Research Proposal Essay Example for Free

Research Proposal Essay I would like to write about a famous Arabic writer, Naguib Mahfouz. His poetry and works inspire me a lot and I enjoy reading his things. My father always used to read them to me, because his poems were true. Mahfouz always talks about the issues affecting the people of Egypt: generational, historical, religious, and political. Egyptians always have something going on. With his writings, Mahfouz’s introduces the reader to Egyptian reformers and modern and traditional characters as they change. We all know that as a country Egypt constantly reforms, even at an early age, Mahfouz has been able to capture hints of revolution. Mahfouz’s novels are stories of love, ethics, moral responsibility, and crises that characterize a culture that has had many changes. His stories talk about and describe the lives of ordinary individuals caught in struggles of identity and religion. His fictional work paint a picture of Egyptian Muslims that are ruled by their own culture, as well as those they encounter as a result of the outside influence of colonialism. This simultaneity allows Mahfouz to depict the contemporary Egyptian identity as both modern and traditional. In Naguib Mahfouzs short story Zaabalawi there see a young man in search of the mysterious Zaabalawi, because he afflicted with a disease which doctors are unable to cure. Zaabalawi is known to cure illnesses, a holy man that has healing powers. Zaabalawi is like a mysterious figure that has some strange powers to accomplish the impossible. While in this search, the protagonist visits a variety of figures including a religious lawyer, a book seller, a government officer, a calligrapher, and a musician. Not able to find any definite answers as to the whereabouts of Zaabalawi, he begins to doubt his existence. Eventually, however, while in a drunken sleep in a tavern, he dreams that he is in a beautiful garden and experiences a state of harmony and contentment. He awakes to find that Zaabalawi was with him but has now disappeared again. Though upset at having missed him, the main character is encouraged by his dream and determines to continue his search for Zaabalawi. In this story the author uses symbolism to convey his message to his audience, that the quest to find Zaabalawi is a journey into our souls in search of the inner peace that inside us. Mahfouz uses a lot symbolic meanings, such as irony, that is why I want to write about this work. I have always been drawn to these types of writing. Annotated Bibliography 1. Aboul-Ela, Hosam. The Writer Becomes Text: Naguib Mahfouz and State Nationalism in Egypt. Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 27:2 (2004 Spring), pp. 339-56. I chose Prof. Aboul Ela because his work because it’s easy to read and very simple, some of the other materials was a bit too hard to put together. 2. Naguib Mahfouz. The Happy Man ONE WORLD OF LITERATURE Shirley Geok-Lin Kim and Norman A. Spencer. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993. p.46-p.53 Im using this source because it’s going to help me explain other literary works of Naguib Mahfouz in this essay. 3. Modern Egyptian Short Stories by El-Gabalawy, Saad (trans.) (Najib Mahfouz, Youssef Idris, Saad Elkhadem) ISBN: 0919966039 Im using this other source because of the type of writing. This book explains how Mahfouz writes his stories, and what he uses in terms of grammar and how he builds the story, symbolism and irony. 4. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mahfouz.htm This source is going to help me discuss the state of mind of Naguib Mahfouz when he wrote his books. It explains how Mahfouz became a beginning of an era not only in the Egyptian literature but also in the Arab literature.He was always lonely, maybe that’s the reason why his writings were always kind of sad.

Societal Views of Women in the Victorian Era in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s

