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Darkness
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Darkness as a literary and philosophical concept appears across multiple disciplines, including literature, philosophy, and cultural studies. It functions both as a physical condition and a symbolic register for moral ambiguity, psychological depth, and the unknown. Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness dominates academic treatment of this topic, drawing sustained attention in courses on modernist fiction, postcolonial literature, and narrative theory. The novella's characters—Marlow, Kurtz, and the colonial world of Africa they inhabit—give students a rich framework for exploring how darkness operates as metaphor, critique, and narrative device. Beyond Conrad, the topic extends into other works, including Milton's Paradise Lost and H.G. Wells's short fiction, as well as philosophical frameworks such as Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of bad faith from Being and Nothingness.

Student papers on this topic take several distinct approaches. Many focus on close literary analysis of Conrad's novella, examining how Marlow's journey and Kurtz's character embody moral and imperial darkness. Comparative essays are also common, pairing Heart of Darkness with texts such as Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych or with film adaptations like Apocalypse Now. Some papers analyze modernist techniques, while others place the work in historical and cultural context, particularly regarding power and Africa.

A strong essay on darkness stakes a clear interpretive claim rather than simply cataloguing symbolic instances. Evidence drawn from specific scenes, character behavior, and narrative voice tends to carry the most analytical weight. The most common pitfall is treating darkness as a self-evident symbol without accounting for how a particular text constructs and complicates its meaning.

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Research Paper Doctorate

Dark Spirituality as a Symbol of Female

Dark Spirituality as a Symbol of Female Frustration:

Paper Doctorate

Women and masculinity in science fiction literature

Science fiction has always been a masculine genre, no matter that Mary Shelley invented it in her novel Frankenstein. Until fairly recent times, most science fiction writers were men, and they dealt with subjects like technology, power, space battles, featuring male heroes, explorers and adventurers. In film, science fiction has been a perfect subject for ultra-masculine actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, although Lieutenant Ripley in the Alien trilogy proved that women could be masculine heroes as well and very effective at destroying hostile creatures that threaten humanity. Joe Haldeman's novel Forever Peace certainly fits within this conventional masculine narrative in science fiction, since the story is related by a male narrator named Sergeant Julian Class, an alienated soldier of the First World who opposes his own government and society. He is a class type of alienated and disillusioned male hero who nevertheless hopes that the world can achieve peace and prosperity through better use of technology. Even though it was written thirty years before, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is a radical departure from these types of themes and characters, since it takes place on an underdeveloped planet called Gethen far in the future.

Paper Undergraduate

Fascination and repulsion from Otherness in Song of Kali and The City of Joy

In this chapter, I examine similarities and differences between The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre (1985) and Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (1985) with regard to the themes of the Western journalistic observer of the Oriental Other, and the fascination-repulsion that inspires the Occidental spatial imaginary of Calcutta. By comparing and contrasting these two popular novels, both describing white men's journey into the space of the Other, the chapter seeks to achieve a two-fold objective: (a) to provide insight into the authors with respect to alterity (otherness), and (b) to examine the discursive practices of these novels in terms of contrasting spatial metaphors of Calcutta as "The City of Dreadful Night" or "The City of Joy." The chapter further argues that these spatial metaphors are redolent of what Peter Stallybrass and Allon White (1986) refer to as the "phobic enchantment" (p. 124) of the Occidental social imaginary for the poverty, squalor and the horror of the Third World.

Paper Undergraduate

Academic Research in Saudi Arabia Academic Research

Having abundance in natural resources is not the only assets a country have. Real assets are the people of a country. Investing on people would generate higher returns in the future. The Saudi government is keen to invest on its people, since it is predicted that the country would lose its oil resources within a time spam of few years (Onsman, 2011). Apart from primary and secondary education, the higher education/university education contributes a lot in the development of a country. Universities are places which provide multilateral services to the people. Along with providing education and incentives for research, it also plays its role in providing guidelines to the individuals (Al-Gindan, Al-Sulaiman, Muhanna, & Abumadini, 2002). Competiting other countries of the world on the educational basis requires that country invest a handsome part of its spending on research and development activities.

Research Paper Doctorate

Religion, culture, and politics: interconnections and influences

Evans-Pritchard was the founder and first president of the Association of Social Anthropologists. His seminal work on indigenous, African tribes has preserved a unique perspective of primitive societies or societies…

Research Paper Doctorate

Art an Artist and His Her Work

Every society has its myths, stories that explain the time-honored order of things. Humankind does what it does now because of ancient prototypes. As Man does, so did the gods. But what of a society in a state of turmoil?

Paper Doctorate

Methods of Evangelism

This four page paper addresses, analyzes, and evaluates three different evangelical approaches: The Intellectual Method, The Relational Method, and the Confrontational Method. The Four Spiritual Laws is the chosen Intellectual Method, Friendship Evangelism is the relational method, and the Way of the Master is the Confrontational method. Summary of each method is given, along with a discussion of advantages and disadvantages.

Paper Doctorate

Poe Communicator Edgar Allan Poe\'s

This essay examines many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe as they contribute to his ability to communicate to his audience. The essay focuses on the literary techniques of Poe such as use of narrative and dialogue. Poe's use of fear and terror is also examined in this essay as an effective way of communicating his message.

Thesis Doctorate

Nathaniel Hawthorne the Objective of This Work

The life of Nathaniel Hawthorne many times was played out in his stories as his life events and experiences bled forth into his works demonstrating the struggles that the writer faced within himself and his own life. Running through the threads of the stories of Hawthorne is the theme of Puritanism and this is clearly perceived as one reads the stories of Hawthorne entitled "The Scarlet Letter", "The Minister's Black Veil and "The Birthmark". In order to understand Hawthorne's view it is necessary that one understand what Puritanism is, believes, and represents.

Paper High School

Colonial and Post Colonial Literature

Historical literature is filled with examples of pre- and post-colonialist paradigms. Within each of these models, however, there is a certain part of a larger story that can only be told in the larger view of the…

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