MINISTERUL EDUCAŢIEI CERCETĂRII TINERETULUI ŞI SPORTULUI

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 <<“It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once
were in books. The same things could be in the `parlour families'
today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected
through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at
all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old
phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for
it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of
receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might
forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in
what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe
together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of
course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You
are intuitively right, that's what counts. Three things are missing.
"Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so
important? Because they have quality. And what does the word
quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has
features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under
the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the
more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on
a sheet of paper, the more `literary' you are. That's my definition,
anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.
The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her
and leave her for the flies. "So now do you see why books are hated
and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable
people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.
We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers,
instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for
all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow
we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without
completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of
Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was
incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when he was
held, rootless, in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn't
something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I
am completely insane. Well, there we have the first thing I said we
needed. Quality, texture of information."

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"And the second?"
"Leisure."
"Oh, but we've plenty of off-hours."
"Off-hours, yes. But time to think? If you're not driving a hundred
miles an hour, at a clip where you can't think of anything else but the
danger, then you're playing some
game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the fourwall
televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real.' It is immediate, it has
dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right.
It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions
your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'"
"Only the 'family' is 'people.'"
"I beg your pardon?"
"My wife says books aren't 'real.'"
"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.'
You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that
encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any
shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes
and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all
my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a
onehundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions,
and I being in and part of those incredible parlours. As you see, my
parlour is nothing but four plaster walls. And here " He held out two
small rubber plugs. "For my ears when I ride the subway-jets."
"Denham's Dentifrice; they toil not, neither do they spin," said
Montag, eyes shut.
"Where do we go from here? Would books help us?"
"Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I
said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And
number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn
from the inter-action of the first two.>>

(Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)

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 FOREWORD

The course introduces students to basic aspects regarding

postwar American culture seen through literary texts and films.
Although it is structured chronologically, the course focuses more on
cultural issues that have been characterizing America since 1945. The
course also tries to portrait American national identities by linking
arts: literature and film. The course assumes that students have little
training in film theory and critiquing. Consequently, instead of
focusing on film analysis, the course covers periods of film and
literary development, initiating debate about books through films, and
vice versa, encouraging critiquing by means of comparative studies,
i.e. ‘art through art’.
Both literature and film are seen as cultural discourses that
integrate into the social, political, economic and cultural context of
Postwar America.
I wish to thank all my students with whom I was in constant
exchange of ideas and beliefs. I am particularly indebted to Daniela
Lit, Petru Nastasa, Nemes Nandor, Veronica Ciuchina, Fulop Eva,
Simonfi Arpad, Szasz Monica, Alina Pintea, Alina Chiorean, Paula
Fagaras, Gyorgy Izabella, Gabriela Demeter, Stefan Molnar, Anca
Crisan, Mathe Ibolya, Luminita Merdar, Ovidiu Craciun, Alin Halatiu,
Codruta Rusu, and Adrian Sorlea.

Dr. Ramona Hosu, Senior Lecturer

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Identity and Books (Old & New – Poetry/ Literature/ Books and
School/ Society): the book, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury; the film,
Fahrenheit 451 directed by François Truffaut; the film, Dead Poets
Society .............................................................................................................8
1.1. Essay 1 ...............................................................................................10
1.2. Essay 2 ...............................................................................................12
1.3. Essay 3 ...............................................................................................16
1.4. Essay 4 ...............................................................................................18
1.5. Essay 5 ...............................................................................................21

2. Identity and Society (Society, authority, corruption, duty): the book,

L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy; the film, L.A. Confidential, directed by
Curtis Hanson ..............................................................................................24
2.1. Essay 1 ...............................................................................................26
2.2. Essay 2 ...............................................................................................30
2.3. Essay 3 ...............................................................................................33

3. Identity and Locus (Sophisticated bohemia and ‘respectability’,

fragility, inadaptability and insecurity): the book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
Truman Capote; the film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s directed by Blake
Edwards; the book, Sophie’s Choice, William Styron; the film, Sophie’s
Choice directed by Alan J. Pakula..............................................................35
3.1. Essay 1 ...............................................................................................42
3.2. Essay 2 ...............................................................................................44
3.3. Essay 3 ...............................................................................................46

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4. Identity and Power (Behavioral defiance - alienation, imprisonment,
(in)sanity, escape): the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken
Kesey; the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, directed by Milos
Forman .........................................................................................................49
4.1. Essay 1 ...............................................................................................52
4.2. Essay 2 ...............................................................................................53
4.3. Essay 3 ...............................................................................................57
4.4. Essay 4 ...............................................................................................59

5. Identity and Otherness (Femininity and Masculinity - individuality

and togetherness): the book, The Hours, Michael Cunningham; the film,
The Hours directed by Stephen Daldry; the book, Mrs. Dalloway,
Virginia Woolf (optional); the book, Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk; the
film, Fight Club, directed by David Fincher ..............................................62
5.1. Essay 1 ...............................................................................................66
5.2. Essay 2 ...............................................................................................69
5.3. Essay 3 ...............................................................................................72
5.4. Essay 4 ...............................................................................................74
5.5. Essay 5 ...............................................................................................79
5.6. Essay 6 ...............................................................................................82

6. Bibliography .............................................................................................86

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1. Identity and Books (Old & New – Poetry/ Literature/ Books and
School/ Society): the book, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury; the
film, Fahrenheit 451 directed by François Truffaut; the film, Dead
Poets Society

PEOPLE = BOOKS

1) Fahrenheit 451 2) Dead Poets Society

Burning books=Killing people (e.g. the old lady episode)

1) Montag:
“There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to
make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something
there…
And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one
of the books.”

2) Keating:
“Words and ideas can change the world.”

 DEAD POETS SOCIETY + FAHRENHEIT 451

I. The Light of Knowledge The School The Candle

Fragment, Dead Poets Society, directed by Peter Weir
(0:00-4:26-6.56)

The four Pillars

Tradition Depravity
Honor Horror
Discipline Decadence
Excellence Excrement

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 Teachers&Parents vs. Students
Old New/Young

The old world/the new world: Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 2005:
13-17, 38-39

II Carpe diem / Seize the day / Make your lives extraordinary

• The difference of approach - Mr. Keating vs. the other
teachers
Fragment, Dead Poets Society, directed by Peter Weir, 10:22-16:40

His insight / inner world

• The history of ‘our’ superficiality: Fahrenheit 451, Ray
Bradbury, 2005: 70-80)

III Definition of Poetry & Books

• Fragment, Dead Poets Society, directed by Peter Weir, 21:01-
26:48

Passions the human race

Identity Sensibility

! You are yourself when you find your own voice.

• Books and their interior: Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury,
2005: 105-107

IV Use of Language
• Fragment, Dead Poets Society, directed by Peter Weir, 41:21-
44:44

The world seen from different angles

(Changed perspectives)

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 Find your own voice!
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 2005: 120-130; Fahrenheit
451, directed by François Truffaut, 01:06:41-01:13:35

V The ‘creation’ of poems & Things ‘the inside’ (thoughts

+ feelings)
• Fragment, Dead Poets Society, directed by Peter Weir, 52:56-
58:56
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 2005: 200

1.1. Essay 1

Daniela Lit, Romana-English

Ways of approaching education in

Dead Poets Society

One might find quite difficult to establish who the main

character of the movie is, especially taking into consideration the
numerous figures that constantly appear in the various scenes.
John Keating is both a remarkable and a memorable
protagonist, who, through the means of original ways of approaching
pupils, manages to attract them and lead them to a better way of
understanding poetry, literature. Moreover, at Welton Academy, the
teacher of English Literature finds a group of students eager to make
something that might represent a considerable change in their lives.
The entire scenario consists of sequences from these boys' lives that
inevitably intermingle and thus cause new conflicts and relationships.
As in any school, all types of students can be found here, wealth and
intelligence being the main criteria. Thus, Neil Perry is a very
intelligent, but romantic boy, a dual nature whose passion for acting
permanently comes in contradiction with his pragmatic talent for
science (chemistry). Opposite to him, Richard Cameron is a

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traditionalist and a realist person, the only one accusing Keating's
methodology. Neil's new roommate, Todd Anderson, is a shy boy, the
only one capable of maintaining a certain balance between his
repressed romanticism (which bursts out due to his efforts to compose
a poem) and the pragmatic, realistic spirit in which he was educated
and which seems to haunt him through his brother's image as a
Welton former eminent student.
School, as any other institution, is led by strict rules which are
to be obeyed. The 1950s-1960s represent a period of transition and
uncertainty, when it is difficult to establish a certain cultural or
societal pattern and to identify oneself with it. The best solution that
people find in these cases is submitting to tradition and rejecting
anything that might come in contradiction with it.
Since education has as a major function in helping the
individual to integrate into the society and submit to its prejudices
and stereotypes, parents pay close attention to what school their
children attend. Known for its remarkable teachers and their
traditional but efficient methods of teaching, Welton Academy is one
of the most desired. Any graduate can be proud of himself for having
achieved tradition, honor, discipline and excellence.
Dr. Nolan, an imposing figure among the teachers, proves to
act according to some rigid and inhumane set of rules which he had
probably inherited from his parents and former teachers. Fearing not
to fail as a teacher and be mocked by students, Dr Nolan takes
advantage on his leading position and becomes the dictator of the
school. Thus, the only way of gaining students’ respect and keeping
the order is by threatening and punishing students by beating them in
case they do not do their homework or misbehave.
A former student at Welton, now a teacher, John Keating is
aware of the traditionalist methods used in school and their
efficiency. He understands teaching not as preaching on standard
norms, but on making himself accepted and loved by the pupils.
Thus, he shows them a different way of approaching literature, since
literature itself is not a rigid discipline or subject matter, but an
original perspective of life and an amazing way of living it. As in
Walt Whitman's 0 Me! 0 Life!, life can be compared to a play or a
poem in which one can identify himself: “That you are here-that life

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exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may
contribute a verse.”
Methodologically speaking, Mr. Keating proves to be the
prototype of the "perfect" teacher because he is the only one
interested in and capable of making the students his friends, gaining
their confidence by encouraging them to come to him no matter the
problem. He obviously rejects some scientists’ attempts of theorizing
literature. Thus, he asks the pupils to rip out the entire introductory
pages and later in the movie it proves that he skipped the chapter
dealing with realism. He transforms the monotonous homework into
an interesting activity meant to develop their imagination and
creativity. But when Mr. McAllister accuses him of filling the boy's
minds with fantasies and silly dreams, he reminds him that dreams
and hope are the only ones that can make a man happy and keep him
alive.
A romantic nature, Mr. Keating dreams to teach the boys what
the real meaning and purpose of literature are - that of inviting us to
look around and of teaching us the philosophy of life expressed by
Carpe Diem!. None of us is immortal and life ends with death. As a
passionate poetry lecturer, he makes his students aware of the fact we
are filled with passion and as long as we seize the day, poetry turns
alive in our nature and than we are inborn poets.

1.2. Essay 2

Nemes Madocsa Nandor, Romana-English

"O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!"

RE-LOADED
(past & present)

O Captain! My Captain! - Walt Whitman

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

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But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck the Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills,
For you the bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores a-
crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning,
Here Captain! dear father!
The arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Task: Find out the similarities between the poem and the film
a. Who is the Captain in the film and in the poem?
b. In what form do the ship and the fearful trip (in the poem)
appear in the film?
c. Which are the Captain's sacrifices in the poem and in the
film?
d. What do the following lines mean: "his lips are pale and
still" and "he has no pulse nor will"?
e. What does the flag represent in the poem? Does the flag
appear in the film?
f. What do the bells represent in the poem? Do the bells
appear in the film? In what form?

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 Just as Walt Whitman was criticized because of his innovation
in free verse form, the use of free verse in long rhythmical lines with a
natural structure, so is John Keating's innovation in the methods of
teaching criticized. Keating does not apply the stereotyped teaching
methods, but the free, natural ones. Both Whitman, through writing
poetry, and Keating, through teaching poetry, want to encourage their
admirers to observe the world from different perspectives and levels.
Instead of imitating others, both Whitman and Keating went on their
own ways; their way of thinking was fresh, limitless
and educative. We could assert that both Walt Whitman and John
Keating followed Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea: "do not go where the
path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
The annual discovered by the students reveals that the teacher,
John Keating, when he himself was a student, was a member of the
old Dead Poets Society. This fact makes the students curious and they
ask their teacher about it. John Keating tells the students that a group
of them used to meet secretly at the "old Indian cave" where they read,
one by one and in a loud voice, the romantics, Shelley, Whitman,
Thoreau and others. Under Neil's leadership, the disciples re-establish,
with tremendous success, the new "Dead Poets Society".
The aim of the old Dead Poets Society will be the goal of the new
Dead Poets Society: “to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life”,
to “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.” Even though the goal is accomplished,
the disastrous end is inevitable. We could guess or suppose the
dreadful end of this new Poets Society from the very beginning of the
film, when the teacher calls himself "0 Captain! My Captain!" (death
of the Captain).
Walt Whitman's poem entitled "0 Captain! My Captain!" was
written for the death of Abraham Lincoln, and serves as a metaphor
upon which both the whole poem and the film "Dead Poets Society"
are built. The poet presents his admiration for Abraham Lincoln who
led the people to victory. Otherwise, the "Captain" becomes a
replacement both for Abraham Lincoln and for the non-conformist
teacher in the film, John Keating. Another important element in the
poem is the "ship", which, in case of the poem, stands for
the United States of America, while in the film, it is represented by the

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"poets society". The fact the ship "has weather'd every rack" shows
that many were murdered at war. "The fearful trip" is a substitute for
the Civil War, which broke out in the mid 1800s and ended with the
murdering of Lincoln. In the film, "the fearful trip" is substituted by
the students "war" for "freedom", a "war" that ends with the
destruction of the "poets society". Why is the poets’ society
destroyed? On the one hand, the destruction happens because of the
severe, strict and stereotyped education in school, and on the other
hand, it emerges because of the parents who force their own children
to follow other ways of life than the children dream of.
The repetition of "heart, heart, heart!" presents the poem's
speaker's fright and awfulness at realizing that the Captain has passed
away. In order to get free, people have to make sacrifices. However,
Keating asserts that "Only in their dreams can man be truly free."
These sacrifices, the "bleeding drops of red", are both Abraham
Lincoln's and John Keating's bleeding wounds. Even though they are
wounded, Abraham Lincoln and John Keating finally won. They both
are proud of what they have done. The former wins the emancipation
of the people and leads the country to safety, while the latter wins the
emancipation of the minds of the students. But, unfortunately they
both fall down right after their success: they "have fallen cold and
dead". The "bells" might signify the Captain's (Keating's) spiritual
death. The fact that the Captain is dead is well depicted in the lines:
"his lips are pale and still" or "he has no pulse nor will".
We can also state that "the flag is flung" in honor and privilege
of the Captain (Lincoln). This "flag" also appears symbolically at the
end of the film when the young and devoted students, eager to follow
their Captain (Keating), step on the desks in the classroom. They were
proudly standing on their desks just like a flag is raised in honor of the
president, just to see the world from another perspective. "Bouquets"
and "wreathe" are typical of celebration and funeral.
By calling the Captain "father", Walt Whitman broadens the
metaphor for Lincoln from a great country leader into a father figure,
whose rationality and guidance leads his children into adulthood. In
"Dead Poets Society", John Keating becomes a
"father" for his students and leads them into adulthood.
As a conclusion, we can assert that both the poem and the film
depict the sad farewell of the "Captain" who has fallen cold and dead

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after the battle. So "Dead Poets Society" could be (and it is) ‘parabolic
reality’.

