Animal Farm - George Orwell

Old Major, a prize-winning boar, gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in which all animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them. He tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise and teaches them a song called “Beasts of England,” in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals greet Major's vision with great enthusiasm. When he dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs—Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer—formulate his main principles into a philosophy called Animalism. Late one night, the animals manage to defeat the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property Animal Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Major's dream. The cart-horse Boxer devotes himself to the cause with particular zeal, committing his great strength to the prosperity of the farm and adopting as a personal maxim the affirmation “I will work harder.”

At first, Animal Farm prospers. Snowball works at teaching the animals to read, and Napoleon takes a group of young puppies to educate them in the principles of Animalism. When Mr. Jones reappears to take back his farm, the animals defeat him again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the Cowshed, and take the farmer's abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball increasingly quibble over the future of the farm, and they begin to struggle with each other for power and influence among the other animals. Snowball concocts a scheme to build an electricity-generating windmill, but Napoleon solidly opposes the plan. At the meeting to vote on whether to take up the project, Snowball gives a passionate speech. Although Napoleon gives only a brief retort, he then makes a strange noise, and nine attack dogs—the puppies that Napoleon had confiscated in order to “educate”—burst into the barn and chase Snowball from the farm. Napoleon assumes leadership of Animal Farm and declares that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make all of the decisions—for the good of every animal.

Napoleon now quickly changes his mind about the windmill, and the animals, especially Boxer, devote their efforts to completing it. One day, after a storm, the animals find the windmill toppled. The human farmers in the area declare smugly that the animals made the walls too thin, but Napoleon claims that Snowball returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill. He stages a great purge, during which various animals who have allegedly participated in Snowball's great conspiracy—meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon's uncontested leadership—meet instant death at the teeth of the attack dogs. With his leadership unquestioned (Boxer has taken up a second maxim, “Napoleon is always right”), Napoleon begins expanding his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon also begins to act more and more like a human being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade with neighboring farmers. The original Animalist principles strictly forbade such activities, but Squealer, Napoleon's propagandist, justifies every action to the other animals, convincing them that Napoleon is a great leader and is making things better for everyone—despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and overworked.

Mr. Frederick, a neighboring farmer, cheats Napoleon in the purchase of some timber and then attacks the farm and dynamites the windmill, which had been rebuilt at great expense. After the demolition of the windmill, a pitched battle ensues, during which Boxer receives major wounds. The animals rout the farmers, but Boxer's injuries weaken him. When he later falls while working on the windmill, he senses that his time has nearly come. One day, Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to Squealer, Boxer has died in peace after having been taken to the hospital, praising the Rebellion with his last breath. In actuality, Napoleon has sold his most loyal and long-suffering worker to a glue maker in order to get money for whisky.

Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs become more and more like human beings—walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. Eventually, the seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and inscribed on the side of the barn, become reduced to a single principle reading “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Napoleon entertains a human farmer named Mr. Pilkington at a dinner and declares his intent to ally himself with the human farmers against the laboring classes of both the human and animal communities. He also changes the name of Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm, claiming that this title is the “correct” one. Looking in at the party of elites through the farmhouse window, the common animals can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the human beings.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/animalfarm/context.html

Eveline - James Joyce

James Joyce’s “Eveline,” focuses on a character of the same name amidst an emotional turmoil. This story could be deemed a love tale which involves Eveline who struggles to remove herself from the strong ties to her family and follow her love, Frank, to Buenos Aires. Joyce uses literary elements such as setting, symbols, and themes that help convey Eveline’s emotional struggle.

This story begins in a town in Ireland with the introduction of family characters. Family seems to be a strong theme in Joyce’s writing. This theme is evident when Eveline stays home and takes over the motherly duties in the household as a teen after a promise was made to her dying mother. Death plays a major role in this story as the author points out that many of Eveline’s friends and family are said to have died at some point. Symbolism such as dust collecting around the house and the aged yellow painting of Mary Margaret Alocoque, a French nun, enable the reader to get a sense of the death and loneliness surrounding Eveline. There are several issues presented by Joyce that give rise to Eveline’s internal conflict of breaking the promise to her mother and leaving with Frank. One major problem is that the family is very poor and money is a very precious resource in their lives. Eveline expresses the importance of money when she is walking to the market with her purse clasped close to her body almost as if to protect it as though it were her very own life. Her family’s poverty is apparent when Frank takes her to the theater and she expresses her delight with the seats Frank has purchased because she has been accustomed to sitting in the back row due to her inability to purchase better seats.