Societal Views of Women in the Victorian Era in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, creates a peephole into the lives of a family in the Victorian Era. The play portrays a female viewpoint in a male-dominated society. The values of the society are described using the actions of a woman, Nora, who rebels against the injustices inflicted upon her gender. Women’s equality with men was not recognized by society in the late 1800’s. Rather, a woman was considered a doll, a child, and a servant. Nora’s alienation reveals society’s assumptions and values about gender. A woman was considered by society to be a doll because she was expected to be subordinate to her husband’s whims. Referring to a ball that she would attend, Nora asks her husband, Torvald, if he would â€Å"take me in hand and decide what I shall go as and what sort of dress I should wear† (26). Nora relies completely on how her husband would dress her, just like a doll. Just as Nora is treated as a doll, she interacts with her children as such. She doesn’t raise them, she merely â€Å"play[s] and romp[s] with the children† (13). She tells Torvald, â€Å"our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll child; and here the children have been my dolls† (67). In this conversation, she shows her alienation as a woman in society by expressing discontent with her role in life. In addition to being treated like a doll, Nora is also regarded as a small child. Victorian society looks upon women’s intelligence as no better than a child’s. Torvald tells her, â€Å"You talk like a child. You don’t understand the conditions of the world in which you live† (69). Yet, he does nothing to rectify the situation. While ... ... a heedless child† (70). Because of Torvald’s inability to grasp the concept of equality, Nora leaves him. Society’s values are revealed by Nora’s declaration of equality and independence. Through Nora’s rebellious declaration and departure, she removes herself from society’s standards and makes a move towards equality. She renounces society’s views of a woman as a child, doll, and slave. Men in Victorian society told a woman how to act as a parent to a child, how to dress for a public event as an owner to a doll, and how to keep her thoughts to herself as a master to a slave. Henrik Ibsen portrayed qualities of the Victorian era through the alienated female gender, represented by Nora. Works Cited Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House. Dover Thrift Edition, 1992 Northam, John. Ibsen. A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1965.

Of Mice and Men Curley’s Wife

mice When John Steinbeck wrote of mice and men, he showed there was a lot of inequality during the 1930’s. This essay shall attempt to portray the inequality of women in Steinbeck’s novel. George the main character of the story, first sets his eyes on Curley’s wife, his initial impression of her is that he has â€Å"never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her† (Steinbeck 2006 p36). In the novel Curley’s wife is a beautiful woman who constantly shows her beauty to the men on the ranch. She dresses inappropriately for a woman married to the boss’s son. She had full, roughed lips and wide spaced eyes, her fingernails are red and her hair hangs in little rolled clusters, like sausages†. (p34 Steinbeck 2006). Curley’s wife always wanders around the ranch in search for someone to talk to. However, the ranch workers stay wary of her as they believe she will only give them trouble. Curley’s wife is isolated, self absorbed and a dreamer. Curley doesn’t seem to have any respect for his wife at all, Candy tells George (Steinbeck p30) why Curley wears only one glove on his hand which is soaked in Vaseline so it is kept soft for his wife and George finds this disgusting. This is degrading to her as she is just there for his pleasure. She is just a wife who is a trophy to show off hence the saying ‘trophy wife’. Dreams are heavily involved in this book. Like many characters in the book, Curley’s wife also has a dream. She dreams of being a film star. She appears to be trying to get the men into trouble but her dreams and frustrations show that she is lonely like the other people on the ranch. She hated her upbringing, so when a guy told her she had the potential to be a movie star and he would be in touch, finally she found a way out. However, being a young naive girl like she was, she fell for his story and she never heard or even saw the guy again. Instead of Hollywood and all its glam, she ended up marrying young and getting trapped on the ranch. Being the only woman there and no one to talk to makes you emphasise with her and soften towards her and feel her loneliness. Curley is not interested in her dream and there is only one person she tells her dream to and that is Lennie. I think she tells ennie because she knows he doesn’t comprehend what’s going on and it goes through one ear and out the other but at least she’s telling somebody her dream even if they don’t quite understand but ironically the one person she tells is the same person who takes it away for good. John Steinbeck makes very good use of dreams throughout the novel. Each character is shown to have greater depth than we might have expected and we are able to see how lonely and disappointed their lives are through the quite humble ambitions that they have. The men seem to want security in their lives whereas Curley’s wife wants to escape from the boredom and lonesomeness that surrounds her and get rid of the title ‘Curley’s wife’. Although Curley's wife may be considered static, she does not change throughout the novel Curley's wife is essential to the plot. Therefore, she is not simply â€Å"unnamed† because she is unimportant. Curley's wife is unnamed for several reasons. She is first and for most not worthy of a name. A name implies that a relationship can exist. Curley's wife is not capable of a relationship; she is not worthy. With a name also comes identification and familiarity. If we were to feel any sort of empathy for Curley's wife, we may not understand or appreciate Lennie's role in her death. We may actually care that she is dead. There is also the historical role of women in society. As a writer of social issues, Steinbeck wants the reader to recognize the inferior role of women in the world. The lack of name demotes Curley's wife to insignificant status. She is not as important as the men in the story. Curley’s wife is very flirtatious. In fact she is so flirtatious that the farmers refer to her as ‘having the eye’. The men see her in the ranch as the cause of many problems like her husband’s short heated attitude and the fear that they will be sacked. But as the story is about to reach its climax, she begins to add more complexity to her own character by letting Lennie in on her dreams, what she is all about. Here she reveals that she doesn’t have the eye at all but she is just lonely. She says that she dislikes Curley because he is always annoyed and so she comes around the farm to get away and find someone that she can talk to. In this conversation with Lennie she tells him the dream that she had for herself. She dreamed of becoming a famous actress and she would have wanted to live in Hollywood. But just like many of the other characters her dream went unrealised. So instead of being an actress living a glamorous life in Hollywood, she is stuck living in a ranch with a husband that she really doesn’t like, living in a ranch full of loneliness not havin