Bibliography
1. ***An Anthology of American Literature And Culture, Edited by
Hamilton Beck, 1999
2. Peter B. High, An Outline of American Literature, Longman,
London and New York, 1997

1.3. Essay 3

Petru Nastasa, Romana-English

A possible hermeneutics of Neil's death

Neil's death raises a lot of questions in the context of the film.

One could wonder if the character's suicide is the product of an
overwhelming sensibility, the result of a misfortunate context or
moreover the natural effect of the tension created between two
opposite extremities: on one side the rigidity and conventionality
imposed by society, in this case Welton College, and on the other side
the freedom and individualism suggested by Keating's behavior and
philosophy of life.
The easy answer to all these questions is apparently the one that
asserts the father's guilt, in the sense that his radical decision to
withdraw Neil from Welton College and send him to a military school
ultimately makes the boy commit suicide. His gesture of not obeying
his father's order and consequently him playing in the Shakespearian
"A Midsummer Night’s Dream" prove to be fatal. But the debate go
on focusing on the analysis of the dialectic relation between "I must"
and "I feel like", reason and sensibility, duty and desire, prosaic reality
and poetry. The dialectic tension is maintained in the story by two
symbolic characters: John Keating, the nonconformist and libertine
professor that teaches his children a philosophy of freedom and breaks
the conventional rules and Neil's rigid and strict father with a
pragmatic conception of life. Neil's tragic gesture is also the indirect

16
result of his teacher's teachings and actions, therefore it can be
concluded that Keating is also responsible for the boy's death.
Freedom cannot be exercised as a fact of life, in total plenitude, in an
environment where conventionality, rigidity, discipline and obedience
rule, without tragic consequences. If school does not break the
teenagers' spirit, in Neil's case the parental misunderstanding of his
artistic endowment and intentionality proves to be the final blow
which will lead him to committing suicide.
Keating's benefic and solar influence over Neil is repressed
violently, and as a result, the artistic energy fueled by the teacher’s
philosophy of freedom and of ‘express yourself’ turns, in the boy's
soul, from explosive into implosive. The father's guilt in his son's
suicide is not debatable; still the professor is also guilty of Neil's
death. The strong point of the movie is that Keating is guilty without
guilt, in the sense that his influence takes in Neil's sensitive soul an
extreme manifestation, it is transformed and carried to an extreme end.
People cannot have the same idea or notion about freedom, in a way
each individual has a characteristic notion about freedom. As a result,
Keating's way of teaching his philosophy of freedom can be
paradoxically interpreted as dictatorial: he teaches the boys his own
freedom.
Neil's death can be seen as the tragic equivalent of another
happening in the film, when one of the boys dears to confront the
director of the school, he says that God is on the phone and that He
wants to have girls in the college. The director punishes this outburst
by administrating him a cruel punishment. Keating's reaction is an
irritated one because his notion of freedom has been misunderstood.
He tells the boys that there is a time for freedom and a time for
caution, but isn't caution a form of fear, the predecessor of a
subsequently self-imposed discipline? His philosophy of freedom
cannot deal with the barriers of reality, moreover freedom cannot exist
in fact without restrictions, freedom cannot be without non-freedom.
He tells the boys that they misunderstood his freedom. An interesting
idea is that freedom itself is a form of dictatorship, it has its own rules,
one of them being for example the necessity to avoid non-freedom, or
in this case to avoid practicing the exercise of freedom in wrong
circumstances.

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 Keating says that science, engineering and other fields of
knowledge maintain life whereas poetry and art mean love and
passion. When these elements that give people a reason to live, that
constitute the gas that fuels the vital engine of life are removed
from one's life (like it brutally happens in Neil's case, his passion for
theatre being encouraged by his professor), the consequences can be
tragic, especially for sensitive people like Neil that seems to love art,
passion, life in a word, to a greater extent. Keating's teachings and
behavior towards his students, his idealistic philosophy of life
(generically speaking) is not in its essence wrong, but like any
philosophy, it presupposes a variety/multitude of nuances and
interpretations, that can be understood only in time, through
experience or vast intuition, comprehension of things etc. This is
certainly not Neil's case.
The abstract proves, like the film shows, inappropriate when
applied to particular situations, and it becomes valid only when
understood in its full complexity. Neil's tragedy extracts its substance
from the fact that the character is caught between forces whose real
magnitude he cannot estimate, at a young age like his.

1.4. Essay 4

Fulop Eva, English-French

DEAD POETS SOCIETY or “Words and ideas can change the world”

Peter Weir’s film is remarkable due to its call for finding

one’s own way in life. It is a revival of “the biggies”, of that universe
of poetry that tends to be ignored in our postmodern era. Why poetry?
Because, in this factual and material world, it is the only means of
expressing oneself. As Mr. Keating, the film’s non-conformist English
teacher, has put it:
“We don't read and write poetry because
it's cute. We read and write poetry
because we are members of the human race.
And the human race is filled with passion.
Medicine, law, business, engineering,

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 these are all noble pursuits, and necessary
to sustain life. But poetry, beauty,
romance, love, these are what we stay alive
for.” (Dead Poets Society)
Some might say that in spite of its title, the movie does not
really explore poetry; that, indeed, there are some names invoked, and
some quotes sewed in here and there, but more as slogans without
deeper reflection deriving from them. I believe it is just that which
makes the film unique. Far from exhibiting a heavy literary analysis of
famous poems, it simply suggests that poetry leads us back to the
roots. Even if we are not aware of it, our existence is built on
archetypes. Therefore we all need to go back, from time to time, to the
ancestral, when the self was united with the universe. Keating does
not teach the boys much poetry, for he is the exponent of a modern
educational program. Tradition, Honor, Discipline, and Excellence are
the pillars of the conservative Welton educational system, and are
meant to shape a particular kind of society. In the light of Keating’s
teaching, these key-words gain a totally new significance. Tradition
should not be conformity, but individualism, Honor should not be
measured in performance, but in integrity, Discipline should not mean
authoritarianism, but expression of personal impulses (liberalism) and
Excellence should not consist in fulfilling the expectations of society,
but rather in feeling free and truly alive. In Keating’s conception,
reading and learning about poetry would be the equivalent for
revealing and inspiring one’s innermost feelings.
Poetry is, thus, the synonym of Life. As such, it shows that
Life is based on three important principles: Carpe Diem, Individuality
and Nonconformity. All these principles are magnificently illustrated
through quotations from great poets, such as Robert Herrick, Walt
Whitman, Robert Frost, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thoreau, and many
others. I especially enjoyed Whitman’s poem O Me! O Life!. The
verses quoted by Keating are:
"O me, o life
of the questions of these recurring, of the
endless trains of the faithless, of cities
filled with the foolish. What good amid
these, o me, o life? Answer: that you are
here. That life exists, and identity.

19
 That the powerful play goes on, and you
may contribute a verse. That the powerful
play goes on and you may contribute a verse.”
(Dead Poets Society)
According to Mr. Keating, Life is a “powerful play and you
may contribute a verse”. This is the view of a romantic, of one whose
aim in life is to triumph as an individual. In this play called Life, each
one of us has a role to play, which in the Emerson-ian one. Whitman’s
view should be defined by the universe and not by the society. The
unique identities hold the diversified universe as one. Whitman does
not refer to the play called Society, in which the individuals wear
masks in order to conform to the roles prescribed by It. Poetry and
Life show what lies under the mask of democracy: pride, competition,
segregation. This same society imposed itself, like fate, upon the
classics, romantics, realists and upon modernists without regard to
their passion. And this is, I believe, the central idea of the film: the
evolution of society instead of rendering man free, imprisons him in
his own liberty. What Keating teaches his students through Whitman’s
lines is that they will only find their identity if they live a fulfilling
life. This can be achieved by being open to the real values of
humanity: love, beauty, truth, justice. Todd, as a poet says:
“Truth. Truth is like, like
a blanket that always leaves your feet
cold."
From
the moment we enter crying to the moment
we leave dying, it will just cover your
face as you wail and cry and scream.”
Does he refer to truth about a society, which represses identity
through its conformism and uniformity, or to truth about the identity,
which functions as a protection of the self? I think screenwriter Tom
Schulman meant to suggest both. “…only in their dreams can man be
truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be”-Keating says.
Truth comes by insight and this explains the boys’ return to the cave,
to the primal nature (the cave is the central space which unites past
present and future: Enlightenment vs. Romanticism vs. Realism vs.
Modernism- the Beat generation equivalent of the romantics). The
artifices of their society prevented them from discovering their own

20
identities. Or man lives “to be the ruler of life, not a slave” (Whitman
quoted in Dead Poets Society).
This movie is about change. In order to be free, we need to
“let poetry work its magic” (Dead Poets Society). “Oh, to have life
henceforth the poem of new joys”- Whitman teaches to us.
“Sometimes the most beautiful poetry can be about simple things, like
a cat, or a flower or rain” Keating tells the boys. Because: “poetry can
come from anything with the stuff of revelation in it. Just don't let
your poems be ordinary” (Dead Poets Society). Don’t let your life be
ordinary, I would say. Feel free to express your “barbaric yawp”
(Whitman quoted in Dead Poets Society).
Contribute a verse to Life. “What will your verse be?”(Dead
Poets Society)

1.5. Essay 5

Veronica Ciuchina, English-French

The Dangers of Conformity

Or
Between I and the Others

According to a viewer from the Internet Movie Database, the

movie Dead Poets Society, written by Tom Schulman and directed by
Peter Weir, is: “... not about poetry. It's about how you look at the
world. How you look, how others look... how you think, how you
feel... and a warning to never, ever become conformist. [...] Never
become conformist - always make up your own mind.”
Nevertheless, poetry is omnipresent throughout the movie,
becoming an effective means of expressing some very important
truths or principles, that can be applied as much to life as to literature,
more specifically to poetry. These principles – like for example: Carpe
Diem, Individuality and Non-conformity – are illustrated through
quotations from great poets, such as Robert Frost, Walt Whitman,
Robert Herrick, Henry David Thoreau, Alfred Lord Tennyson etc.

21
 Of all these, I have chosen to discuss about the principle of
non-conformity or, better yet, as professor Keating puts it, about the
‘dangers of conformity’.
But, first of all, what is conformity?
According to Keating, conformity represents “the difficulty of
maintaining your beliefs in the face of others”. That is, we, as
individuals, are all unique and have our own beliefs and values. But,
once in a group, we are tempted to adopt the values of the majority, to
mould us to what the others think, fearing what they would say of our
own ideas. Thus, we put ourselves in the danger of becoming nothing
but ‘sheep’ in a herd.
The exercise that he performs with his students in the
courtyard is meant to prove precisely this point. He picks out three
boys and tells them to take a stroll. At first, each boy walks in his own
pace, but after a while the others start clapping and the three find a
common pace, each of them adapting himself to the others. At the end
of the exercise, professor Keating tells them: “...we all have a great
need for acceptance. But you must trust that your beliefs are unique,
your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even
though the herd may go, "That's bad." Robert Frost said, "Two roads
diverged in a wood and I, / I took the one less traveled by, / And that
has made all the difference." “
Quoting these three lines from Robert Frost’s poem The Road
Not Taken, he induces the boys to “find [their] own voice ... [and]
Break out!”
As Robert Frost suggests, life is a continual journey and we
are its travelers. And being the free thinker that he was, when he finds
himself in front of a choice, he decides to make the one less expected
by society, taking the road “less traveled by”. Thus, he differentiates
himself from the rest of the society.
However, in my view, there is also another risk that has to be
taken into account and that is ‘the danger of non-conformity’. As,
rebellion against social norms and constrains has also its risks and we,
as members of society, even though we are individuals, cannot
entirely disregard and defy the principles and values of society.
And the best example of this respect is what happens at the
end of the movie, more precisely, the death of Neil Perry and,

22
consequently, the demission of professor Keating from Weldon
Academy.
Now, I am not stating that the boys should not have renewed
the Dead Poets Society, but I think that their mistake was to totally
isolate themselves from the others, to ignore and defy the conservative
values of their teachers and headmaster. Thus, they created a bigger
gap between them, the new-born Romantics and the stiff conservative
Old School.
For example, Neil did not speak up to his father when he had
the chance, not making himself better understood. He gave up the
fight too soon, failing to fully understand the message of their
‘Captain’, who told them that “...sucking the marrow out of life
doesn't mean choking on the bone. Sure there’s a time for daring and
there's a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called
for.”
That is, they were not completely prepared to ‘seize the day’
under all the aspects.
Nonetheless, the movie ends in an optimistic note, as the
students stand up on their desks, saluting Mr. Keating, recognizing
their mistakes and wanting to make up somehow for them, but also,
showing a certain maturity and moral force. This is what gives us a
feeling of hope, as far as conformity and the conflict between
Modernity and Conservatism is concerned, that there is a middle road,
a common point between the two.
All in all, we can say that Dead Poets Society shows, teaches
us the ‘poetry of life’, as life is a play that is still to be written. And
we are, just like a play writer, the ones who decide how we are going
to live our lives and according to what principles we are going to do it.
In other words, we can “contribute a verse” to it, we can make a
difference.

23
2. Identity and Society (Society, authority, corruption, duty): the
book, L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy; the film, L.A. Confidential,
directed by Curtis Hanson

I. Alvin Toffler - The Consumers of Culture

How to turn the quotidian into ART?

• Toffler, Alvin, Consumatorii de cultură, Oradea: Editura

Antet, 1997: 5-8 [why], 13-16 [how], 23-24, 29-30, 37-38
[who]

- the American complex lacking tradition & roots hating

art & culture

after 1945

enthusiasm, interest, appreciation

- positive: art & culture is open to the many

accessible &
superficial
- negative: lack of interest

democratization of culture

o The Portrait of the Consumer of Culture

W. Wordsworth: “poets do not write for poets but for people”

The form of art is a reflection of the audience.

24
The Consumer of Culture 3 components

1. rich people from Europe 3.artists and virtual artists

2. renegade intellectuals

II. L.A. as Labyrinth

(L. A. Noir by Gary J. Hausladen, Paul F. Starrs)

- The camera ‘fly on the wall’ narrative technique. (Ernest

Hemingway- Cat in the Rain)
(the voice of the camera in the film - Danny de Vito)

- Part of the American dream and nightmare at the same

time.

