http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/authors/193/tristan-gans Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Fri, 01 May 2026 09:58:02 -0400 Fri, 01 May 2026 09:58:02 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/536/the-red-wheelbarrow-dissecting-the-minimal-masterpiece By Tristan Gans - William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” contains four two line stanzas in which the first line contains three words and the second contains one word with two syllables; it is also an awesome, awesome poem. With four stanzas the poem describes in humongous detail not just a wheelbarrow but a whole scene, a moment stuck in time. Williams’s form in the poem accomplishes this by using the strange break points to emphasize certain words and letting the words and their rhythms work for themselves. The first stanza, “so much depends/ upon” illustrates this... Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:29 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/536/the-red-wheelbarrow-dissecting-the-minimal-masterpiece http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/532/creation-and-rebellion-in-william-faulkners-as-i-lay-dying By Tristan Gans - Perusing famous works of literature, one would be hard pressed to find a volume that does not concern itself with the relationship of a creation to its creator. It is a central concern of most religious texts, as well as much of the narrative literature that the academic world deems to be above the realm of escapism. This is hardly surprising in that creation is inherent in existence; moreover, it is central to the subsidiary themes that often drive stories: family relationships, the nature of art, the role of society for the individual, the role of the individual in society, and so on. More specifically... Wed, 25 May 2011 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/532/creation-and-rebellion-in-william-faulkners-as-i-lay-dying http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/529/gender-and-power-in-vladimir-nabokovs-lolita By Tristan Gans - In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the overriding force of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is his need to prove himself master of everything: other people, his own desires, fate, and language itself. Time and time again through Lolita we see Humbert’s most extreme actions and emotions not as a result of his physical desires but rather his psychological need to win, to possess, and to control. Gender relations are quite simple for him: women are to be possessed, and men should compete for the possession of women. At times Humbert competes to prove his superiority in other ways, for instance tricking... Wed, 18 May 2011 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/529/gender-and-power-in-vladimir-nabokovs-lolita http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/526/adornos-bach-schoenberg-connection-frivolity-and-expectation By Tristan Gans - Adorno’s case is built on the composers’ treatment of melodic subjects, which he views as ‘pure’ in an intellectual and philosophical sense. He contrasts this to the work of the classical and romantic composers, specifically Beethoven, whose work he views as overcommitted to the formal façade unintentionally constructed by Bach: essentially he claims that Beethoven et al rejected Bach’s challenging, philosophically constructive methodology in favor of “a category existing prior to the subject-matter and oriented on external consensus” (153), a category... Wed, 11 May 2011 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/526/adornos-bach-schoenberg-connection-frivolity-and-expectation http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/523/gender-and-unity-of-the-self-in-virgina-woolfs-orlando By Tristan Gans - The confluence of biography and fiction in Virginia Woolf's Orlando raises the question, of which the book is highly aware, of which genre facilitates the proper perception of the truth. As Woolf writes, “Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer” (267).[1] In this book (there’s no point in defining it as novel or biography) Woolf has attempted to find truth through an examination of her friend Vita Sackville West, and has decided upon synchronicity as a more meaningful apparatus of illumination... Wed, 04 May 2011 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/523/gender-and-unity-of-the-self-in-virgina-woolfs-orlando http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/519/persuasion-and-agency-in-aphra-behns-oroonoko By Tristan Gans - Aphra Behn’s 1688 novel Oroonoko leaves many questions unanswered.[1] In one of many seeming contradictions within the text, one wonders how Behn, personally victimized by Charles II and an economic system that sought to disenfranchise her,[2] would glorify a socio-political system that affirmed not just masculine dominance, but the essential and innate authority of a male whose moral and political agenda enforces the oppression of her gender; furthermore, her de facto assertion of authority as both the creator of the work and an influential character implies a certain amount of agency and... Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:45 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/519/persuasion-and-agency-in-aphra-behns-oroonoko http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/516/custine-tocqueville-and-intellectual-autonomy-in-comparative-politics By Tristan Gans - The most obvious and immediate difference between Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Astolphe de Custine’s Letters from Russia is one of style.[1] Put simply, Tocqueville’s text is an impersonal social-scientific treatise, while Custine’s is a personal narrative of observation. However, the two men traveled abroad with the common intention of examining societies that functioned through certain idealized political and social paradigms. More specifically, one might say that both examine the role of government and political culture in suppressing the subjective... Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:15 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/516/custine-tocqueville-and-intellectual-autonomy-in-comparative-politics http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/514/dramatic-therapy-stylish-re-enactments-in-hitchcocks-the-birds-and-marnie By Tristan Gans - Alfred Hitchcock’s first three films of the 1960s, Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie, feature alliterative blonde bombshell leads with distinctly avian qualities—Marion Crane, Melanie Daniels, and Margaret “Marnie” Edgar, respectively—and in the course of each film the woman seeks a resolution of deep-seated feelings of isolation, abandonment, and self-hatred relating to parental figures and often represented by birds.[1]  In the latter two films, the character is played by the same actress (Tippi Hedren), and given the thematic similarities of the two films, we... Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:08 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/514/dramatic-therapy-stylish-re-enactments-in-hitchcocks-the-birds-and-marnie http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/511/interpreting-gawain-the-hermeneutics-of-translation By Tristan Gans - In the Broadview Press edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, editor and translator James Winny makes a concerted effort to render the original Middle English text in denotatively correct, non-alliterative modern English. In doing so, he fails to illuminate one of the work’s primary themes: the transition of Gawain from a socially defined literary superlative to a three-dimensional, introspective character. The language and form of the text, neglected in Winny’s translation, tie changes of insignia and verb form explicitly to the growth of Gawain’s identity and emotional... Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/511/interpreting-gawain-the-hermeneutics-of-translation http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/224/the-concept-of-unity-in-elizabeth-gaskells-north-and-south By Tristan Gans - North and South is a novel defined by the resolution of binary conflicts: heroine Margaret Hale is presented with a number of divisions of sympathy, between industrialists and the working class, between conflicting views of Mr. Thornton, and even between her conflicting views of her own intelligence.[1] In almost all cases, Margaret does not so much choose sides as acknowledge mutually dependent and beneficial relationships. The ending of the novel, in which a proposal to loan money to a newly benevolent Mr. Thornton manifests the confluence of her compassion and her business sense, binds these... Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:29 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/224/the-concept-of-unity-in-elizabeth-gaskells-north-and-south