The Arachnid Arthropods

Arachnids (Arachnida) are a group of arthropods that include spiders, ticks, mites, scorpions and harvestmen. Scientists estimate that there are more than 100,000 species of arachnids alive today. Arachnids have two main body segments (the cephalothorax and the abdomen) and four pairs of jointed legs. By contrast, insects have three main body segments and three pairs of legs—making them easily distinguishable from arachnids. Arachnids also differ from insects in that they lack wings and antennae. It should be noted that in some groups of arachnids such as mites and hooded tickspiders, the larval stages have only three pairs of legs and fourth leg pair appears after they develop into nymphs. Arachnids have an exoskeleton that must be shed periodically for the animal to grow. Arachnids also have an internal structure called an endosternite that is composed of a cartilage-like material and provides a structure for muscle attachment. In addition to their four pairs of legs, arachnids also have two additional pairs of appendages that they use for a variety of purposes such as feeding, defense, locomotion, reproduction or sensory perception. These pairs of appendages include the chelicerae and the pedipalps. Most species of arachnids are terrestrial although some groups (especially ticks and mites) live in aquatic freshwater or marine environments. Arachnids have numerous adaptations for a terrestrial lifestyle. Their respiratory system is advanced although it varies among the different arachnid groups. Generally, it consists of tracheae, book lung and vascular lamellae that enable efficient gas exchange. Arachnids reproduce via internal fertilization (another adaptation to life on land) and have very efficient excretory systems that enable them to conserve water. Arachnids have various types of blood depending on their particular method of respiration. Some arachnids have blood that contains hemocyanin (similar in function to the hemoglobin molecule of vertebrates, but copper-based instead of iron-based). Arachnids have a stomach and numerous diverticula that enable them to absorb nutrients from their food. A nitrogenous waste (called guanine) is excreted from the anus at the back of the abdomen. Most arachnids feed on insects and other small invertebrates. Arachnids kill their prey using their chelicerae and pedipalps (some species of arachnids are venomous as well, and subdue their prey by injecting them with venom). Since arachnids have small mouths, the saturate their prey in digestive enzymes, and when the prey liquifies, the arachnid drinks its prey. Classification: Animals Invertebrates Arthropods Chelicerates Arachnids Arachnids are classified into about a dozen subgroups, some of which are not widely known. Some of the better-known arachnid groups include: True spiders (Araneae): There are about 40,000 species of true spiders alive today, making the Araneae the most species-rich of all arachnid groups. Spiders are known for their ability to produce silk from spinneret glands located at the base of their abdomen.Harvestmen or daddy-long-legs (Opiliones): There are about 6,300 species of harvestmen (also known as daddy-long-legs) alive today. Members of this group have very long legs, and their abdomen and cephalothorax are almost completely fused.Ticks and mites  (Acarina): There are about 30,000 species of ticks and mites alive today. Most members of this group are very small, although a few species can grow to as much as 20mm in length.Scorpions (Scorpiones): There are about 2000 species of scorpions alive today. Members of this group are easily recognized by their segmented tail that bears a venom-filled telson (sting) at the end.