The Los Angeles of the 1930s, 40s and 50s

EXPERIMENTAL
AMBIGUITY

CLASSIC FILM NOIR (Alfred Hitchcock)

PATHOLOGIES OF LIVING

MYTHOLOGIES AS PARADISE

L.A. as LABYRINTH AMBIGUITY

- triangular relationship
male - female - crime
(protagonist)(fatale)

25
 +
- ambiguous - protagonists
- femmes
- victims
+
- the ambiguity of the city

L.A. a SYMBOL of the NEWLY EMERGING AMERICAN

CULTURE

wealth + vitality vs. fear + paranoia

! The philosophy of the labyrinth: if you get in you cannot get out.

1. L.A. Confidential (the book) - plot + 2 fragments

(chapter 5, chapter 16)
2. L.A. Confidential (the film) - Film Noir – tragism in the
‘city of angels’: L. A. Confidential, directed by Curtis
Hanson, 00:00-13:10)

2.1. Essay 1

Simonfi Arpad, Romanian-English

L.A Confidential
Similarities and differences between the novel and the film

L.A Confidential was published in 1990, while it was only in

1997 when a very successful film of the novel was brought to screen.
The overall effect of the reading and watching element is merely
describable with words. The novel itself never stops unveiling
incriminating records, while the movie highlights the most significant
mischief of a corrupt society.
The written origin of the movie is undoubtedly real. It is a
pleasant endeavor to unintentionally track down whole sentences
attributed to main characters such as the one from the paternal

26
discussion between Dudley and Ed (“You have the eye for the human
weakness, but not the stomach.”), or Jack Vincennes naïve assertion
over his position within the movie business (“I’m the technical
advisor”).
The movie is a technical masterpiece of a laborious novel; it
descends from a written tradition and fulfills the requirements of harsh
spectators. We are dealing with the best adaptation of the 1950’s
within the 90’s. Based on the best-selling novel by James Ellroy this
crime drama explores the dark side of the Los Angeles police force in
the early 50’s. In L.A Confidential Ellroy mixes fact with fiction, also,
some of the actors actually existed: Mickey Cohen and Johnny
Stompanato were real Los Angeles criminals of the 1940’s and
1950’s. The outstanding success of the novel is due to the differences
with the movie while the uniqueness of the movie is highlighted by its
similarities with the novel.
Similarities between the book and the movie
 They both follow the lives of three policemen as they
investigate the shooting of six people in a café in Los
Angeles, USA, on the night of April 13, 1953.
 The three policemen are partners yet not friends; in fact most
of the time they hate each other, in addition they are not ‘good
cops’.
 Various scenes are the exact prototypes of the ones from the
novel:
• Tyrone Jones, one of the three Negroes, weeping;
• Bud bursts in and sticks the gun in Fontaines’ mouth;
• Corpse under the house with bulleted head.
 Ed Exley is the youngest applicant by 8 years;
 Sid Hudgens owns a documentation that could nail Jack
Vincennes;
 Richard Stensland and Bud were to be blamed for the
aggression;
 Ed made the detective Bureau as a result of hid informing;
 Pierce Patchett find girls with middling resemblances to
movie stars and performs plastic surgery for exact
resemblances;

27
  The 3 accused killers escaped from the Hall of Justice Jail by
jumping out a second storey window;
 The Nite Owl killings were semiprofessional, an attempt to
take over the heroin and pornography rackets of Pierce
Patchett;
 Dudley Smith being behind the N.O.M.
Differences between the book and the movie
 The active presence of an entire list of characters who are
cast out of the movie: Preston Exley, Karen and Joan
Morrow, Duckey(Lunceford), Kathie, Blue Blade, Peter and
Baxter Englekling, Dean Van Gelder, Duke Cathcart,David
Mertens, Raymond Dieterling and Billy Dieterling.
 Scenes or facts are distorted due to unknown reasons:
• Ed locked up by Bud White to prevent him from
calming down the prison fight vs. being locked up by
two policemen;
• Ed is psychically prepared by his father to face all
accusations vs. being prepared by Dudley Smith;
• Purple 48-50 Merc vs. brown coupe;
• Bud sneaking into the house before the police arrive
shoots the fat guy in the face vs. shot in the chest;
• Lunceford was in the wrong place at the wrong time
vs. Stensland being in the Nite Owl for a clear reason;
• Dudley asks Jack to stick to Bud and follow him
secretly vs. Ed asking Jack to trace down Bud;
• Sid Hudgens hacked up on the floor, arms and legs
severed, out of weird angles, off his torso-bones
showing white through red vs. being suffocated by
Dudley;
• The Cathcart impersonator gets killed at N.O. vs.
Dick Stensland, a N.O. victim;
• The N.O.M. was solved incorrectly vs. solved
correctly;
• Ed is afraid that solving the N.O. case might reveal
Preston Exley’s fallibility to the world and destroy his
gubernatorial chances vs. no reputation whatsoever in
the movie, just a mere mentioning of his father;

28
 • David Mertens killed Sid vs. Dudley suffocated him
with his own hands;
• One inmate shot Jack in the face, Bud got severely
injured vs. Dudley caused all this;
• Ed was waiting for the perfect moment to nail Dudley
Smith vs. shooting him at the back;
• Dudley survives vs. gets clipped by Ed.
 Various parts of the novel are omitted or simply cut out for
time consuming reasons:
• Preston Exley is the man to build the freeway
system that will link Hollywood to downtown
L.A;
• Ed was beaten up by two guys in kid masks down
in the parking lot, probably Stensland and Bud,
which does not occur in the movie;
• Jack Vincennes marries Karen Morrow;
• Inez admits that the three negroes were all the
time with her so they could not have killed the
people from N.O.;
• Dudley’s gang arranged the beat-up at the prison
and the bombing which Mickey Cohen survived;
• Ed knows his life will soon be flushed down the
toilet and attempts suicide;
• L.A. District Attorney Ellis Leow resigned from
the office in an atypical manner;
• Preston Exley 64, Inez Soto 28, Ray Dietyerling
66 were found dead, the motif suicide.
Mixing fact with fiction, morality with immorality, justice
with corruption, James Ellroy shapes the less popular yet the
most successful novel of his so far and revives the 1950s life
in an apparently safer decade.

29
2.2. Essay 2

Szasz Monica, Romanian-English

Diversity gives unity

Our world and our life, in order to be a happy one or a

“perfect” one, it needs the help of some institutions, doctors,
policemen. As the doctors are specialized in different health problems,
so are the policemen: some work at Narcotics, others at
Administrative Vice, some are detectives at Homicide, others are
detective lieutenants. Even if they work on different cases, they have
the same job, purpose: to keep the order in our world.
Policemen in Los Angeles have to work even harder to keep
the clean image where it is said to be the “Paradise on earth”, a place
that will be revealed to be the perfect one just through its false image.
L. A. Confidential presents three different policemen and
moves along three narrative paths tracking the rises and the falls of the
careers and lives of the policemen.
Three different personalities work to find the real killers from
the “Nite Owl Massacre” to which all the other cases, subplots are
related.
Covering a period of almost eight years, James Ellroy narrates
the destinies of the three policemen: the promotion of Ed Exley in the
Police Department (he succeeds in becoming a detective lieutenant),
Bud’s struggle to show his real capacities and Jack’s fight to hide his
dark past and “repair” it by being the technical advisor at the “Badge
of Honor”. Despite conflicting ambitions and motives, the three
officers will team-up to solve the Nite Owl crime case.
Edmund Exley, Preston Exley’s son (ex-policeman) tries to
rise at his father’s level and even outdo him and to become a
detective. He represents the intelligence in his Department and his
chief Dudley Smith does not think that he has the qualities to become
a detective, because he is too honest and he cannot have the necessary
cold blood when it is needed. His personality’s characteristics are:
intelligence, ambition, and his way of always following the
regulations. These characteristics and his testifying against other
policemen in the Bloody Christmas incident contribute to Ed’s social

30
isolation from the other policemen. But this does not bother him
because all he wants is glory.
Wendell “Bud” White had an awful experience in his
childhood: he saw his father beating his mother till she died and then
stayed with the dead body three days until a policemen found him.
This is one of the reason he become a policemen: to jail or even kill
those men who abuse, sexually and physically, women. He represents
violence despite being against it and he is also the direct man who can
solve cases by using ‘his muscles’. He was frustrated for being the
guy who was “bought in to scare other guys shitless”. He is assigned
by his chief Dudley Smith to participate in the violent testimonies
from Victory Motel. All he wants is to demonstrate, before he retires,
that he can solve a case by using intelligence. The Nite Owl case
represents the chance to work at Homicide as a real detective.
Jack Vincennes (the Big V, Trashcan Jack) has a dirty past (he
used dope and drank and killed an innocent couple being under dope
and alcohol) and he tries to cover his secret by trying to steal his
‘dirty’ file from Sid Hudgens. He is the technical advisor at the Badge
of Honor and he represents the image of the perfect policemen on the
screen and he always appears in the newspapers with another dope
case solved or in their pictures with him arresting celebrities in
compromising positions in L. A. He quit drinking and dope and with
Sid Hudgens’ help, he built his name as a local celebrity.
It is very important to mention the fact that the movie does not
present all the subplots and scenes of the book, which underline the
three men’s moral characteristics.
In Ed’s case we see through the movie almost just his positive
site. But his suicide game from the book uncovers his coward face. He
also demonstrates that he has the cold blood when he shuts the three
Afro-American boys.
The difference between Ed and Jack is underlined when they
meet before entering the witness room. Jack is sure that Ed testifies
for personal purpose and Ed’s response underlines their different
personalities: “I’m just doing my duty… You’re the pay off expert not
me”.
Ed and Bud’s conflict appears out because of two women
(Lynn Bracken an Inez Soto) but each of them will use his own skills
and forgive the problems between them the moments they will

31
understand that they need each other to solve the case and to survive.
Their different techniques and their ‘dark’ methods will help them
work together and try to survive to a nightmare that tests their loyalty
and courage.

Bibliography
James Ellroy – L. A. Confidential; the Arrow edition; London; 1994

UNITY GIVES DIVERSITY

Ed Exley Bud White Jack Vincennes

Intelligence: Violence: Image:
“the smart man” “the direct man” -technical advisor at
Tries to reach his His childhood the Badge of Honor,
father’s level and experience: local celebrity
outdo him-> “sentimental
he wants glory weakness for
females”

- wants to become a - wants to demonstrate - wants to cover his

detective his real detective skills dark past and
‘repair’ it
- The “list with the bad
-wants to make guys” - “50 dollars’
things correctly
- “a brutal disgrace of a
- “smart and coward” policemen and a - “You’re the pay
(Bud) slimy” (Ed) off expert” (Ed)

32
2.3. Essay 3

Alina Pintea, English-French

AUTHORITY= CORRUPTION
In the show Badge of Honor, the LA cops walk on water as
they keep the city clean of crooks. (Film)
This idealized image of the LA cop proves to be an impressive
lie, as the LA cop is very much a corrupt character. The authority that
he represents goes hand in hand with that of the mafia. What common
citizens expect from the police are justice, honesty and truth. These
are the qualities that seem to be missing in the police station presented
in the movie and in the book LA Confidential. Even this genre called
film noir creates the image of a world closed within its own laws, its
own ambitions where corruption at high rank seems to dominate.
Corruption does not imply only money but also (as we can read
in the book and see in the movie) prostitution, drugs, plastic surgery,
cruelty, pornography, gangsters, greed, perversion, tabloid journalism,
organized crime and non limited ambition. These are the ingredients
that make the main interest point of the story. Police captain (or
lieutenant) Dudley Smith is the one that plays a double role in the
story. On the one hand he is the chief of police and on the other he has
connections with the mafia, doing business with Mickey Cohen, the
head drug dealer. This so-called captain of police tries to manipulate
and to take advantage of the officers.
What Dudley Smith asks Ed Exley in the film and what
Preston Exley asks his son to do in the book is one of the proofs that
we need in order to see the true character of the police:
... would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect
you knew was guilty in order to insure an indictment? ...And would
you be willing to beat confessions out of suspects you knew to be
guilty?... Would you be willing to rig a crime scene evidence to
support a prosecuting attorney's working hypothesis? (p. 20)

33
 All that these questions do is rise the question of how honest
the police are in this city of angels. Dudley Smith even admits: I've
been involved in containing hard crime so that myself and a few
colleagues might someday enjoy a profit dispensation, and that day
will soon be arriving... Grand means will be in our hands...Imagine
the means to keep the nigger filth sedated and extrapolated from
there, (p. 400) and not only that but he feels that illegalities must
continue... do you recognize the need to contain crime, to keep it south
of Jefferson with the dark element?...And do you think a certain
organized crime element should be allowed to exist and perpetuate
acceptable vices that hurt no one? (p. 71)
What we can notice so far is that the members of the police are
dirty, but what is even more interesting is that the district attorney, a
man of high statute and one that should represent the law is at the
same time a man that hides behind a mask and that follows the same
path as the police. Officer Jack Vincennes relies on his connection
with Loew and uses it as a trump card, while the others find this an
advantage, too. In this city all works because somewhere some
injustice is made. Justice is no longer blind but favors those that
comply with the rules that society asks.
Drugs, prostitution, crime are a daily routine and the police
take advantage of this and thus they accept willingly to be part of the
system. They all expect to get rich easily even if this means losing
their moral integrity. Thus they recur to all means in order to achieve
what they desire: I plan on using certain aspects of our mutually
withheld evidence to clear the Nite Owl posthaste, establish myself as
the new front-runner and ruin Exley in the process. Lad, bear with me
for a few more days and I'll guarantee you your own personal
revenge. (Dudley Smith, p. 353)
Probably, the most important aspect of LA Confidential is that
of presenting a society that acts according to some unwritten rules,
that appears to follow the path to a false American Dream, and one
that hides behind the mask of corruption, while promising justice.

James Elroy- LA Confidential, Arrow Edition, London, 1994

LA Confidential-film directed by Curtis Hanson.