To Eveline, Frank represents a new and exciting lifestyle that she has not had the opportunity to experience after taking over the mother role. Her routine, mundane lifestyle that Eveline has led appears to be comforting to her because of its stability, whereas being with Frank is something new and spontaneous. Perhaps Eveline is not so much in love with Frank as she is with the opportunity to embark on a new lifestyle that contradicts everything she has known and become accustomed to. When the time comes for Eveline to make her life altering decision she falters. Frank is urging her to go as they are at the station and Eveline becomes frozen in a state of emotional paralysis, unable to make a decision. Again, Joyce uses symbolism when Eveline grips onto the handrails that lead down the steps to her new life. The handrails represent stability and control. They represent the life she has always known and the comfort that it provides. James Joyce tells us that Eveline lacks the strength to make her own decision. Therefore, she remains dysfunctional due to her fear of failure, promise to her mother, or guilt that she faces for leaving her family behind. Joyce is able to exaggerate all of these feelings inside Eveline primarily because of his writing style. The use of these literary elements gives a more intense understanding of the emotional quarrel that Eveline is forced to deal with.

Robinson Crusoe - Colonialism and Imperialism

In order to keep expanding, capitalism requires a cheap source of raw materials and markets for finished products. Colonies serve both functions for the mother country. So though capitalism and colonialism are not identical, they are closely associated. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, colonialism and imperialism were generally synonymous; today the terms are still often interchanged, though they are not truly identical. In colonialism, one nation controls the territory, the economy, and the political structure of another country; in imperialism, one nation extends its empire or its dominion over another nation. Thus, colonialism is one form that imperialism may take in extending its domination of other lands; today, however, imperialism is more likely to consist of a wealthy, powerful nation coercing or threatening weak or poor nations to control them politically and/or economically.
Crusoe acts as a colonizer in assuming complete dominion over the island and any people he encounters. The land and all its products belong to him. Several times he notes the abundance of trees suitable for making masts (the British navy and merchant ships looked to the American colonies to meet their need for trees to make masts). Crusoe's actions as an individual duplicate those of nations in claiming land for colonies. When Crusoe leaves the island, he leaves behind English and Spanish sailors as colonists. An absence of years does not diminish his ownership. The chapter which narrates his return to the island is titled "I Revisit My Island" (italics added for emphasis). He visits "my" colony on the island (298) and gives some land to the Europeans, keeping title to the whole island for himself. In return, they agree not to leave the island (do they have any choice, since Crusoe has the only boat?).
As an embryo imperialist, Crusoe sees himself as king and others as his subjects, including his pets. He creates, not a democracy, not a republic, but a kingdom He imposes his will on others, most obviously Friday, but also on the worst of the English mutineers, whom he forces into staying on the island. For James Joyce, Robinson Crusoe is "prophetic," forecasting English imperialism:
The true symbol of British conquest is Robinson Crusoe, who, cast away on a desert island, in his pocket a knife and a pipe, becomes an architect, a carpenter, a knife grinder, an astronomer, a baker, a shipwright, a potter, a saddler, a farmer, a tailor, an umbrella-maker, and a clergyman. He is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty slave who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.
Crusoe as imperialist-conqueror is not a twentieth century invention, as Jules Fesquet's 1877 illustration of a heroic Crusoe demonstrates. Fesquet presents Crusoe as Hercules with a nude muscular body, Hercules's trademark lion's skin, and a sword. His sovereign rule is suggested by the orb he holds and the abject submission of the native. This picture asserts European domination over native populations, whose inferiority is expressed not only in the caannibal's submissive posture but in a somewhat less muscular body. The limitlessness of Crusoe's/the white man's power is suggested by the absence of a frame around the original illustration. An aside: do you think the prone figure is Friday?

