Hermit in Paris by Italo Calvino

The city, Toronto in this case, presents a web of streets and geographical space that threatens to lock its citizens in a certain demarcated way of life and conduct. The four key characters in this narrative - Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku - each feel blocked in by the constrained locality that they have been born into and each attempts to escape it in his own way.: Tuyen by being an artist, Carla by being a courier; Oku by being a student and Jackie by working in a store. The first two not only attempt to escape by means of their profession using their profession to either flee the spaces and squares (by bike) or transcend it via imagination (by art) but they also adopt profession that go against societal expectations. These societal expectations were created by, and exist within the geographical space they live in. Toronto of the late 20th century had an internalized set of expectations for immigrants and its citizens. The parents of the characters succumbed to it. The protagonists, however, resolved to step out of their boundaries and most of them succeeded.

God challenges people in times of hardships, however, it depends on the person if they can take upon the challenge and keep faith in God. Eliezer Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of the memoir Night, is one of these people who have to take this test. Elie demonstrates faith is tested in times of trouble through the use of character relation, change in setting and the conflicts that he witnesses.

Attention: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (Emma Lazarus). This sentence can be found in the poem “The New Colossus,” written by Emma Lazarus in 1883. It can also be found inscribed on the Statue of Liberty towering over the New York Harbor, a bright beacon symbolizing the freedom and democracy we hold so esteemed in America. Immigrants founded the United States and immigrants are arguably who made our nation so great. However, when immigrants do not follow the process to acquire legal citizenship into the United States is when the problems arise.

Throughout the text “Solitary Stroller and the City,” author Rebecca Solnit explores the complex relationships between the walking individual and living in the city. The title brings together three central ideas; walking, the city, and solitariness as an individual.. These three central ideas are tied together and used to reveal deeper meanings and relationships within the text. When analyzing Solnit’s work, the reader is left to identify a complex relationship between the central ideas and how the geography of a city influences all the three of the central ideas. Solnit makes claims throughout the text that are strongly suggestive of a relationship between the ability to walk and its derivability based on the “when” and “where” concepts. The geography and or location can be explored through the comparison of rural walking versus urban walking, the comparison between the cities of London and New York, and the solitariness associated with the geography and structure in one city versus another. Spanning the entire text is the idea that the city influences the walker and their individualism among the crowd, or their perception of solitude. Solnit compares London walkers and New York walkers, exploring how their different geographical locations define their city as a whole as well as the individual. Geography plays a crucial role in one 's idea of solitude and individualism.

Talking about America living up to their so called “promises”, “statements” whatever you want to call it. America has the tendency of not following all the rules or laws that they themselves have created. Between 1877 and 1945 did the United States live up to Emma Lazarus ' poem which is engraved on the Statue of Liberty? While, reading her poem “The New Colossus”, there was a sense that Emma Lazarus believed that the United States of America would had let anyone come into the state no matter of what the person’s situation and/or lifestyle they lived, basically “what happens in their country stays in their country”, America would be a fresh new start of life. The way she viewed America and the way America is viewed by many others upon this earth have some similarities and differences in various of ways. Therefore, her ideas of America being a “gratifying and inviting” place is just a belief comparing it to what this country is actually about, when it comes to the level of patience and actions with we the people and how America reacts. There are nine sources that explains Americas perception and views on certain topics.

While explaining his new daily routine, he expressed his views on the city, “I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the contrast flicker of men and women and machines give to the restless eye” (56). When he says this, his tone is a tinge of sadness but mostly acceptance. It doesn’t seem to affect or bother him that he feels solitary in a big city. He admits that he feels lonely, but he also believes other people in New York feel lonely as well. Showing that even though a big city can be exciting and filled with opportunities, it’s not always as grand as people make it

I feel like the book Night lets off a very sad a depressing mood. The setting of this book is a various amount of concentration camps that Elie and his dad go to. The main central idea of Night is to explain the experiences in the Holocaust. I personally think that this book is a good book for young adults and not kids because it uses some language and it’s very descriptive.

Freedom. A goal. A liberty. A myth. So many descriptions for a single concept. Yet the main idea is the same: to be free of restrictions, free to be whatever you wish. It is a life necessity, one that was, unfortunately, and still is, restricted throughout history, resulting in many chasing after its acquisition. Humans currently live in a time, in several nations, where freedom is a right, a necessity of life freely given. However, throughout history, freedom has been kept to only a minority, resulting in individuals struggling to change society for freedom to be distributed to the majority of people, a battle that took years, centuries to accomplish. This fight for true autonomy took many forms, both violent and peaceful. Literary works, in particular, have been major agents to this cause, serving as both reminders of those struggles and remembrance to readers of the endeavors those authors sought to accomplish. Two particular works, The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, spearheaded movements for freedom by tackling the prejudice of gender roles, expressing through their novels’ characters and experiences the arguments for individual freedom and the challenges that must be conquered to achieve those goals for future generations.

In Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, a boy rebels against his father by climbing up trees, where he spends the rest of his life on, without ever touching the ground again. The philosophical residue is the idea that reason advances the human knowledge, which is a powerful influence to individuals, making people seek for it through books and logic. Accordingly, it is necessary for the improvement of society that it should govern people with justice and reason, not through sovereign authorities.

Throughout the world of suburbia, there seems to be a persistence of communities who attempt to create a perfect, enclosed world for the whole of the community to live in. By providing for everything that the inhabitants would ever want, suburbia is able to close itself off from those around it that it deems unworthy of belonging. While this exclusivity helps to foster the sense of community, it can also bring with it isolation from the outside, and also from within, and have disastrous results. Throughout the semester, there have been a number of works that have dealt the issue of isolation, but the greatest representation of a work whose physical qualities in its representation of suburbia help to

The play No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre, is about three people that die and go to hell. Joseph Garcin, a journalist executed by a firing squad for trying to desert during a war; Inez Serrano, a post-office clerk murdered by her lover which left a gas stove on while she slept; and Estelle Rigault, a woman who married an older rich man and died due to pneumonia. They all expected physical torture in hell. However, all they found was a plain room with some furniture that always had the light on, no windows, no beds, and nothing that would reflect or work as a mirror. The three of them were trapped inside the room. After discussing among themselves, they confessed their crimes and deduced that the torture was psychological. They also realized that they had been placed together so that each of them was to become the torturer of the other two. Each character began to ask things from the others to fulfill a need they all had, which only led them to more despair. Due to this, Garcin concluded that “hell is other people” (pag26). A. Petrusso argues in his article “No Exit” that the three main characters of the play have in common a display of cowardice. Certainly, all of them seem to be cowards at some moment and one character exhibits it more than the others. He also argues that certain actions and behaviors are merely the cowardice of the character when in fact, it rather seems more like fear. The examples and arguments used by Petrusso seem to simply catalog the main characters as

The spiritual life of each person in the world is as individual as a fingerprint. Thousands of different religions create a myriad of outlines for worship, but every personal belief system is unique. “The Three Hermits” by Leo Tolstoy tells of three holy men living a silent life of prayer on an island by themselves. When an Archbishop catches word of them, he insists on diverting his own travel route so that he may visit the hermits. With diligence, he teaches the men the Our Father and departs to return to his ship. Later, the three hermits chase after the ship as if they were running on ground, for they forgot the Our Father and wished to be retaught by the Bishop. Crossing himself, the Bishop assures the hermits that their prayers will be heard by God and asks that they pray for him and other sinners.

Far in the distance, the faint chewing sound of people taking their first bites into their carne asada tacos, the loud, sharp clinks of tequila glasses, and the hoarse bangs of a piñata being beaten all come hand in hand, representing a Mexican celebration in La-La Land or also known as the city of Los Angeles. The city has been nicknamed “La-La Land” due to its recognition of being a place full of fun and out of touch with reality. For the past several decades, the city of Los Angeles has increasingly become a Latino city as they hosted countless festivals to celebrate the Mexican cultural holidays such as Cinco de Mayo, El Dia de Los Muertos and etc. In the book, The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz discusses the generalization of Mexicans and emphasizes the idea of them preferring to be placed in solitude due to their fear of intimacy. The book even discusses the roles of a Mexican fiesta and cultural aspects of the Latino culture. By having Mexican holidays celebrated in Los Angeles, the city has become more invested into the Latino culture with the adoption of its cultural belief of death and celebrations techniques, which include excessively drinking, usage of guitars, letting off fireworks and celebratory gunshots.

As individuals in the city, we preserve our individuality. People are enslaved to time, working under the clock. Structure of the city makes the people have less time for themselves. Everything is moving and it's either you leave or get left. Simmel suggest that To becomes a true individual you must face all the struggles. Mark abolishing all the trials and tribulation. City life was just too fast paced for people to have time for interaction or time to stop and explore the environment. too many complex groups and relationships, as are found in the city, can increase the level of stimuli and contribute to the blasé metropolitan attitude. That reveals that the blasé attitude is a defense mechanism to help us preserve emotional energy. The city

This illusory book entitled “invisible cities” was published in Italy in 1972, written by a very famous Italian prose writer of the postwar era, Italo Calvino. This book highlights a historical memoir of a well-known Venetian explorer named Marco Polo but focuses around a specific dialogue and a series of stories shared between Kublai Khan, emperor of Mongolia, and his right-hand man Polo in the late 1200’s. This concept of writing emphasizes the aspects of humanity and social consequences in generic city makeup and the way we become trapped in the metaphorical “inferno of living”.