34
3. Identity and Locus (Sophisticated bohemia and ‘respectability’,
fragility, inadaptability and insecurity): the book, Breakfast at
Tiffany’s, Truman Capote; the film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s directed
by Blake Edwards; the book, Sophie’s Choice, William Styron; the
film, Sophie’s Choice directed by Alan J. Pakula

I.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s Sophie’s Choice

(Truman Capote) (William Styron)
- a novel - a novella
- minimal prose style - ‘maximal’ realistic and
+ naturalistic prose style
- documentary style - very charismatic
- very charismatic character character
(Holly - a projection of (Sophie - a projection of
the author the narrator)
himself: Capote)
- a projection of the
narrator
The characters = the authors’ mirroring of the idea of:
- depression
- freedom
- instability

 Contemporary critics The issue of GENDER STUDIES

- Progressive social politics;

- Sensitive treatment of human sexuality

and identity;

- Subtle references to friendship: men -

women

35
 Love triangles:

Sophie Holly

Stingo Nathan Fred Men Doc Barnes

(the narrator)

 II. WOMAN = SOCIETY

Holly Sophie
- orphan - survivor of a Jewish
- easy woman extermination camp
- promiscuous life - beautiful woman
- curious, unique, - weak, insecure
charismatic woman - dependent of men
- wild spirit
- mysterious
- independent

- their flaws are exposed throughout the books

- they both hide something
- they both ‘use’ men
- they are magnetic personalities
- they are dynamic, voluptuous, impressive, charming

Holly & Sophie = Human Portraits of Postwar America

36
 2 concepts: respectability - bohemia - a need for stability
stability - freedom - a desire for freedom

III. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE NAMES

- Holly Golightly making a holiday out of life

(holly – green; holy - saint)

the idea of rebirth/’cyclic-ity’

she permanently constructs her

identity (she is an artifact)

- Tiffany’s stability
Tradition (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman
Capote, 1961: 39-41)

- The Christmas gifts the cage

St. Christopher: the saint of the travelers

IV. THE THEME OF LOVE

Breakfast at Tiffany’s Sophie’s Choice

Freedom - superficial Stability - passionate

- based on interest - addictive

Love - not balanced (past vs. present)

- mutual affection stronger than desire. (the narrator -
trustworthy)
- mutual friendship/companionship better than love
itself.

37
 V. NATURE VS. CULTURE (SOCIETY)

Freedom Stability - conventional, structural

(Holly) (Tiffany’s)
- the cat
- the horses
- ‘a wild thing’
(ability of ‘domesticating’ men
but not wanting to be tamed)

VI. ART AS A COMMODITY

- Holly itself is art Holly = a carving - an artifact (the

only Holly who revealed her true Identity; only art can reveal
true identity - (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote, 1961:
9-16, 94-100)
Fred begins to write, to construct a piece of art
Stingo wants to write a novel

The two novels as art construct themselves while revealing the

identity of a person.

- Holly - permanently finds/defines herself (she sells herself:

she is a commodity, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, directed by Blake
Edwards, 6:50- 8:50, 27:50-29:22, 51:10, 55:30)
- Sophie - unable to find herself/recover her identity after the
traumatic Auschwitz and her choice: Sophie’s Choice,
William Styron, 1979: 526-530

Both narrators want to sell their ‘commodities’ well

Art - as an expression of personal vs. social truth.

(The writer alters the truth about the characters.)

38
 ART has to sell well in a consumerist society, or else it ends
in obscurity (e.g. the denouement of the film, Breakfast at
Tiffany’s.)

VII.

OLD vs. NEW

The 50s as the New Age The new type of hero

of organized conformity

Fahrenheit 451 - society Clarisse, Montag

Dead Poets Society - school Mr. Keating
L.A. Confidential- society, police Bud, Jack, Dudley Smith
Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Tiffany’s Holly Golightly, the narrator
Sophie’s Choice - Auschwitz Nathan, Stingo
- the entire American society
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Mc Murphy
- the asylum and everybody (helps them rediscover their
connected to it (the orderly) human component/identity)

VIII. Ihab Hassan about Truman Capote’s style (“The Birth of the
Heroine” in The Critical Response to Truman Capote, edited by
Joseph J. Waldmeir and John C. Waldmeir, 1999: 109-114)

Nocturnal Style Daylight Style

(e.g. In Cold Blood - Capote) (Breakfast at Tiffany’s)

a dreamy imagery with a first person narrative

supernatural motives that (anecdotic or humorous)
‘sort of autistic’ characters about the business of social
experience. relations (love).

39
 One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Nocturnal Style - Chief Bromden’s point of view
- Daylight Style - the insane behavior of characters

IX. Holly Golightly - a traveler, traveling from place to place

- basically does the same thing
- no past or future (Seize the day!)

‘cyclic-ity’
(movement in circles)

the motive of initiation

her rebellion against stability in life

is the source of her vitality

Initiating into enjoying life despite the fact that what she does is
against our morality.
She is ‘the kid’ ‘phony’ She is wearing masks.
If she had been overwhelmed by her morality, she would have
become ‘a Sophie’
She keeps escaping hiding.

Art is said to be the perfect embodiment of the essence (her true

nature)

The African carving the essence of Holly

- she did reveal her true nature

- she did find a place of her own
(stopped playing tricks)

40
 “She finds that vitality in the world and herself and in the gift
of truth.”

Holly Golightly - “may be what we should all like to become if

we put away comfort and respectability in an insured bank account;
and her breezy excess of fancy as of intuition may be, again, just what
our stuffy age most requires.” (Ihab Hassan 1999: 109-114)

a conformist age the New rejecting the Old

- “there is something of the peculiar American quality: her quixotic

(utopian) ideas of hope, sincerity, truth”.

Holly Golightly as well as the U.S. is:

- a liberating spirit a spirit breaking free

- a scapegoat she is a new, free-willing hero,

who insists on the freedom to
experience and to denounce a
society that does not tolerate such
freedom

- need to experience freedom

vs.
- a society which does not tolerate freedom

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

A new hero(ine) that is both innocent and experienced; an outsider

and a fugitive from the dominant concerns of American life.

41
3.1. Essay 1

Alina Chiorean, Romanian-English

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
- comparison between the book and movie -

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is the 1961 Oscar-winning movie

starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. Based on Truman
Capote’s novella of the same title, the movie is the story of Holly
Golightly, a young woman always running away from herself.
Lacking a stable childhood, she marries at the age of fourteen, has the
marriage revoked, moves to Hollywood to start a film career, leaves
Hollywood for New York (where she earn money as a call girl and by
carrying coded messages for an imprisoned mafia boss), and plans to
leave New York for Brazil to marry one of the richest men in the
world.
The film is a romantic comedy involving mainly the
relationship between Holly and her neighbor, Paul Varjak. It includes
the famous closing sequence that shows Paul’s “lecture” to Holly and
Holly’s self-discovery of who she really is and who makes her truly
happy.
The movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s is far more than the novella
it was adopted from. Although the film closely follows much of the
original dialogue, I think the similitude is insignificant (for instance,
the fact that Holly has a cat, that she plays a guitar, the theft of two
masks from a store or the boxes from Holly’s apartment). The
numerous changes are important and they made the storyline
acceptable to a sophisticated audience.
Starting with the book, it is interesting to notice several things.
First of all, the novella is framed by a narrator who is introduces Holly
by talking about her with the owner of a bar (Joe Bell), many years
after the event of the story. So, the first difference to be noticed is the
fact that the novella has a framing device, but the movie, of course,
takes place within a frame and therefore does not need one.

42
 The major changes were consequences of the shift to a typical
Hollywood love story. To support this idea, I will quote the opinion of
the screenwriter George Axelrod about the adaptation process:
“Nothing really happened in the book… [what] we had to do was
device a story, get a central romantic relationship, and make the
hero a red-blooded heterosexual.” In the novella, the narrator is a
homosexual with an unrevealed name. At the party, when the narrator
is looking through Holly’s book collection, he realizes that she only
owns books about horses and baseball, and he has no interest in either
subject, Holly informs the narrator (whom she calls Fred, after her
brother’s name) that, if a man does not like either subject, than she is
in a trouble anyway, because he does not like girls. In the movie, this
character was transformed into “Paul Varjak”, a man who is in love
with Holly. We can observe that the movie preserves Capote’s
depiction of semi-prostitution, but shifts activity from Holly to the
male protagonist. How? By introducing the character “Fooley” as
Paul’s “benefactor” and by omitting the novella’s references to
Holly’s sexual promiscuity. Such changes were the result of mid-
century taboos surrounding sex: they also indicate how such taboos
were organized around gender. In the ‘50s and the ‘60s, male
promiscuity was accepted, while sexual women were condemned.
The discussions of lesbianism, homosexuality and gender that
made the novella so innovative were omitted from the screenplay.
Moreover, Capote’s novella included language that was toned down
for the film. The screenwriter wanted to create a conventional image
of the relationship between men and women, according to the gender
stereotypes of the early sixties.
Audrey Hepburn portrayed a desexualized Holly Golightly.
There are many examples to be mentioned in this case: in the book,
Holly invites only men at the party, whereas in the film women are
also present; the film skips the fact that Holly lives, for a while, in her
apartment with Meg Wildwood; in the book, Holly visits Sally
Tomato alone, while in the movie she comes to Sing Sing with Paul.
Holly’s boyish haircut signifies her rejection of the common feminine
ideal.
The events in the novella take place in the 1940s, whereas the
film is clearly contemporary (the cars, fashion, the phone in Holly’s
apartment, all make this clear).

43
 Another difference to be taken into consideration is the
following: in the book, Fred is already living in the apartment block,
when Holly arrives. So, we might say that the main character of the
novella is the narrator, who observes Holly arriving as a stranger. In
the film “Fred” arrives when Holly is already living there. I think this
difference emphasizes the characters’ positioning within the
narrative.
Concerning the music, in the book, Holly sings mournful
country-style songs; in the movie she sings “Moon River”. This song
was written especially for Audrey, and the film won an Oscar for best
song.
The famous kiss-in-the-rain ending differs from Capote’s
story, in which the unnamed narrator fails to capture Holly’s heart.
She leaves for Brazil, and with the exception of a few postcards, he
never hears from her again.
To conclude, we can notice that the film changed the novella’s
open ending to a more conventional ‘Hollywood’ happy ending. In
fact, the film in general is based on the classic formula of Hollywood
cinema.

3.2. Essay 2

Paula Fagaras, History-English

Social Conventions vs. ‘Stretching’ the Standards

Fads, fashion and film reflect specific attitudes about each

generation's interpretations of life. Breakfast at Tiffany's and Capote are
two exponential poles in defining the changes of mentalities that
occurred from the late 60s to the early 21 st century.
America in the late 50s was concerned with women
emancipation from domestic chains, a liberation that, paradoxically,
tied those women to the inability to support themselves. In search of
solutions some women, who because of their nature considered
independence a must, had, according to the public eye, conduct
anomalies. Such case is perfectly portrayed by Holly Golightly in
44
Breakfast at Tiffany's. The film is a juicy Hollywood classical
romance dealing the reality with long black satin gloves as it does blur
the boundaries between sexual promiscuity and peccadillo acts. Every
detail that derives from the standard social norms is hidden, as Holly is
not showed as a malicious frivolous women, in spite of the fact that
she admits that at the age of twenty she had more than eleven men.
Though, Breakfast at Tiffany's is sprinkled with modern depictions as
Truman Capote mirrors himself in Holly's attitude: love seen as a way
of imprisonment, she ignores what "the others" think about her life
style, open mindedness and free spirit.
‘Sophisticated bohemia’ drinking in martini glasses, smoking
marijuana on special occasions, taking money from wealthy business
men after a date - about as close to prostitution as the Hollywood film
conventions of the time would allow, breaking social normal patterns
represented an outburst for the 50s which mischaracterized Holly
Golightly, in a delicate manner, as a representative of moral
decadence. Nevertheless, if we had the same Holly with the same
attributes that she has in Breakfast at Tiffany's in a leading role in a
contemporaneous romantic comedy, she would drew the image of a
typically American girl who dreams to become rich by using the most
appropriate means - men. So the 21st century brings no novelty as in our
times of dead chivalry, promiscuous girls are fashionable, as Holly was
the type of woman that people desired to be around in the 60s, but with
one exception: she was not accepted by the community
Respectability was a matter that did not preoccupied Holly too
much, but her moral aspects are revealed in the most exhilarating way
when she refuses to be interrogated as a witness in Sally Tomatoes' trial
- she will never accept to stab a friend in the back.
On the other hand Capote treats midnight parties, elegant
cocktails, alcoholism, and deliberate abnormal sexual inclinations as
integrating parts of nowadays. Real facts are exposed in a transparent
manner, as the film is based on Truman Capote's non-fictional novel, In
Cold Blood, shocking the audiences by illustrating what are the effects
produced when two different worlds collide: the quiet conservative life
slaughtered by criminally violent hands.
In order to start a better life, Perry Smith and his partner are
forced by the circumstances to commit robbery followed by a morbid
massacre - a scene that is very familiar among the gangsters from

45
today's American ghettos. While Holly Golightly applies a milder
method: she chases an impossible dream of climbing the social ladder
through marriage to a rich Brazilian, whom she does not love, but who
can assure her financial freedom and a respectable social status. She
eventually steals two Halloween masks as she wants to divert Paul
Varjak and exercise her theft skills.
Truman Capote, in the film, stands for a cryptic character - he
is a special guy, he is short and effeminate, and yet everybody
surrounds him because he has something spectacular to say. Holly, in
spite of her unsubstantial education, is above the average intelligence, as
well as Perry Smith is, and performs a behavior evaluated by the 50s as
casual promiscuous.
Viewed from another angle, Holly Golightly may symbolize the
genesis of the flexible social perspectives, a transition phase between
Old and New, a bridge over a gap between generations, encaged by
community. Capote instead offers snapshots of a non exigent code of
moral guidance, which give yellow cards to special persons to develop
their conduct in a natural habitat.

3.3. Essay 3

Gyorgy Izabella, History-English

The Theme of Belonging

I decided to talk about Breakfast at Tiffany's from the

perspective of the theme of belonging, which appears all over the
story and stands out as a major symbol characterizing the main
character - Holly Golightly.
All her life presented in both the book and the film is a quest
for belonging, for finding a place she could call home. Having had an
unhappy childhood and adolescence, having been affected by a much
too early marriage, her personality becomes deeply affected and
finding a place where she can be at home becomes the most important
goal of her life.

46
 I found her mail box card very interesting:" Miss Holiday
Golightly, Traveler", as if her occupation was to travel all around the
places.
"I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might
as well be dead." She even calls herself a "traveler", which implies a
thirst for adventure, for new experiences which can eventually bring
her the much desired stability and sense of belonging.
There are several symbols in the story which help to define
this theme, among which the most relevant are Tiffany's, the bird cage
and the cat.
The major symbol - Tiffany's, which can be seen as a kind of
"home" for her, is a jewelry store that plays an important part in the
life of Holly Golightly:
"It calms me down right away, the quietness and proud look of
it, nothing bad could happen to you there, not with those kind of men
in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets.
If I could find a real place that made me feel like Tiffany's, them I'd
buy some furniture and give the cat a name."
It's the place that she really belongs to, where everything is
good, calm and feels safe.
She tries to belong to something or someone, although at the
same time, she tries not to. Though she has a brownstone apartment,
she seems not to have one. The sparse furnishings shows as she was
always on the way of moving. She says at one moment: "home is
where you feel at home. I'm still looking." In the novel, even at the
end, she is still searching for a place to belong to, while in the film she
seems to find her place beside Paul.
On the night when a man is bothering her at her apartment she
visits the narrator in his apartment and ends up sleeping beside him.
Another symbol is the bird cage, too expensive for the narrator.
Holly brings it to him as a present for Christmas but makes him
promise to "never put a living thing in it" which refers to the fact that
she is a free spirit.
The story with the cat is very significant; the cat is the symbol
of her search for some kind of belonging. This is the reason why she
refuses to name the cat, which is also a sign of denial of her own
personality and belonging. Only after losing the cat does she realize

47
that they belong to each other. "Oh Jesus God. We did belong to each
other. He was mine."
She is very scared at the end of the story not knowing whether
she will ever find her real home. “I’m very scared Buster. Yes, at last.
Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what's yours until
you've thrown it away."
On the other hand, in the film, the cat is the unifying symbol
which reconciles Holly's split and troubled consciousness. There is a
happy end in the film, as Holly is also reunited with Paul, whereas the
book has an open ending. It is the book that offers a more realistic
image of the main character.