Technological heroes

Today, thoughts about the isolated hero of Western technology. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Only a third of the book is about his survival on a remote island. But that part is now a metaphor for the way we save ourselves with technology.
Fourteen years earlier, a real person, Alexander Selkirk, was left by his shipmates on a real island -- off the coast of Chile. Selkirk had fled his contentious Scottish family in 1702 and gone to sea in a British privateer. Its business? Harassing Spanish outposts in the Pacific. Conditions on the ship were terrible, and Selkirk carried trouble with him.
One day, in a rage, he told his shipmates to put him ashore. So they did -- on a deserted island. As the longboat pulled away, he screamed for them to take him back. They would not. And there he stayed 'til a British ship found him four years later.
A London magazine published the story in 1713, and Defoe read it. Meanwhile, Selkirk went back to his erratic life -- marrying women here and there -- going to sea now and then. He died in 1721, two years after Defoe published Robinson Crusoe.
Of course, Defoe changed his hero. He modeled Crusoe on himself -- made him part of the conservative middle class. He used Crusoe to explore his own ideas about imperialism. Crusoe becomes the benevolent colonizer -- teaching the savage, Friday, to be what he himself is. There was no Friday in Selkirk's story.
Selkirk was pretty savage before he was deserted, and he brought little technology to his imprisonment. The sailors who found him said he was almost naked -- that he had to relearn human speech. Oddly enough, Defoe undercut his own survival thesis in another book. He wrote, "Necessity makes an honest man a knave."
In 1750, the Spanish built a small fort on Selkirk's island. Later, they made the island into a prison. Neither lasted long. In 1966, the Chilean government changed the name of the island to Robinson Crusoe. They hoped to pick up tourist trade. Today the population is around 600 -- mostly fisherfolk who live in near isolation. There are three small hotels -- not heavily used.
The theme of a lone technological man carving civilization from the primeval forest recurs down through our technical/scientific world -- from Crusoe all the way to Gilligan's Island!
Mark Twain put that old wine in a new skin when he wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. But Twain was smarter. His Yankee hero eventually made a mess of things.
So: what about the lone technological hero? Well, it didn't work for Selkirk, and I doubt it'd work for anyone. In the end, technology is culture -- something we do together. Technology does define our survival, but only in the framework of community.

F. Kafka - The Metamorphosis - Summary and themes

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find that he has been inexplicably transformed into a giant insect. He has also slept late. His parents and his sister Grete try to rouse him so he can make it to his dreary job as a traveling salesman. The family depends on him for its livelihood. Gregor, however, is now a bug. When a clerk from his company comes to demand an explanation for his absence, Gregor makes a great effort to open the bedroom door and show himself. This sends the terrified clerk tearing down the stairwell and Gregor's family into shock.

Grete, more than his father or mother, handles the situation practically. Gregor is fed, and his room is cleaned. Before long, however, economic reality requires all three to find work, and less attention is paid to Gregor--except when he gets out of his room. No one in the family is fully able to reconcile him- or herself to the insect Gregor, and Gregor is unable to express himself to his family. The fear and disgust his presence inspires (the irrational fear of the mammoth cockroach) is a detriment to his mother's health and incites his father to brief fits of violence. One such fit, a bombardment of fruit, deals Gregor a deep and crippling wound.
Hobbled and neglected, Gregor begins to waste away in his room. The family takes in three carping lodgers, using Gregor's room to store excess furniture and other miscellanea--adding insult to injury. Yet the family does leave Gregor's door slightly open in the evenings, so that he may take part in the household in a small way. One evening, the lodgers hear Grete practicing her violin. They call her into the parlor for a concert. She obliges, and the music so moves Gregor that he creeps out into the parlor towards her, wanting to convey that he understands her gift and will help it to blossom. The lodgers see Gregor and immediately give notice. This is the breaking point for the family. Grete declares that they must abandon the notion that this hideous bug is their dear Gregor. All sadly agree. Gregor slinks back into his room. He dies that night.
A great weight has been lifted from the family. After a moment of mourning, the father demands that the lodgers leave immediately. The family takes a trolley out of the city and into the countryside. It is a beautiful, sunny day, and as Grete stretches out her limbs in the trolley car, her parents' thoughts turn to finding her a husband.

