I really don't know, but I know what it is not. It is not what is being presented today, which is clearly just European and American." we can see that Achebe is trying to imply that Europe and America has the strongest influence in people around the world. Due to this their vision of the world might be distorted and also have a pos...

The text that has been provided is a Winston Churchill speech that was presented during the World War 2. This text can be identified as a political speech as this speech’s aim is to persuade its target audience into agreeing with the political figure’s opinions and ideas through the use of rhetorical devices, slogans and other persuasive devices that can convince people into agreeing into Churchill’s ideas of a specific event happening at that time (Germany’s advancements during the Second World War). He has also used a variety of literary devices that is suitable for his aim and his target audience. In this text Winston Churchill delivers a speech to the House of Commons about the British’s efforts and participation in the Second World War which has not been promising. This speech also talks about Churchill’s hopes of the so-called “New World” (The USA) of joining the war to aid Britain as well as the Allies. For this I will analyse the use of various literary and persuasive device t...

In the play Coriolanus, Shakespeare has used the theme of Power as one of its main themes of the play. Being a political play, This underlying theme parallels to the situation that the people of England faced during the time Coriolanus was published. The power dynamics between characters shifts from on side to another as the play progresses.One evident example of this happening in the play is with Coriolanus' Character. Coriolanus lives in two worlds, Rome and the Battlefield. Shakespeare presents his powers differently in these two places. This leaves Coriolanus with the greatest power from all of the characters. As you go down the scale of the importance of the character, the least important character, Plebeians, has the least amount of power. Women in this play were also portrayed as a powerful figure with Volumnia trying to convince her son to make peace with Rome. Another notable example for the theme of power can also be found in Act 1 when the Plebeians were rioting about th...

What is Shakespeare’s larger purpose in his characterisation of Coriolanus in Act I? Shakespeare has used characterisation to build up the main (and supporting) characters' characteristics which have helped shape the plot of the entire play. Shakespeare’s use of characterisation in the play Coriolanus in Act 1 have played a major role into shaping the characters’ characteristics. Coriolanus is classed as one of Shakespeare’s Tragedy Plays which is mainly centered on the political moves of people in the governmental level. Coriolanus being a political play would also mean that the play can portray politically controversial concepts in the play to show awareness. A political unrest was presented when Caius Martius (later titled as Coriolanus), a Roman General, was firstly presented as an inhumane person who were against the idea of treating the plebeians well. This idea was starkly presented in Act 1 Scene 1 where commoners riot against the augmentation of the price of corn (as i...