48
4. Identity and Power (Behavioral defiance - alienation,
imprisonment, (in)sanity, escape): the book, One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey; the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest, directed by Milos Forman

• The New Type of a Hero The Mythical Hero

- both innocent and

experienced
- a fugitive from the dominant
concerns of American life
- revolts against the evolution
of the society to escape the
prototype of the individual who
gets to involution

Finding vitality and identity in rebellion (e.g. Holly

Golightly, Tyler Durden)

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Book + Film,

directed by Milos Forman, 00:00-21:22)

2. Authority vs. Individual

Text: The Combine Chief Bromden (One Flew over the

Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, Penguin Books, 26-31)
Film: The Hospital McMurphy (One Flew over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, directed by Milos Forman, 28:00-34:33)

Society: grouping unity

Nurse Ratched is the embodiment of the leader of the
society.
3. Democracy vs. Individual

Equal rights Principles of Democracy

Rights

49
 Illusion
Appearance

The character victim - of the democratic system

(e.g. Billy Bibbit)

- of his own rules
(One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, directed by Milos Forman, 39:00-
48:00)

4. Madness = Alienation (Barbara Tepa Lupack –

Introduction to “Inmates Running the Asylum” in
Insanity and Redemption in Contemporary American
Literature

• the protagonist is a modern man who is alienated in a

mechanized society that deemphasizes human values;

• in order to reemphasize human values, the characters

challenge the social order;

• the characters withdraw from society in order to find

some forgotten familial, cultural and social values and
social amelioration. This withdrawal can be: voluntary
or forced by certain circumstances;

• the Asylum / America = a temple of consciousness;

there the characters become conscious of their own
condition and they undertake a rebellion against the
unnatural and totalitarian order;

• the protagonists are either mad or seen as

mad; they are able to reveal the dangers of the
institution’s demand for social/political/cultural
conformity:
e.g. Sophie and Nathan - unable to live with the truth
- sign a mutual death pact

50
 McMurphy - fails in his attempt at changing
the system

• the protagonists are presented as

‘minorities’:
e.g. Chief Bromden
Sophie - A Polish Catholic concentration camp
survivor

• despite the idea that they are unsuccessful,

the characters still fight the system; despite the
impossible goal, protagonists look for the confirmation
of their own authority; they do offer some kind of hope
(New Age Messiahs)

Conclusion:

 Both novels (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and

Sophie’s Choice) speak about the controversial and
counter-cultural attitudes they seem to expose. It’s the
sophisticated and complex American establishment
which is:
- repressive
- impersonal
- dehumanizing
 Insanity seems to be the single sane alternative
available in this mad world.
The solution is offered by these inmates running the asylum.

51
4.1. Essay 1

Gabriela Demeter, Romanian-English

Differences and similarities between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Nest –the novel and the film.

While preserving many of the novel’s themes and motifs, the

filmed version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) –
considered one of the greatest American films of all time, a $4.4
million dollar effort directed by the Czech Milos Forman- differs in
several significant ways.
Kesey himself did not hide his dislike of the film, particularly
the casting of Nicholson as McMurphy and the fact that he felt the
screenplay and casting did not remain true to his original vision.
Probably the most important difference between the novel and
the filmed version is that the film replaces Chief Bromden as the
story’s narrator, abandons his background story and transforms him
into a secondary character. In the film, McMurphy is clearly the hero.
Moreover, Chief Bromden’s hallucinating episodes of witnessing the
inner workings of the Combine and its fog machines are eliminated in
the film.
While that Chief Bromden eventually becomes fully
communicative in the novel he only mutters one phrase—“Juicy
Fruit”—in the filmed version. Several key symbolic elements are also
missing from the film, such as McMurphy’s poker-hand tattoo
(depicting aces and eights, known as the dead-man’s hand) that
foreshadows his death.
In the film, McMurphy boasts that he was convicted for legal
rape against a teenaged girl who lied about her age while that in the
novel his initial imprisonment is not for statutory rape, it is for being
“a guy who fights too much and fu--s too much.”
Certain major scenes from the novel are eliminated in the
cinematic version, the most notable being Cheswick’s suicide. In the
novel, McMurphy manipulates Chief Bromden to lift the control panel
after McMurphy takes bets from the Acutes that it cannot be done.
The film replaces this moment with two different scenes: one in which
McMurphy unsuccessfully tries to lift a basin and the scene when

52
Chief Bromden lifts it, throws it through the window and manages to
escape from the mental hospital.
Another important difference stands in the fact that the fishing
episode in the novel is a planned event that Nurse Ratched repeatedly
attempts to sabotage while that in the filmed version, McMurphy
hijacks a waiting institutional bus and involves the patients into an act
of rebellion.
In the film, McMurphy’s character remains the same roguish
nonconformist up until his lobotomy. In the book, however, Chief
Bromden notices McMurphy’s growing sadness and sensing of his
own imminent doom.
The film also differs from the novel in its depiction of the
events leading to McMurphy’s introduction to electroshock therapy.
The novel carefully establishes a character not present in the film, Big
George, who has an obsession with cleanliness, and McMurphy
prevents him from being ill-treated by the black orderlies.
Perhaps the most telling difference between the film and the
novel is the ending. In the novel, after his escape, Chief Bromden
follows the same course as the dog he saw through the window one
night giving the readers a feeling of uncertainty as to whether the
Chief will succeed in the outside world or surrender to a worse fate.
The film’s conclusion, however, depicts Chief Bromden running from
the hospital towards what the viewer assumes to be his happiness and
freedom.

4.2. Essay 2

Gabriela Demeter, Romanian-English

The Hospital- Metaphor of the Oppressive Society.

Rebellion against Conformity

The setting of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is placed at

the end of the 1950s, when many of the nation's younger generation
began to defy the idea of conformity. Nurse Ratched embodied the
power and control displayed by large government and businesses. The
Beat Culture began at this time and continued with other
countercultures and finally led to the hippies of the 1960s who

53
dedicated themselves to peace, love and the search for the beauty of
life.
Through the major conflict of the book, between Nurse
Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the novel explores the
themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity.
McMurphy represents sexuality, freedom, and self-determination, all
qualities that come into conflict with the oppressed ward, which is
controlled by Nurse Ratched.
Nurse Ratched represents the dehumanization, the
mechanization of modern society, that is, in Bromden’s words, the
Combine. The narrator, Chief Bromden, sees modern society as a
gigantic, oppressive organization that he calls the Combine and the
hospital as a place meant to fix people who do not conform to the
imposed rules. Therefore, in his opinion, the hospital is a factory for
“fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and
in the churches.”
This image of an oppressive and all-knowing authority is not
new in English literature as George Orwell already used it in his novel
1984. The connection with this literary work is suggested by Nurse
Ratched’s nick-name, which is “Big Nurse”- a name which sounds
like Big Brother, the embodiment of an all-knowing authority.
Individuality and natural impulses are suppressed by a society
made of mechanisms and machines. The hospital, presented as a
metaphor for the oppressive society, is definitely unnatural: the
aides and Nurse Ratched are described as being made of diverse
machine parts. It is important to underline that in Chief Bromden’s
dream, when Blastic is killed blood is replaced by rust, revealing that
the hospital destroyed not only his life but his humanity as well.
Bromden’s bizarre dream about Old Blastic turns out to be
prophetic, showing that his distorted states of perception are
significant for the novel’s development rather than simply the
imaginations of a crazy person. Bromden perceives the hospital not as
a place promoting health but as a mechanized slaughterhouse where
not only humans, but also humanity, is murdered:

"The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for

fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the
schools and in the churches... When a completed product

54
 goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better
than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart;
something that came in all twisted and different is now a
functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit
and a marvel to behold." (Kesey, Ken. Zbor deasupra unui
cuib de cuci : 40 )

The machinelike modern society considers all those who do

not conform to its rules and conventions as imperfect products which
are labeled as mentally ill and are sent for treatment. Thus, the mental
institution becomes a metaphor for the oppression Kesey sees in
modern society, preceding the appearance of the 1960s counterculture:

“Our intention – he usually concludes – is to

make this meeting resemble as much as possible the free
and democratic communities from which you came here –
a small interior world which should replicate at a reduced
scale the huge outside world where one day you will
resume your position.” – personal translation- (Kesey,
Ken. Zbor deasupra unui cuib de cuci : 50 )

The novel reveals the terrible reality in which the hospital,

normally a place where the ill go to be cured, becomes a dangerous
place; Ellis, Ruckly, and Taber, for instance, are electroshocked until
they become docile or even vegetables. Unfortunately, the hospital is
not about healing anymore, but about dehumanizing and manipulating
the patients until they are weak and willing to conform to the imposed
rules.
Harding compares the patients to rabbits who cannot adjust to
their rabbithood and need a strong wolf like Nurse Ratched to teach
them their place. He explains that everyone in the ward is a rabbit in a
world ruled by wolves. They are in the hospital because they are
unable to accept their roles as rabbits. Nurse Ratched is one of the
wolves, and she is there to train them to accept their rabbit roles. She
can make a patient shrink with shame and fear while acting like a
concerned angel of mercy:

55
 “ – This world ... belongs to the strong ones, my
friend. (...) We must, once again, get used to this reality. It
is right. We must learn to accept it as a natural law.
Rabbits accept their role in this ritual and admit the fact
that the wolf is the powerful one. In its own defense, the
rabbit becomes cunning and coward and evasive, digging
itself dens where to hide if the wolf is close. And so it
survives. It admits its place. (...)
- Mr. McMurphy.... my friend.... I am not a
chicken. I am a rabbit. The doctor is also a rabbit.
Cheswick there is a rabbit too. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit.
Here, we all are rabbits of different kinds and ages,
hopping around in Walt Disney’s world. Oh, do not
misunderstand me, we didn’t come here because we are
rabbits – we would be rabbits anywhere – but because we
can’t adapt ourselves to our rabbithood. We need a
vigorous wolf like our nurse to teach us what is our
place.” –personal translation- (Kesey, Ken. Zbor deasupra
unui cuib de cuci : 64-65 )

When McMurphy urges Harding to escape from the hospital

he replies by saying that he is almost ready to leave on his own, with
all “the traditional red tape.” He says that the rest of them are “still
sick men in lots of ways. But at least there’s that: they are sick men
now. No more rabbits, Mack.” This is probably the most important
change that McMurphy has generated during his stay in the hospital.
Chief Bromden realizes that McMurphy’s power comes from
his ability to “be who he is,” to maintain his individuality within the
Combine’s institutions. With this new knowledge, Bromden and the
other patients slowly revive their suppressed individuality and break
free from the control of Nurse Ratched, “an angel of mercy”.

56
4.3. Essay 3

Molnar Stefan, History-English

McMurphy vs America

An American of Irish origins, thirty-eight years old, never

married, distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape
from a communist prison camp. Discharged from the Army for
insubordination, he leads a life with a series of arrests for
drunkenness, assault, battery, disturbing the peace, gambling and
statutory rape. Assigned to a prison work farm, he once again
manifests insubordination towards authorities and is sent to a mental
institution for diagnosis and possible treatment.
These are events and characteristics that reveal a man larger than
life with serious problems in dealing with authority and social rules.
He is representative for the hippie generation which tried to change
the way America functioned in the 60`s and 70`s.
As stated before Randall Patrick McMurphy is a larger than life
person, who assumes the role of changing the way the institution is
run by Nurse Ratched. A clear and simple comparison reveals that
McMurphy is to Nurse Ratched what the hippies were to America.
Upon entering the ward, the reader or viewer, easily observes that
McMurphy is not insane and does not belong there. He is outgoing,
funny, laughing out loud, something with which the institution was
not accustomed to, thus becoming a factor of chaos and change. He
finds his nemesis in the person of nurse Ratched and because the best
defense is offense, he begins an attack on her, much to the
entertainment of the patients who soon find him as their leader in
rebellion against Ratched.
As an example, McMurphy wants to see the World Series on TV.
The nurse in her role of conservative authority denies this demand.
McMurphy resorts to the use of a democratic tool, the vote. He soon
finds that democracy means something different from the superficial
form he was familiar to in society: the power of the many, of the
group, the power of manipulation and not of the individual, which he
ultimately was.

57
 This is also the first time that McMurphy finds himself
disempowered by the system, but soon finds a way to redeem himself.
After a little bit of manipulation towards the patients (his attempt to
lift the heavy control panel), he tries again to vote, but the stronger
individual, the representative of the state shows him that voting is
futile.
The state plays the game with the rules it created and therefore
cannot lose.
Desperately, he tries another technique, his non violent protest in
front of the blank TV set, instead of doing his work. One by one the
other patients join him. He did not achieve anything in changing the
program, but won a battle by undermining Ratched`s authority in
front of the patients, and proving that alternative ways function and
have better results in a normal state.
After these attempts and after he finds that Nurse Ratched has the
deciding role in his release, McMurphy becomes clearly skeptical
about fighting against the system.
But McMurphy becomes the quintessence of the patients, he is all
that they want, desire, or lack. He is constructed and acts just like the
representative of a group; he becomes an institution.
He tries to rehabilitate the patients with his ways. He organizes a
fishing trip in which all the patients learn that they are strong
individuals with real prospects of normal behavior in society, outside
the ward.
In trying to change things he uses his last technique: violence,
fighting . Trying to help George or Charlie, he gets in a fight and is
sent to the disturbed ward, where he is submitted to electroshocks.
The institution's repressive solution does not seem to work on such a
strong and obstinate individual.
But, the institution chooses for a final solution: lobotomy. With
this method individuals are deprived of their one thing that makes
them human, reason. The new individual becomes docile and ready
for society's use.
This was the way in which America in the 60s and 70s chose to
solve its problems, repressing individuals when they did not obey its
rules and guidelines .