Themes
Economic effects on human relationships
Gregor is enslaved by his family because he is the one who makes money. Thus, with the possible exception of his sister, the family seems to treat him not as a member but as a source of income. When Gregor is no longer able to work after his metamorphosis, he is treated with revulsion and neglected. Once the family begins working, they also find difficulty communicating with each other, eating dinner in silence and fighting among themselves. The exhaustion of dehumanizing jobs and the recognition that people are only valuable so long as they earn a salary keeps anyone who works isolated from others and unable to establish human relations with them.
Family duty
The theme of family and the duties of family members to each other drive the interactions between Gregor and the others. His thoughts are almost entirely of the need to support his parents and sending his sister to the Conservatory. Though Gregor hates his job, he follows the call of duty to his family and goes far beyond simple duty. The family, on the other hand, takes care of Gregor after his metamorphosis only so far as duty seems to necessitate. He is kept locked in his room and brought food. In the end, his room is barely cleaned and his sister no longer cares about what food she brings him. Her actions are routine, as she only wants to do enough that she can claim she has fulfilled her duty. When she decides she has had enough, she insists that their duty to him has been fulfilled: "I don't think anyone could reproach us in the slightest," she says as she suggests that they need to get rid of him.
Alienation
Before his metamorphosis, Gregor is alienated from his job, his humanity, his family, and even his body, as we see from the fact that he barely notices his transformation. In fact, even his consideration for his family seems to be something alien to him, as he barely notices it when he loses this consideration at the end. After his metamorphosis, Gregor feels completely alienated from his room and environment and, as a symbol of this, can't even see his street out the window. The Metamorphosis, then, is a powerful indictment of the alienation brought on by the modern social order.
Freedom and escapism

Gregor is trapped in his job by his duty to his family, but he dreams of the day when he can finally pay off their debts and quit his job. His need for freedom from the restrictive demands of work is expressed in his metamorphosis, by means of which he escapes. This escape, however, fails to bring Gregor freedom, for he is now imprisoned by his family in his room. Thus, when Gregor works, he is enslaved by his job and, when he doesn't work, he is enslaved by his family. There is no way of balancing out freedom and duty, and in the end one is always a slave. The only means of escape turns out to be death.
Guilt
Guilt stems from family duty, and is Gregor's most powerful emotion. When he is transformed into an insect, Gregor is made unable to work by circumstances beyond his control. Despite the fact that his metamorphosis is not his fault, however, he is racked by guilt every time that the family mentions money or that he thinks about the pain that he has inadvertently inflicted on them by losing the ability to support them. Guilt, it turns out, is deadly, as Gregor realizes at the end that his life is the only thing keeping the family from a better life. He dies for them just as he lived for them: out of guilt.
Personal identity

Alone in his room, Gregor tries to rebuild the self-identity that he had lost by living entirely for others and ignoring his own needs. He cannot, however, escape from what he sees as his family duty, and continues to act only to serve his family by doing his best not to inconvenience them. Gregor's comments about his family's behavior are often tinged with resentment at the way they treat him, but he will not allow himself to recognize his bitterness. Gregor manages to escape his self-effacing sense of duty only in the last chapter, when he asserts himself in realizing that his family has been neglecting him. Gregor's search for his identity seems hopeless, however, because he never had an identity to start with. He finds his humanity only at the end, when his sister's playing reminds him of his love for his family. This love, coupled with his freedom, is the final ingredient he needs to establish his identity.

Hamlet - Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Themes
The Impossibility of Certainty
What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and maybe from every play written before it) is that the action we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to obtain more certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play poses many questions that other plays would simply take for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears to be, or is it really a misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is the ghost itself deluded? Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for certain the facts about a crime that has no witnesses? Can Hamlet know the state of Claudius’s soul by watching his behavior? If so, can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or the audience) know the state of Hamlet’s mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? Can we know anything about the afterlife?
Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlet’s failure to act appropriately. It might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they evaluate one another’s actions.

The Complexity of Action
Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it possible to take reasonable, effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it’s even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously think much less about “action” in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about the possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in some sense they prove that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown through bold action, but his conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of course, he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge, but he is easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudius’s ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back upon himself.

The Mystery of Death
In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlet’s deepest questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and Claudius’s death is the end of that quest.
The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.

The Nation as a Diseased Body
Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as a whole. The play’s early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating that “[s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.67). The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once again.

Motifs

Incest and Incestuous Desire
The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius, the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are now married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in Hamlet’s fixation on Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius and his preoccupation with her in general.

