The Power of Texts and Images in My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade
NB: The metaphors are shown in capital letters as indicated by Barbara Dancygier and Eve Sweetser’s Figurative Language (2014) text. For every song a musical artist publishes, the artist creates an album cover art to represent the theme and messages conveyed in the music. In The Black Parade (2006) album, written and sung by the American rock band My Chemical Romance,...
Be Still: Slowing Down to Savour Life
“When we lose our sense of wonder we become dissatisfied with who we are,” Madeleine L’Engle says in her book on creation and human identity (Madeleine 51). When I came back to her words this month, I connected just as strongly to them as I had the first time I read them. Madeleine L’Engle is...
The Polar Express: The Train You Need to Ride Every Year
Many of Chris Van Allsburg’s books have been projected into a motion picture film such as Zathura (2005) and Jumanji (1995). Van Allsburg’s most memorable book to film project is The Polar Express(1985) which has gained the status of being a Christmas film played each year like Frosty the Snowman (1969) and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). But why? The Polar Express (1985)...
“You, Who Have Devastated the Souls of the Living”: Heroes, Hubris, and the Victorian Gothic in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Although Christmas time and ghost stories seem to us strange bedfellows, the two were commonly found lying together in the nineteenth century. Ghouls and ghosts, seances and mystics, changelings and revenants were all immensely popular among the Victorians – and their presence was felt year-round in high society. Christmas was especially fraught with the souls...
Transgressive social mobility in Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood”
“Once upon a time, deep in the heart of the country,” begins Charles Perrault, “there lived a pretty little girl whose mother adored her, and her grandmother adored her even more. This good woman made her a red hood like the ones that fine ladies wear when they go riding. The hood suited the child...
LITERATURE TO LIFE: WE EAT TOO MANY PAPER PLATES
Thinking beyond ourselves has become a dominant theme in my Canadian Environmental writing course that influences my decisions on a day-to-day basis. It is annie ross’ collection of poems from Pots and Other Living Beings(2019) that inspires me to reflect on my consumption of food, clothing, and other materialistic items. I am not insisting to start...