58
4.4. ESSAY 4
Anca Crisan, Romanian-English

Since the story takes place in an asylum, insanity is presented

not only when it comes to patients but also regarding the staff of the
institution.
From the beginning we find out that the patients from this
institution are classified in Acutes (those who have the possibility for
rehabilitation and release but also have the possibility of becoming
worse because of their stay in the hospital) and the Chronics (they are
in the hospital for good). As Chief Broom says, the Chronics are in the
hospital so they do not walk in the streets, putting the society in a bad
light. They are separated into 3 groups: the Walkers (those who can
still walk if you feed them), the Monitorized and the Vegetables.
“The ward is a factory for the Combine. It’s for fixing up
mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the
churches...the one that entered here wrong-headed is now a functional
component…and a true miracle. Look how he slips through the
world, with a pre-fabricated smile upon his face, perfectly integrating
in who knows what new community” (personal translation- Ken
Kesey- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, p.40).
Starting with the beginning of the novel, we find out that the
narrator of the story, Chief Broom is a patient of the ward. He is a
Walker. He fears that something called the “Combine” controls the
world. In the army he learns about the electronics that he will later
schizophrenically hallucinate as part of the Combine. The Combine is
the invention of Chief’s paranoia. For him the Combine is the
machinery that fills the walls and floors of the hospital, constantly
spying on and controlling the men in the ward. He believes that those
who work in the asylum are full of cogs and gears are part of this
giant, controlling machine.
Like many of the novel’s “insane” characters, Chief’s
“insanity” was a result of a traumatic experience with a female figure
in his life. His mother forced his father to sell the tribe’s land, after
that turning to a life of alcoholism. He is the only one that has
hallucinations and thinks he is surrounded by fog.
Most of the patients are here because they suffer from a
mental disease. Like Chief Broom, Dale Harding is also dominated
59
by a female figure, his wife, who intimidates him with her sexuality.
He is identified as the “bull-goose loony”. Dale is motivated to remain
in the mental hospital voluntarily, and any confidence he may have in
his ability to face the world openly with his homosexuality is
eliminated. Harding proves to be a very sane person. His only problem
is maybe being too soft and weak. He allows Nurse Ratched to bring
up his problems with his wife during the group therapy and make fun
of him. He explains to McMurphy that this world belongs to the
strong ones and that we have to accept the reality. Harding compares
the patients to rabbits who cannot adjust to their rabbithood and need a
strong wolf like Nurse Ratched to teach them their place “…we are
not here because we are rabbits-we’d still be rabbits wherever we
were- it’s because we can’t accommodate to our rabbit condition. We
just need our nurse to teach us which is our place.”(personal
translation –Ken Kesey- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, p.64-65).
Harding is not there because he is insane, he is there because he is not
able to accept his condition, repressing his homosexual urges and
suffering the humiliation. He is “insane” thinking that by going to the
mental institution he can change who he is. But in the end he proves
his sanity by accepting himself as he his.
“Insanity” as represented by the fog is a comfort to the
patients. It allows them to recede from the difficulties of reality that
McMurphy wants them to face. They retreat themselves in “insanity”
being too afraid to face their problems. But once they learn dealing
with their problems, they became sane again.Billy Bibbit, although
being in his 30, is perhaps the most repressed member of the group.
He is a product of a domineering mother who controls his every
action. His weakness and incapability to stand up for what he wants is
proof of the scars on his wrists from an unsuccessful suicide attempt
made when his mother forced him to break off an engagement with a
woman she felt was socially beneath her son. This shows his mental
state. He ends up killing himself being too afraid of his mother finding
out about his improper behavior (sleeping with a prostitute).
While the other patients believe themselves to be weak and in
need of an authority to control them, but when in fact they are capable
of independent action, McMurphy is the exception to this. This
independence marks him as possibly sane and even Dr. Spivey
believes that McMurphy may be faking insanity to keep out of the

60
work farm. McMurphy himself admits “…I’m here because I wanted;
simply because this is a better place than the work-farm. As far as I
can tell. I’m not nuts or I don’t recall ever being” (personal
translation). In all his sanity, there is one moment of insanity that
strucks McMurphy- it is the moment when he brutally attacks nurse
Ratched, tearing off her clothes.
Insanity is also present when it comes to the institution’s staff.
When it comes to Nurse Ratched, her sanity raises sometimes signs of
question. Her attempt to suppress all human and all feminine
characteristics makes us wonder about her sanity. The schizophrenic
Chief Broom brings the reader’s attention to her denial “ A mistake
was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly
breasts on what otherwise would have been a perfect work, and you
can see how bitter she is about it.”(Ken Kesey- One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, p.11). She dreams of a world of efficiency and order.
In her desire to have total control she made her own “team” of three
black boys. They were chosen out of many others “candidates” by
measuring their hate. If they did not hate enough, they were not good.
One of the boys saw how his mother was rapped. This had a big
impact on his mental state. The most prominent characteristic of these
three boys is a complete hatred for all around them. They are sadistic.
They feel pleasure from the pain they inflict. They were taught by the
best teacher –Nurse Ratched. She had taught them her own technique:
to hide their hatred, to be calm and wait, wait for a little advantage, a
moment of weakness and then tighten the rope and do not let loose.
Not even a minute. This is how you get them where you want. She
loves making people suffer. To gain submission from the patients, she
uses domination and even electroshock therapy (EST). She uses Billy
Bibbit’s mother to instill a sense of shame and she drives him to
suicide. Her desire to have control pushes her to insanity. In order to
have control she is ready to use the red pills, electroshock therapy and
even lobotomy on those that do not accept her ideas, weather they
need it or not.
With “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” , Ken Kesey
created a work without precedent in American literature, a novel at
once comic and tragic that proves the nature of madness and sanity,
authority and vitality.

61
5. Identity and Otherness (Femininity and Masculinity -
individuality and togetherness): the book, The Hours, Michael
Cunningham; the film, The Hours directed by Stephen Daldry;
the book, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (optional); the book,
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk; the film, Fight Club, directed by
David Fincher

• What connects The Hours and Fight

Club?

THE HOURS FIGHT CLUB

1. stories of thought and memory

(rather than action)

stream of consciousness first person reliable narration

3rd person narration direct speech and indirect speech

indirect speech

2. both texts CENSORING

OF THE SELF

femininity masculinity

- in both texts characters express sexuality freely to

the public and to themselves

death freedom
failure life
unhappiness hope

62
 SANITY
(in)sane = “a measure of impersonation”
(Virginia Woolf)
=
normality uniformization

3) Sexual and Economic Repression

The social The individual

Depression
Death

4) The Hours
(Magazine article by Brooke Allen, New Criterion, vol. 17, June
1999)

- “a meditation on age and decay” sanity and insanity

the nature of creative act, the love of life, the long for death
- three separate stories provided by the sample of Virginia
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

5) Sane Truth Insane

Clarissa Vaughan Richard

Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf

as a dweller writing

Laura Brown Laura Brown

daily routine reading

(The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, 07:00-27:40)

The Book
=
The Reality
(The Hours, Michael Cunningham, 2003: 43-46)

63
 Exterior life is a shadow (The Hours, directed by
Stephen Daldry, 27:40-32:00)

Dislocation of the Real Self / Ideal Self

Inner Outer
(Tyler Durden) (The Narrator)

SPLIT SUBJECTIVITIES

6) Fight Club

The Real Self The Ideal Self

The FIGHT

Inner Outer
Id Ego
Mr. Hyde Dr. Jekyll

The Consumerist Society

“I” The Other

Being Nothingness
“You just had a near-life experience” The mass of consumers
Authenticity Inauthenticity/ mediocrity
Originality Uniformity
Individual Society

• Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, 2004: 189-194

64
• Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, 03:44-06:09, 18:27-
19:35, 23:40-31:00)

Conclusion:
• Heroes, Metanarratives and the Paradox of Masculinity in
Contemporary Western Culture, Journal article by Kevin
Alexander Boon; The Journal of Men’s Studies, Vol. 13, 2005

Why is he a mythical hero?

• <<The hero figure spans western literature, from Gilgamesh

to Tyler Durden (central character in Chuck Palahniuk's
[1996] Fight Club. It is the oldest and most prevalent of all
character types, dating from antiquity and remaining to this
day the dominant figure in contemporary American narrative.
[…]As Klapp (1954) notes, “Because the hero exceeds in a
striking way the standards required of ordinary group
members, as has been said, he is a supernormal deviant, his
courage, self-abnegation, devotion, and prowess, being
regarded as amazing and "beyond the call of duty." Because
of the requirement of transcending the mediocre, he must
prove himself by exceptional acts, and the most perfect
examples of heroes are to be found in legendary or mythical
personages who represent in a superhumanly exaggerated way
the things the group admires most. Because of their superior
qualities, heroes dominate the scene of human action,
symbolizing success, perfection and conquest of evil,
providing a model for identification by the group--one might
say its better self.” (p. 57)>> (Boon, Heroes, Metanarratives
and the Paradox of Masculinity in Contemporary Western
Culture, in The Journal of Men’s Studies, Vol. 13, 2005)

• Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, 2004: 89-94

• Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, 57:50-01:02:16

He= Tyler Durden:

65
- is more than an ordinary man in his trying to find a “father” for
the society; individuality and uniqueness.

The Postwar World= in NEED for a hero to provide meaning in a

meaningless world that keeps evolving and, paradoxically, such
evolution results in involution.

HERO(ES) BOOKS MEANING

“A MAN WAS BEHIND EACH ONE OF THE BOOKS”

(Fahrenheit 451)
“WORDS AND IDEAS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.” (Dead
Poets Society)

5.1. Essay 1

Mathe Ibolya, Romanian-English

Women as defined by their sexuality and relationships

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham’s

The Hours and the film directed by Stephen Daldry are all stories
about love, passion, loneliness and depression, about women and their
everyday existence shaped by males and the expectations that
annihilate their true identity. Depicting a single day may seem too
banal, ordinary but this day is symbolical for all their existence: "A
woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her
whole life."
The women of the novel The Hours have a common point
regarding their position in relationships, they are all dominated by
males. In spite of the fact that men try to make their women happy, the
reader may see them as the oppressive force. The film builds such

66
incredibly strong barricades, walls between men and women, that one
is almost tempted to see it as an unintentional feminist cinematic
manifesto.
Virginia Woolf has the controlling husband, Leonard who is
very harsh, critical, but in the meantime also loving, patient. She only
accepts staying in Richmond to satisfy her husband. When she is
trying to escape, at the train station she proves that she is a strong
woman: she desires to return to London, to life even if there is a
possibility of another nervous breakdown.
Laura Brown lives with the idea that everything she does has
to be perfect, even though her husband is a man without hopes. Her
struggle to make the birthday cake symbolizes that she cannot really
play the role of the perfect, loving mother and wife, she is not the
“angel” of the suburban life. Her only escape from this empty state is
reading, she is capable of going to a hotel just to have some hours of
her own, to “recollect” herself. She is the symbol of the pre-
postmodern female, with nowhere to turn for independence and locked
in a cell full of unattainable desires.
Being an editor, Clarissa Vaughan, the contemporary New
York woman has to create her own place in the business world
dominated by men. The biggest challenge is the love she has for
Richard, her former male friend, but yet she is seemingly happy in her
present, lesbian relationship with Sally.
Virginia Woolf’s character, Clarissa, chooses balance instead
of passion, Richard instead of Peter: “in a marriage a little license, a
little independence there must be between people living
together…”(Mrs. Dalloway, p.10) Marriage with Peter would have
been synonymous to her with surrender, suffocation, loss of herself.
The safety that is favored by her is not capable of destroying the spirit
which responded to Peter’s love. Marrying Richard was seen as a way
of protecting and preserving her soul, but to some extent it turned out
to be “the death” of it.
All major female characters of the books are kissed at a
certain point in time by other women, but except Clarissa Vaughan,
none of them is involved emotionally. Whether they have inclination
or not towards the same sex is not the main issue, what we have here
is some women not able to cope with reality. To some extent the
novels examine the freedom with which successive generations have

67
been able to express their sexuality freely, to the public, even to
themselves. Also the film is an attempt to raise the sympathy for a
redefinition of sexual norms.
In Virginia’s case there is her love for her sister, Vanessa
materialized in a kiss seen by Angelica, a kiss which seemed to be
“the most delicious and forbidden” among the pleasures. She has an
immense love for her husband and the letter she wrote to Leonard
before she killed herself highlights this: “I don't think two people
could have been happier than we have been.” (The Hours, p.11) Their
relationship is more based on friendship than on passion.
Laura Brown is very kind with Kitty, her neighbor, when she
comes to tell her about her surgery and she hugs and kisses her in
front of her son, Richie in the kitchen. Although it was not a real kiss
(according to the book), in the film it was the kinds of kiss women
were not supposed to give each other in 1951.
For the modern day Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Vaughan, sexual
relationship with a woman is not only a dream, but also a reality. Her
relation with Sally is a stable one, yet it lacks the real heat, maybe this
is why the memory of Richard haunts her. Even though she accepts
her status as a lesbian, she cherishes some deep feelings for Richard.
Despite the fact that she left him a long time ago, she is still bearing in
mind a kiss Richard gave her. That walk near the pond, that kiss
meant happiness, it was a singular moment in her life. She expected
more of Richard, but she could not get it because he was not quite sure
of his sexual orientation, whether he wanted Clarissa or Louis or both
of them.
Virginia Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway thinks that the moment
Sally offered her a flower and kissed her was the most exquisite
moment of her whole life. That kiss was a “diamond”, a treasure for
her. How strange that the most intense sexual moment is considered a
“religious feeling”! It was a love society would never have accepted
because of the conservatism on sexual relations and because in
Clarissa’s time women of her class were expected to marry and
become perfect society wives, perfect hostesses, party-giving
machines.
Clarissa Dalloway and Clarissa Vaughan both reflect on their
histories and past loves in relation to their present lives, which they

68
both perceive as insignificant. They consider themselves wives,
perfect hostesses giving parties “to cover the silence.”
None of the female characters is quite happy in their present
relationships, they all look back in time, cherish something that was
inexperienced since then, but they remain quite passive. Women try to
ignore the call of their heart, but by doing this they deprive themselves
of real emotions, passions, deprive themselves of life and condemn
themselves to loneliness. Only Laura has the courage to act by taking
life in her hands, leaving her family and finding a meaning to her
existence as a librarian.

5.2. Essay 2

Luminita Merdar, Romanian-English

DECISIONS IN WOMEN’S LIFE

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was born on January 25th 1882 in

London. She was a British novelist, a feminist essayist and critic. With
“To the Lighthouse” and “The Hours”, Woolf established herself as
one of the leading writers of modernism.
Virginia Woolf is the writer of “Mrs Dalloway” that is formed
of giant thoughts, acts of people during the course of a single day.
Michael Cunningham wrote the novel “The Hours” that had a
thrilling success.
“The Hours” (the initial title of “Mrs Dalloway”) follows three
women through one day in their lives. We are revealed the inner self
of these three women acting in three different periods of the XX
century. The novel deals with major themes such as: feminism,
choices, madness, homosexuality. The novel is essentially about
women, from different periods, of different age.
Decisions: Appearance Vs. Essence
“The Hours” retells a day in the life of three women from three
different periods, whose destinies are ruled by “Mrs Dalloway”, ‘the
novel, but in fact this is a book about everything (Meryl Streep).

