Fifth Business - Character Foils Of Dunstan Ramsay And Percy Essay

Robertson Davies’ novel, Fifth Business, revolves around guilt, competition, and two men who are foils of each other. Although Dunstan Ramsay and Percy Boyd Staunton are parallels to each other, they contrast in a great number of ways. Their awkward relationship plays a significant role in the number of elements which make Fifth Business such an interesting story. While Dunstan Ramsay had never been too interested in competing with Percy Boyd Staunton, Percy from a young age saw Dunny as a rival. When Percy’s brand new expensive sled isn’t as fast as Dunny’s, Percy gets angry and throws a snowball at Dunny, which in turn begins the setting for the novel. The two continue to compete throughout the novel, for things such as Leola’s love, military recognition, and more. Percy’s and Dunstan’s characters contrast in many ways. The most prominent way in which they contrast is their values. Dunstan values spiritual things, while Percy values only material things. Percy is impressed by and yearns for money, while Dunstan could care less about it. Dunstan explains his lack of desire for materialistic things: Where Boy lived high, I lived - well, not low, but in the way congenial to myself. I thought twenty-four dollars was plenty for a ready-made suit, and four dollars a criminal price for a pair of shoes. I changed my shirt twice a week and my underwear once. I had not yet developed any expensive tastes and saw nothing wrong with a good boarding-house. (Page 1...

Humorous character Essay

Hereafter, Shakespeare decides to extend Bottom’s appearance of silliness even further by transforming his head into a donkey’s head, which, according to the story, is the result of the fairy, Puck’s exertion. After that little incident, Bottom’s mates start to flee in anxiety. Bottom is obviously confused why his buddies are running away from him, since he doesn’t know that his head has been replaced by a donkey head. When doing this, Shakespeare uses the dramatic irony-technique again to increase the hilarity for this scene even more. – The audience is aware of the ass head, but Bottom is not – He’s striding around all over the stage, confused why his mates ran away from him, but his pompous attitude is not all gone yet, so instead of asking them, why they’re running away from him, he chooses to believe, they’re just messing about with him. So when they’re all running away in anxiety, he shouts, that he’ll not be afraid of their little joke. Bottom just want to keep his pride, whatever it takes to do so. For that reason, he randomly starts to sing about birds. – Which after my opinion is a quite ridiculous thing to do just suddenly. To his surprise, he’s overheard by Titania, the fairy queen, who Puck has also messed around with, to make her fall in love with the first creature she set her eyes on. This creature turns out to be Bottom the weaver. She hears his song and falls madly in love with him. – It is humorous that the high class fairy queen, perhaps a beauty beyond everything else, falls in love with a low class guy, whose head has the same figure as the head of an animal, which is most likely considered one of the most unintelligent and stubborn mammals in the world. (I bet Shakespeare took this into account when he was writing the play). This is clearly shown when they’re speaking. Titania says something like: â€Å"Be kind and courteous to this gentleman†¦ † and she nearly makes a whole poem out of her speech, with lots of long poetic words. Bottom will respond with something that he think himself is a hilarious joke; ‘well-thought’ and ‘intellectual’ – Not quite, but Bottom doesn’t know, because he’s still got his pompous attitude. Shakespeare had most certainly been thinking thoroughly about the names of the fairies, that Bottom was about to meet when Titania had convinced him to go with her, because he wanted to make Bottom come up with a joke for each and everyone of them – A fairly bad joke of course. Shakespeare knew that Bottom still had this pompous attitude going on, but he also knew that Bottom was a somewhat stupid character. It requires a certain level of intelligence to come up with good jokes, which will make listeners laugh or at least produce a bit of giggling. – But Bottom doesn’t have that intelligence. The thing that makes Bottom funny is not his jokes, but his belief that his jokes are good and the amount of time he’s spend making them up.

The Declaration of Independence A Closer Look Essay

In What Did the Declaration Declare?, Joseph J. Ellis, an editor for history publications presents various historical perceptions on the analytical conception of this mythic text of American public life. The Declaration of Independence has enjoyed a long and useful career as an expression of quot;natural rights,quot; providing Americans with an influential statement of their national doctrine. Thomas Jefferson had no reason to believe that he was writing a document that would become so revered throughout the ages. One may confirm the Declaration’s idealistic origins by examining Carl Becker’s enduring argument that the Declaration was an American product of the doctrines of John Locke. The Declaration was composed for a specific†¦show more content†¦In summary, the Declaration of Independence gives hope and a feeling of security to the people of the United States of America. It went through many changes, beginning from a simple draft to an edited piece that imp acted the Nation as a whole. Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, but Congress edited and perfected this historical document to create a tactful and eloquent Declaration, which would remain a part of our country day-to-day philosophy throughout the course of history up to modern day times. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Thomas Jefferson, during May and June of 1776, served on committees and dealt mostly with the affairs of Canada. Naturally, he was more concerned with the welfare of Virginia, which was his home. He began drafting a Constitution for his own Commonwealth and included specific charges against King George III (Ellis 29). Jefferson had a history dealing in the politics of the colonies. He was very well informed on the proceedings within the colonies and this helped him to have a clear objective of the colonial procedures. 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