Misogyny
Shattered by his mother’s decision to marry Claudius so soon after her husband’s death, Hamlet becomes cynical about women in general, showing a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs sporadically throughout the play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlet’s relationships with Ophelia and Gertrude. He urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the corruptions of sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude, “Frailty, thy name is woman”

Ears and Hearing
One facet of Hamlet’s exploration of the difficulty of attaining true knowledge is slipperiness of language. Words are used to communicate ideas, but they can also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for power. Claudius, the shrewd politician, is the most obvious example of a man who manipulates words to enhance his own power. The sinister uses of words are represented by images of ears and hearing, from Claudius’s murder of the king by pouring poison into his ear to Hamlet’s claim to Horatio that “I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb” (IV.vi.21). The poison poured in the king’s ear by Claudius is used by the ghost to symbolize the corrosive effect of Claudius’s dishonesty on the health of Denmark. Declaring that the story that he was killed by a snake is a lie, he says that “the whole ear of Denmark” is “Rankly abused. . . .”

Symbols

Yorick’s Skull

In Hamlet, physical objects are rarely used to represent thematic ideas. One important exception is Yorick’s skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the skull of the king’s former jester, he fixates on death’s inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to “get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come”—no one can avoid death (V.i.178–179). He traces the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death (V.i.174–175). This latter idea is an important motif throughout the play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human body’s eventual decay, noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.

J. Kerouac - On the Road

F. Kafka - The Castle

An excerpt

It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay under deep snow. There was no sign of the Castle hill, fog and darkness surrounded it, not even the faintest gleam of light suggested the large Castle. K. stood a long time on the wooden bridge that leads from the main road to the village, gazing upward into the seeming emptiness.
Then he went looking for a night's lodging; at the inn they were still awake; the landlord had no room available, but, extremely surprised and confused by the latecomer, he was willing to let K. sleep on a straw mattress in the taproom, K. agreed to this. A few peasants were still sitting over beer, but he did not want to talk to anyone, got himself a straw mattress from the attic and lay down by the stove. It was warm, the peasants were quiet, he examined them for a moment with tired eyes, then fell asleep.

Yet before long he was awakened. A young man in city clothes, with an actor's face, narrow eyes, thick eyebrows, stood beside him with the landlord. The peasants, too, were still there, a few had turned their chairs around to see and hear better. The young man apologized very politely for having awakened K., introduced himself as the son of the Castle steward and said: "This village is Castle property, anybody residing or spending the night here is effectively residing or spending the night at the Castle. Nobody may do so without permission from the Count. But you have no such permission or at least you haven't shown it yet."

K., who had half-risen and smoothed his hair, looked at the people from below and said: "What village have I wandered into? So there is a castle here?"

"Why, of course," the young man said slowly, while several peasants here and there shook their heads at K., "the Castle of Count Westwest."

"And one needs permission to spend the night here?" asked K., as though he wanted to persuade himself that he hadn't perhaps heard the previous statements in a dream.

"Permission is needed" was the reply, and this turned into crude mockery at K.'s expense when the young man, stretching out his arm, asked the landlord and the guests: "Or perhaps permission is not needed?"

"Then I must go and get myself permission," said K., yawning and pushing off the blanket, as though he intended to get up.

"Yes, but from whom?" asked the young man.

"From the Count," said K., "there doesn't seem to be any alternative."

"Get permission from the Count, now, at midnight?" cried the young man, stepping back a pace.

"Is that not possible?" K. asked calmly. "Then why did you wake me up?"

The young man now lost his composure, "The manners of a tramp!" he cried. "I demand respect for the Count's authorities. I awakened you to inform you that you must leave the Count's domain at once."

"Enough of this comedy," said K. in a remarkably soft voice as he lay down and pulled up the blanket: "You are going a little too far, young man, and I shall deal with your conduct tomorrow. The landlord and those gentlemen there will be my witnesses, should I even need witnesses. Besides, be advised that I am the land surveyor sent for by the Count. My assistants and the equipment are coming tomorrow by carriage. I didn't want to deprive myself of a long walk through the snow, but unfortunately lost my way a few times, which is why I arrived so late. That it was too late then to report to the Castle is something that was already apparent to me without the benefit of your instructions. That's also the reason why I decided to content myself with these lodgings, where you have been so impolite--to put it mildly--as to disturb me. I have nothing further to add to that statement. Good night, gentlemen." And K. turned toward the stove.