69
 We are shown women that apparently lead perfect lives and
all of them come to a moment in their lives when they stumble upon
the superficiality of their days and have to face their disturbed inner
selves.
The fate of the three characters cross because Laura is reading
exactly the book Virginia wrote, while Clarrisa Vaughan appears to be
a kind of living breathing Clarissa Dalloway.
Clarissa Vaughan is a publisher from the ‘90s that tries to
have a common life, despite being a lesbian and having a rebellious
girl. She is helping her friend Richard (dying of AIDS) and nurses
him. Richard is not looking forward to the party Clarissa is organizing
for him nearly as much as Clarissa is. Clarissa refuses her struggle for
happiness just as Clarissa Dalloway. Although she loved Peter Walsh,
she turned down the marriage proposal. By this decision her entire life
changed, she lives for two people, for her friend Sally and for Richard.
In the life of these three main characters there is a huge
discrepancy between the real life they expose and their inner life,
which is not confessed. It is about what is revealed and what is
hidden.
Clarissa →relation with Sally →Decision: takes care of
Richard <= denies her true love →has a daughter
In appearance she is a woman that knows how to cure
people’s pain, but she is a weak character, trying to get over her inner
self. Clarissa still wonders what her life might have been if they had
tried to stay together.
Virginia Woolf seen in her house in Richmond, England, in
1923, writing her novel “Mrs Dalloway”. She has a precarious
physical state and she tries to complete her work. She tries to escape
her realistic life and plunges body and soul into her work. She tries not
to lose her inspiration. She is always disturbed by other events. The
lack of communication is actual here and everything is less important,
but the book.
Virginia has a husband, Leonard → sacrifices for the novel →
Decision → kills herself
Apparently she was a character suffering of mental illness,
trying to give life to her characters, but she herself chooses death.
Clarissa Dalloway appears to be a carrying woman, loved by
her husband (like Virginia Woolf), has a daughter and always has

70
flashbacks. We are shown the beauty and profundity of every-day and
a person’s whole life can be examined through the prism of one single
day. In Clarissa’s life the past is so important that it shadows the
present.
Clarissa Dalloway → has a husband and a daughter →
Decision → not to marry Peter Walsh → mystery, how her life would
have looked like (”If I had married him this gaiety would have been
mine all day”).
In appearance she is a loving and happy woman, but in
essence, through her decision, she is anxious to know her life without
Richard.
Laura Brown is a housewife of Los Angeles suburbs of the
50’s. She had a typical American family. Because of her unhappiness
(influenced by Mrs Dalloway) she had to make the choice, rather to
kill herself (she thought of suicide) or to “destroy” her family. She has
to create an inner self of her own. She did not belong to where she
was. Apparently she was a happy woman till the moment she felt that
it was not what she had hoped for.
Laura → has a husband and two children → Decision → kills
her family (”it was death and I chose life”)
Laura’s decision to abandon her family changed her life,
because she did not feel that she belonged there, although she
sacrificed her family for that.
In each of these women’s lives, decision had a huge impact on
their life. One choice could have destroyed or accomplished their
lives. A decision is not difficult to make, but what comes after is hard
to obey, because there’s no turning back.
The hours of one day reflect the years of one’s entire life.
“We live our lives, do whatever we do and then we sleep. A
few take pills; more die by accident and most of us are slowly
devoured by some disease or if we are very fortunate by the time
itself” (The Hours, 1999, Fourth Estate papers edition, 121).
Each of these women had made their decision, but always
looked back and wondered about having made the right choice.

71
5.3. Essay 3

Ovidiu Craciun, History-English

A CENTURY OF HOURS: “THE HOURS” BY MICHAEL

CUNNINGHAM

This novel and movie speaks about the story of three women,
each one living in three different periods. One of these women is
Virginia Woolf herself, the author of Mrs. Dalloway. The entire story
describes one day in these women’s life. The author chose to describe
a single day in these women’s life, because he considered that day
significant and life changing for them. The author describes one day in
Virginia Woolf’s life from 1923, when Virginia had retreated in the
small town of Richmond to spend her days writing in peace and quiet.
The second woman is Laura Brown, and the author describes her
preparations, with the help of her little boy Richie, for her husband’s
birthday party in 1951. The third woman is Clarissa MacVaughn, she
lives sometime in the ’90s, she is a fifty two year old woman, from
New York City, who is giving a party that day for her friend Richard,
who has AIDS and has won a poet’s prize.
I think the author chose to present these three women in
parallel to better emphasize the changes that can occur in a woman’s
life and also to show the differences in their way of living – between
Old (Virginia Woolf) and New (Clarissa MacVaughn). But one of the
most important things is that all these three women have one thing in
common: they seek their happiness. They were not satisfied with their
lives, so they try to find happiness in the things that define their lives
(writing, in the case of Virginia; her family in Laura’s case and
Richard in Clarissa’s case). Their drama comes out of the fact that
they cannot accept what they already have; they want more than just
an ordinary life. They fail in making the right choices at the right time
and that leads them to suicidal thoughts, in the case of Virginia and
Laura. Richard (Laura’s son) and Virginia will eventually commit
suicide and that reflects their lack of courage in facing life. Virginia
keeps asking about why people die, and Richard asks about why
people have to live if their happiness lasts only one moment and might
not come back again. They seem to find the answer in death itself,

72
choosing to take away their lives, hoping that through death they will
reach happiness. The hours represent something almost unbearable for
Richard as well as for Virginia. The passing of time through hours,
days, months, years and centuries is the same for everyone, no matter
what century you live in. But for Richard and Virginia, even though
they live in different periods on time, an hour seems like a century of
waiting for that moment of happiness. By describing one day from
their lives, the author tries to draw a parallel between Old and New,
by showing the differences, as well as the similarities of the two. The
emotional background and also the continuous search for happiness
constitutes the common grounds for Old and New. The author
describes how women see happiness, through their perspective, but at
the same time he describes some aspects of their femininity. Virginia
was not strong enough to go on with her life, even though she had a
good husband and apparently no good reason to commit suicide. But
she was always absent whenever her husband would try to talk to her;
she lived in her own world, a world filled with imaginary characters
that resembled her own thoughts and feelings.
In my opinion, Virginia creates a vicious circle around her
obsession with death. Laura and her son Richard, will face the
consequences of growing too, attached to „Mrs. Dalloway”. On the
one hand there is Laura who is trapped in Virginia’s story, but
eventually she manages to abandon the idea of suicide because of the
love she has for her family and the love her family has for her. She
realizes something is missing in her life. She manages to view her
family as an outsider. She detaches herself from the role as a
housewife and a mother, and starts viewing her life more critically.
That day, when Laura tried to kill herself, will later have a negative
impact on Richard. This would explain why she left her family forever
soon after that day. On the other hand, there is Richard who faces the
consequences of her mother’s unstable emotions which drive her away
from him and his father. Richard’s drama of being abandoned by his
mother will turn him into something that he really does not want to, he
becomes gay and at the same time he falls in love with Clarissa. As a
consequence of being gay, he gets infected with AIDS, which will
eventually lead him to suicide, because he thinks of the hours that he
would have to spend with his friends at the party. The hours become
unbearable for him especially at the thought that he has to face his

73
friends like that. He calls Clarissa „Mrs. Dalloway” because she fits
the profile of that character: she is kind, natural and has the strength of
character, that her mother lacked. She is the only one who made him
happy. Clarissa realizes that she cannot be happy unless Richard is
happy. They love each other even though their sexual partners are
different and they live their own lives separately. Clarissa comes to
the realization that life must be taken as it comes and that individual
hours can provide moments of joy and profound pleasure. In
Virginia’s good-bye letter to her husband, before committing suicide,
she expresses her gratitude for his kindness and for the hours and
years he has spent next to her, taking care of her and preventing her
from killing herself. Virginia triggers „a century of hours” by writing
Mrs. Dalloway which will affect Laura, Richard and Clarissa, but it is
also „a century of hours” because of the time that passed since
Virginia wrote Mrs. Dalloway and the effects it has on Laura’s family
life and on Richard’s personal life.

5.4. Essay 4

Alin Halatiu, Romanian-English

Contents:
What is Fight Club?
Masculinity
Individuality and Togetherness: In Tyler We Trust!
Important Quotations
Bibliography

What is Fight Club?

First of all Fight Club is a Saturday night “activity” started by
the narrator of the novel and Tyler Durden [his alter-ego]. But it can
also be defined as an ever-growing activity (*1), it is a way to escape
the real world (*2), it is something better than everything else, even
better than group therapy.
Fight Club is something that makes you bigger and stronger
and it can’t be compared to anything else. (*3) Fight Club is a way of
reaching Enlightenment. (*4) The members of Fight Club are not who

74
they are in the real world, and after attending it everything else would
have a different value. (*5)
Fight Club is Tyler’s gift to the world, it is a refuge for men
and it could be “the next Church.”

Masculinity
The members of Fight Club are “the middle children of
history”, men raised and influenced by television, dreaming to become
millionaires and rock stars (*6), they are space monkeys, part of an
experiment (*7), men possessed by their own belongings (*8), they
are a generation raised by women. (*9)
These men are part of a generation that has a great war of
spirit, living a revolution against culture and the great spiritual
depression. (*10)
Their masculinity is affected by the modern society they live
in, they are slaves to the system, they are manipulated, turned into
robots.
These men, destined to failure, all change their life when
discovering Fight Club. In fact they are the strongest and smartest
man, they are the man who deserve to rule the World. (*11)
By creating Fight Club, Tyler Durden completed the circle of
manhood. He brought the man back to its origins; he transformed the
space monkey into a warrior. He revealed their masculinity by
engaging them into fights.
The modern man of today lost his instincts and his power.
Project Mayhem was a continuation of Fight Club. It was
something destined for the strong men. To enter Project Mayhem one
should pass a test in order to prove he deserves it, that he is strong
enough to be part of it. (*12)
Once a man is accepted as part of Project Mayhem he lives
like in a training camp (the rented house), and he becomes stronger
and more disciplined. He lives just like in an army. (*13)

Individuality and Togetherness: In Tyler We Trust!

Tyler Durden is the one who “men look up to him and expect
him to change their world” (chapter 20). He is seen like a God (*14),
but he follows his beliefs, which represents teachings for the others
and considers himself “trash and shit”. (*15)

75
 He acts like a prophet when he asks to have the rules typed,
printed, and given to the “space monkeys”, just like Moses gave the
10 Commandments to the people.
Both Fight Club and Project Mayhem have well-defined rules
that are strictly respected by his disciples. (*16&17) The most
interesting rule is by far the fifth rule about Project Mayhem. It says
that you always have to trust Tyler.
His teachings are outrageous in comparison with the Church’s
and they lead to destruction as part of evolution. Tyler states that self-
destruction is the answer (*18), that disaster is part of our evolution,
that only through destroying yourself you can discover the great
power of your spirit and only when you clear all your possessions
from your path you will be free. (*19), and also that freedom can be
obtained by losing all hope. (*20)
Tyler Durden sustains that God hates men and He will only
notice them if they do something bad, or He won’t notice them at all,
and that punishment will represent salvation. (*21)
He proposes salvation through Project Mayhem, an exclusivist
project and/or belief and its goal is to teach each man in the project
that he had the power to control history (*22) as well as “the complete
and right away destruction of civilization”.

Bibliography:
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk (pdf edition)

Important Quotations in Chuck Palahniuk’s

“Fight Club”

1 ⇒ “And this is how Tyler was free to start a fight club every night
of the week. After this there were seven fight clubs, and after that
there were fifteen fight clubs, and after that, there were twenty-three
fight clubs, and Tyler wanted more.”
[Chapter 12]
2 ⇒ “Who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world.
Who I am in fight club is not someone my boss knows.” [Chapter 5]
3⇒ “You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club.”
[Chapter 5]

76
4⇒ “Me, with my punched-out eyes and dried blood in big black
crusty stains on my pants, I'm saying HELLO to everybody at work.
HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is
NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be
ENLIGHTENED. Like me.” [Chapter 6]
5⇒ “After you've been to fight club, watching football on television is
watching pornography when you could be having great sex.” [Chapter
5]
6⇒ “We are the middle children of history, raised by television to
believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock
stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact.” [Chapter 16]
7⇒ “[…] the feeling you get is that you're one of those space
monkeys. You do the little job you're trained to do.” [Chapter 1]
8⇒ “The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with
pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture
catalogue […] the things you used to own, now they own you.”
[Chapter 4]
9⇒ “What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by
women.” [Chapter 5]
10⇒ “We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great
depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a
great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives.
We have a spiritual depression.” [Chapter 16]
11⇒ “I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived
[…] and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables.” [Chapter 16]
12⇒ “Get rid of him” Tyler tells me. “He's too young”
I ask how young is too young?
“It doesn't matter” Tyler says. “If the applicant is young, we tell him
he's too young. If he's fat, he's too fat. If he's old, he's too old.
Thin, he's too thin. White, he's too white. Black, he's too black”
This is how Buddhist temples have tested applicants going back for
bahzillion years, Tyler says.” [Chapter 14]
13⇒ “I hug the walls, being a mouse trapped in this clockwork of
silent men with the energy of trained monkeys, cooking and working
and sleeping in teams. Pull a lever. Push a button. A team of space
monkeys cooks meals all day, and all day, teams of space monkeys are
eating out of the plastic bowls they brought with them.”

77
[Chapter 14]
14⇒ “Tonight, I go to the Armory Bar and the crowds part zipper
style when I walk in. To everybody there, I am Tyler Durden the
Great and Powerful. God and father.” [Chapter 24]
15⇒”I am trash,” Tyler said. “I am trash and shit and crazy to you and
this whole fucking world.” [Chapter 12]
16⇒ “The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
That's the third rule in fight club, when someone says stop, or goes
limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over.
Only two guys to a fight. One fight at a time. They fight without shirts
or shoes. The fights go on as long as they have to. Those are the other
rules of fight club.”
[Chapter 5]
17 ⇒ “You don't ask questions is the first rule in Project Mayhem.
The second rule of Project Mayhem is you don't ask questions.
The third rule in Project Mayhem is no excuses.
The fourth rule is no lies.
The fifth rule about Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler.”
[Chapter 13]
18⇒ “Maybe self-destruction is the answer.” [Chapter 5]
19⇒ “Disaster is a natural part of my evolution,” Tyler whispered,
“toward tragedy and dissolution.”
“I'm breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions,”
Tyler whispered, “because only through destroying myself can I
discover the greater power of my spirit.”
"The liberator who destroys my property," Tyler said, "is fighting to
save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path
will set me free." [Chapter 11]
20⇒ “This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.” [Chapter 2]
21⇒ "What you have to consider," he says, "is the possibility that
God doesn't like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst
thing that can happen."
How Tyler saw it was that getting God's attention for being bad was
better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God's hate better
than His indifference.

