The Silent Child is a short film based on a
true story about a deaf child and it won an Oscar in March 2018.
The film tells the story of a deaf child, Libby, who is born into a hearing
family that doesn’t have knowledge about deaf culture or anything related to
deafness. Libby is growing up in a world of silence, leaving her with
communication barriers and feeling isolated. A social worker begins to teach
her sign language and Libby’s world changes completely. Read here.
Jane Eyre is a 2006 television adaptation
of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. The story, which has been the subject of numerous
television and film adaptations, is based on the
life of the orphaned title character.
A young governess falls in love with
her brooding and tormented master. However,
his dark past may destroy their relationship forever.
Here you can read Charlotte Brontë's novel online.
President John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration Robert Lee Frost delivered a poem, said of the poet, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding." And famously, "He saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." Read here.
Queen Elizabeth I died on 24 March 1603. Elizabeth, the last Tudor
monarch and "Virgin Queen", was the daughter of Henry VIII and his
second wife, Anne Boleyn. She became queen in 1558 aged 25 and ruled for 45
years. Her reign saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the introduction of a
revised Book of Common Prayer and a golden age of playwrights and poets. Read here.
"Though the sex to which
I belong is considered weak you will nevertheless find me a rock that bends to
no wind."
Hard Timesis the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in
1854. It describes nineteenth-century England and satirises the social and economic
conditions of the era.
Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is the shortest of Dickens's novels, only just a quarter of the length of
those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of
his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor
illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in
London. Instead the story is set in the fictitious (=fictional,
imaginary) Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English
mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller.
One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was
that sales of his weekly periodical Household Words were low,
and it was hoped the novel's publication in instalments would boost circulation
– as indeed proved to be the case.
Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics. Critics
such as George Bernard Shaw have mainly focused on Dickens's
treatment of trade unions and his post–Industrial Revolution pessimism
regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers
during the Victorian era. Read here.
It is needless to say how influential peer pressure can be on an individual. Peer pressure comes in when we get influenced by the lifestyles and the ways of thinking of our peers. Read here.
“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.” Maya Angelou
First performed in 1611, The Tempest is different from many of Shakespeare's plays in
that it does not derive from one clear source. The play draws on many of the
motifs common to Shakespeare's works. These include the painful parting of a
father with his daughter, jealousy and hatred between brothers, the usurpation
of a legitimate ruler, the play-within-a-play, and the experiences of courtiers
transplanted to a new environment. It is commonly classified with Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and Cymbeline in a small group
of plays called "romances." These plays contain elements of
comedy and, to a lesser extent, tragedy, but do not wholly belong to either
category. Common elements in Shakespearean romances include experiences of loss
and recovery, as well as imaginative worlds in which magic can play an
important role. Read here.
Prospero uses magic to conjure a storm and torment the survivors of a
shipwreck, including the King of Naples and Prospero’s treacherous brother,
Antonio. Prospero’s slave, Caliban, plots to rid himself of his master, but is
thwarted by Prospero’s spirit-servant Ariel. The King’s young son Ferdinand,
thought to be dead, falls in love with Prospero’s daughter Miranda. Their
celebrations are cut short when Prospero confronts his brother and reveals his
identity as the usurped Duke of Milan. The families are reunited and all
conflict is resolved. Prospero grants Ariel his freedom and prepares to leave
the island. Read here.
Among all female poets of the
English-speaking world in the 19th century, none was held in higher critical
esteem or was more admired for the independence and courage of her views than
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Emily Dickinson had ecstatically admired
her as a poet and as a woman who had achieved such a rich fulfillment in her
life. Her humanitarian and liberal point of view manifests itself in her poems aimed
at redressing many forms of social injustice, such as the slave trade in
America, the labor of children in the mines and the mills of England, the
oppression of the Italian people by the Austrians, and the restrictions forced
upon women in 19th-century society. Read here.