78
If you could be either God's worst enemy or nothing, which would
you choose?
We are God's middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no
special place in history and no special attention.
Unless we get God's attention, we have no hope of damnation or
Redemption.
Which is worse, hell or nothing?
Only if we're caught and punished can we be saved.
"Burn the Louvre," the mechanic says, "and wipe your ass with the
Mona Lira. This way at least, God would know our names."
The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly. The farther you run, the more
God wants you back.” [Chapter 15]
22⇒ “When Tyler invented Project Mayhem, Tyler said the goal of
Project Mayhem had nothing to do with other people. Tyler didn't care
if other people got hurt or not. The goal was to teach each man in the
project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can
take control of the world.” [Chapter 11]

5.5. Essay 5

Codruta Rusu, History-English

POSTMODERN ALIENATION IN ‘ FIGHT CLUB ‘

“ Installed in our minds and attempting

To hold us back
We’ve got to take it back
Holes in our spirits causin’ tears and fears
One-sided stories for years and years and years
I’m inferior? Who’s inferior?
Yeah, we need to check the interior!
Of the system that cares about only one culture
And that is why
We gotta take the power back “
( Rage against the Machine-Take the power back)

79
 “You’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re
not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell
yourself. You’re not your name. You’re not your problems. You’re
not your age. You are not your hopes.” 1- and I couldn’t but wonder:
“Then, what are you?”.
And all the answers lie in the metaphor written by Palahniuk
and directed by David Fincher.
In a society driven by capitalism, consumerism and the
constant need for money, the individual is bound to disappear slowly,
like a rusty little old screw in a great machinery. The narrator himself
is such an individual, his material possessions turned out owning him
and his job urged him into a hollow routine. The lack of essence in
life, the endless routine and a whole generation of sick materialists
push the narrator to an extreme alienation from reality and a severe
schizophrenia.
The first sign of alienation is insomnia itself. The disease
makes the narrator see the world in a different shade, as “a copy of a
copy of a copy”, nothing looks original or vivid, and the lack of
aliveness in his existence leads him to seek death as a soothing
solution to his useless life. Thus, he joins several support groups, to
observe death in her reign, only to make his life worth more. He
claims that if “people thought you were dying, they gave you their full
attention”.
When Marla Singer threatens his position in the therapy
groups he finds a new escape door from the reality: schizophrenia. It
is the moment in which Tyler Durden appears, with his destructive
ideas as the perfect solution to his despair and lack of a true place in
society. Tyler is not afraid to be honest and politically incorrect, to
reject consumerism and capitalist values and to lead a journey of self-
enlightenment through terrorism and violence. 2
The moment in which Tyler appears marks the beginning of
the end. Self destruction is the answer to all the narrator’s problems
and he takes a way of losing all his material possessions, his identity,
unfulfilled dreams and fears in order to achieve something greater.
Fighting and Fight Club makes the narrator and Tyler Durden

1
Palahniuk,C,Fight Club, Polirom,2004,p.178-179
2
www.chuckpalahniuk.net

80
powerful gods, they have control not only over themselves but over
the thousands of alienated men who come to fight and feel free again.
I think that alienation is the very essence of “Fight Club”.
Consumerism and routine forces the individual to an ill isolation, thus
he is forced either to spiritually die, or to fight back in any ways
known. And fighting, together with organized terrorism is the way the
narrator chose to oppose his society.
Even the fact that the narrator has no name is very suggestive.
He chose not to give his scared and frustrated self a name, but in
exchange, there we have Tyler Durden, the powerful warrior alter-ego.
The relationship he has with Marla is marked by alienation, too. They
both are products of the same society and love is merely a brute sexual
act. However, the two characters have different types of alienation.
The narrator chose violence and extreme measures, whereas Marla is a
tired parasite, very self-conscious about her uselessness. She is more
self-destructive as she realizes her status; she is not even trying to
pretend or to fit in the society like the narrator did. The supreme
alienation and self-destruction is reached when Marla states that she
would like to have Tyler’s abortion. 3
The alienation and the break between the narrator’s two
worlds reaches the climax when Project Mayhem is purchased. The
final revenge on the contemporary American society is total
destruction of civilization and the return to primitive ways, when
everything was clear and instinctual and only the strong survived. At
this point, it is not the narrator’s alienation anymore, but a whole
generation’s; as Tyler Durden says : "We are the middle children of
history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be
millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're
just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us." 4
The first step towards a better life was made and towards the
end of the book, the narrator feels more peaceful, the chains of
materialism have been broken and the path to the new life is clear. 5 He
begins to experience new emotions and he tries to escape from the

3
C,Palahniuk,Fight Club,Polirom,2004.
4
Idem.
5
www.chuckpalahniuk.net

81
frustration and its results, mainly known as his alter-ego, Tyler
Durden.
“Fight Club” is not about brute violence, but about reactions
and fair, gladiatorial fights. It is about frustrations, alienation, routine
and their scary results, about men in search of self and of long lost
manhood, about a cold society which tends to crash the individual and
last but not least about all of us who felt low and useless for once in a
lifetime.

Bibliography :

1. Palahniuk,Chuck, Fight Club, Editura Polirom,

2004,Bucuresti
2. www.ruthlessrevirws.com
3. www.chuckpalahniuk.net
4. www.generationterrorists.com/quotes
5. www.imdb.com

5.6. Essay 6

Adrian Sorlea, History-English

Rejection of “Consumer” Society portrayed in “Fight Club”

Old VS New

The return to the archetypal MAN

“When the fight begins within

himself, a man's worth something.”
- Robert Browning, 1855 -

“I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and

possessions, Tyler whispered, because only through destroying myself
can I discover the greater power of my spirit.” 6

6
Palahniuk, Chuck, “Fight Club”, Chapter 11

82
 This is the solution which the narrator of the book gives for
the people that feel alienated in this artificial world. “Self-
improvement is masturbation” then maybe the answer is self
destruction. The Narrator goes against the modern society, blaming it
for turning men and women into “space monkey”, simple robots that
are asked to do a task without asking questions (“You push a button,
pull a lever, and then you die”). Everything is empty and hollow, your
life especially. According to the narrator, we are all slaves of
materialism, and this is the greatest tragedy of our lives, that “the
things that we own, end up owning us”. The solution offered is
destruction both of self and civilization as we know it. The only way
to escape this rigid world of “consumerism” is to destroy that which is
old, so people can begin anew. Tyler’s view on how the world should
renew is almost religious, his theory resembles the crucifixion and
resurrection of Christ. The most amazing thing about “Fight Club” is
how quickly Tyler’s theories were adopted by the other men;
conclusion: that they weren’t only the products of a deranged mind,
the feelings of alienation and loneliness were experienced by most of
the people. This is why Fight Club was created, to offer a place of
refuge for the working class men to release some of the steam that
gets built inside them, the modern world offering little distractions of
this sort, the fights they saw on TV are artificial like all those adds of
products, which make people buy stuff they do not need. Fight Club is
a place where a man can release all the frustrations of his daily life,
when he fights, he is a God and he has godlike powers, but they all
fade when Fight Club ends, because “Fight Club exists only between
the hours when Fight Club starts and when Fight Club ends”. The first
two rules of Fight Club are that you do not talk about Fight Club.
Why? Because it is exclusive, and receives only members that are
willing to hit bottom. Self-destruction is the path to freedom. Women
are not allowed in Fight Club because of their more gentle side, and
they do not need a fight to release themselves from frustration they
can find other ways. And also, women have a natural sense of
materialism, a lot more developed than men do, and that is because
they are more sensitive than men to beauty and art. Man nowadays is
frustrated because he has lost his place in the family as a provider, the
one who brings food on the table. The men in Fight Club participate in
Project Mayhem, which Tyler said it was “the complete and right

83
away destruction of civilization”, because they want out of this world
where they have lost their role, they want to recreate the ancient world
in which they felt content, and most importantly, alive.
One of the major themes of Fight Club is Man’s quest for his
Manhood. The real manhood is never in the present context, it is
always transposed into the patriarchic past. “Tyler said the goal of
Project Mayhem had nothing to do with other people. Tyler didn’t
care if other people got hurt or not. The goal was to teach each man in
the project that had the power to control history. We, each of us, can
take control of the world.”
The quest for oneself, the quest for identity, the quest for a
reason to live. Each man part of Project Mayhem is anonymous, he is
the “all dancing, all singing crap of the world”, they lose their
“contemporary” names only to be resurrected under a different name
in the new world that they will create.
But what gives us the assurance that once Tyler creates his
new ancient world, he would not get corrupted like many of the
modern day politicians, and became a dictator, an enslaver and not a
liberator? “We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great
depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a
great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives.
We have a spiritual depression.”
Materialism and self-improvement has driven man out of the
cave and into a condo fifteen stories high, he no longer has to fear the
bear coming to surprise him in his cave, he changed the single leather
coat which kept him warm during winter, with suits, tuxedos, shirts,
panties, C.K. and Gucci branded, but creating all this stuff he does not
need (Tyler says), he has lost two things : his freedom because he
became a slave of his own creations, and his most important feature,
his manhood.
Throughout the centuries man tried to replace his constant
thirst for blood with wars made against himself, and gladiator fights,
until all those faded and he ended up at the end of the 20-th century a
disappearing shadow of what he used to be. To become again what he
has once been he has to “blast the world free of history” and recreate
the prehistoric, unpolluted world. But is that really the answer?
Can humanity slip back to where it started and not evolve? I
think not. At least not through Project Mayhem. Einstein said at the

84
end of WWII that he does not know with what kind of weapons
WWIII will be fought but WWIV will be fought with sticks and
stones. Only a nuclear disaster can put MAN back into the cave.
Bibliography
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
Fight Club, movie, director, 1999

85
6. Bibliography

Primary sources:
• The book, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• The film, Fahrenheit 451 directed by François Truffaut
• The film, DEAD POETS SOCIETY
• The book, L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy
• The film, L.A. Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson
• The book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote
• The film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s directed by Blake
Edwards
• The book, Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
• The film, Sophie’s Choice directed by Alan J. Pakula
• The book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken
Kesey
• The film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, directed by Milos
Forman
• The book, The Hours, Michael Cunningham
• The film, The Hours directed by Stephen Daldry
• The book, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (optional)
• The book, Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
• The film, Fight Club, directed by David Fincher
Secondary Sources:
“Petru Maior” University Library:
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Anthology of Literatures in English, The 20th Century Literatures in
English, vol. 3, La Spiga languages, 2003
• Belton, John, American Cinema. American Culture, New York:
McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1994
• Bigsby, Cristopher (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern
American Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
• Bradbury, Malcolm, Modernism: 1890-1930, London: Penguin
Books, 1991
• Breidlid, Anders et al. (eds.), American Culture: An Anthology, New
York: Routledge, 2008
• Brodey, Kenneth, A Concise History of the United States: from the
Beginnings to the Present Day, Milan: La Spiga Languages, 2007
• Brodey, Kenneth, History of the United States, Milan: La Spiga
Languages, 1993

86
 • Cartmell, Deborah (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Literature
on Screen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007
• Cooke, Alistair, Alistair Cooke's America, New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1977
• Fineberg, Jonathan, Art since 1940 - Strategies of Being, Laurence
King Publishing: London, 2000
• Jason, Kathrine and Holly Posner, Exploration in American Culture:
Readings for Critical Thinking, Writing, and Discussion, Boston:
Heinle and Heinle, 1994
• Marcus, Laura and Peter Nicholls (eds.), The Cambridge History of
Twentieth-Century English literature, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2004
• Prosser, Jay (ed.), American Fiction of the 1990s: Reflections of
History and Culture, New York: Routledge, 2008
• Winthrop, Jordan D. and Miriam Greenblatt, John S. Bowes, The
Americans: A History, Evanston: McDougal, Littell&Co, 1991
• Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society 1780-1950, Penguin
Books, Harmondsworth: Chatto and Windus, 1962
Other Libraries:
• Agger, B, Cultural Studies as Critical Theory, London: Falmer, 1992
in Jenks, Chris (1993) Culture, London and New York: Routledge
• Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Steven Seidman (eds.), Cultură şi
societate: dezbateri contemporane, Iaşi: Institutul European, 2001
• Bertens, Hans, “Political reading: the 1970s and the 1980s”,
“Literature and culture: the new historicism and cultural
materialism” in Bertens, Hans, Literary Theory, Routledge, London
and New York, 2001;
• Blandford, Steve, Barry Keith Grant and Jim Hillier, The Film
Studies Dictionary, Arnold, 2001;
• Blandy, Doug and Kristin G. Congdon (eds.) Art in a Democracy,
New York and London: Teachers College Press, 1987
• Bradbury, Malcolm and Howard Temperley, Introduction to
American Studies, Longman, London and New York;
• Caune, Jean, Cultură şi comunicare, Bucureşti: Cartea Românească,
2000
• Caranfil, Tudor, Dictionar universal de filme
• Cornwell, Terri Lynn, Democracy and the Arts – The Role of
Participation, New York, Westpoint, Connecticut, London: Praeger,
1990

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• Dyer, Richard, The Matter of Images. Essays on Representations,
Routledge, London and New York, 1993;
• Ferguson, Russell, Marginalization and Contemporary Culture,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 1991
• Fiske, John, Media Matters. Everyday Culture and Political Change,
Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994
• Fowler, Roger (ed.), Modern Critical Terms, London and New
York: Routledge, 1993.
• Gans, Herbert J., Popular Culture and High Culture. An Analysis
and Evaluation of Taste, BasicBooks, 1974
• Harper, Philip Brian, Framing the Margins. The Social Logic of
Postmodern Culture, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994
• King, Richard, “The Eighties” in Bradbury, Malcolm and Howard
Temperley, Introduction to American Studies, Longman, London
and New York, 1989;
• Jenks, Chris, Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1993
• Jenkins, Richard, Social Identity, London and New York: Routledge,
1996
• Lowenthal, Leo, “Literature and Society” in Lowenthal, Leo,
Literature, Popular Culture and Society, Pacific Books Publishers,
1968;
• Orr, John, Contemporary Cinema, Edinburgh University Press,
1998;
• Patterson, James, “The United States since 1945” in Howard,
Michael and WM. Roger Louis, The Oxford History of the Twentieth
Century, OUP, 1998
• Temperley, Howard and Malcolm Bradbury, “War and Cold War” in
Bradbury, Malcolm and Howard Temperley, Introduction to
American Studies, Longman, London and New York, 1989;
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88