___________________________________________________

A short plot

The narrator, K. arrives in the village, governed by the castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he gives himself out to be a land surveyor summoned by the castle authorities. He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in the introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Council Chairman.
The Council Chairman informs K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, he was erroneously requested but, trying to accommodate K., the Council Chairman offers him a position in the service of the school teacher as a janitor. Meanwhile, K., unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach the official Klamm, who is not accessible.
The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying, quite elaborately at times, the actions of the officials, even though they do not appear to know what or why the officials do what they do. The villagers simply defend it. The number of assumptions and justifications about the functions of the officials and their dealings are enumerated through lengthy monologues of the villagers. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the official's actions that appear to be founded on assumptions and gossip. One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid. K. is the only villager that knows that the request is being forced by the castle (even though Frieda may be the genesis), with no regard for anyone in the village, only Klamm. Pepi and Jeremiah quickly come to their conclusions and do not hesitate to state them.
The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is "flawless". This flawlessness is of course a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system which are occasionally referred to. K. witnesses a flagrant misprocessing after his nighttime interrogation by Erlanger as a servant destroys paperwork when he cannot determine who the recipient should be.
The castle's occupants appear to be all adult men and there is little reference to the castle other than to its bureaucratic functions. The two notable instances are the reference to a fire brigade and that Otto Brunswick's wife is self declared as from the castle. The latter builds the importance of Hans (Otto's son) in K's eyes, as a way to gain access to the castle officials.
The functions of the officials are never mentioned. The officials that are discussed have one or more secretaries that do their work in their village. Although the officials come to the village they do not interact with the villagers unless they need female companionship, implied to be sexual.

F. Kafka - The Trial

An excerpt

...Once more the odious courtesies began, the first handed the knife across K. to the second, who handed it across K. back again to the first. K. now perceived clearly that he was supposed to seize the knife himself, as it traveled from hand to hand above him, and plunge it into his own breast. But he did not do so, he merely turned his head, which was still free to move, and gazed around him. He could not completely rise to the occasion, he could not relieve the officials of all their tasks; the responsibility for this last failure of his lay with him who had not left him the remnant of strength necessary for the deed.

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Synopsis by chapters

Chapter One: The Arrest - Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, a junior bank manager, Josef K., who lives in lodgings, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, but left at home to await instructions from the Interrogation Commission. That evening K misses his regular visit to a prostitute, Elsa.
Frau Grubach, his landlady, tries to console Josef but unintentionally offends him by speculating that perhaps the arrest was related to an illicit relationship with Fräulein Bürstner, the tenant next door to Josef K. Josef visits the Fräulein to discuss his plight, but ends up kissing her, belatedly fulfilling the landlady's speculation. This is an early indication that Josef K. is no longer in control of his own fate.
Chapter Two: First Interrogation
K is instructed to appear at a local court, but the time of the trial is not specified. This causes him to waste his time waiting to be called. When he is finally called, he is told, confusingly, that he is late. As the interrogation begins, he is asked an ill-informed question, which he uses as the basis for his attack on the preceding events and the general competence of the court. As he leaves, the Examining Magistrate tells K that "...today you have flung away with your own hand all the advantages which an interrogation invariably confers on an accused man."
Chapter Three: In the Empty Interrogation Chamber - The Student - The Offices
Josef K tries to visit the Examining Magistrate, but finds only the Law-Court Attendant's wife. Looking at the Magistrate's books, he finds that they are not law books, but pornography. The woman tries to seduce him. As Josef resolves to succumb to the woman as an act of defiance against the Court, a law student appears and, after an argument with Josef, carries the woman off in his arms.
Josef later spots the Attendant, who complains about his wife's wantonness and offers Josef a tour of the court offices. There are many other defendants waiting hopelessly for information about their cases. Josef struggles to cope with the "dull and heavy...hardly breathable" air, and almost faints. To his shame, he has to be carried out of the court by two officials.
Chapter Four: Fräulein Bürstner's Friend
Josef returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.
Chapter Five: The Whipper
Later, in a store room at his own bank, Josef K discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a superior. This surreal event appears to have been staged for his viewing, either to simply frighten him, or to demonstrate the seriousness in which the court views incompetence and corruption. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he left it, including the Whipper and the two agents.
Chapter Six: K.'s Uncle - Leni
Josef K is visited by his influential uncle, who by coincidence is a friend of the Clerk of the Court. The uncle is, or appears to be, distressed by Josef's predicament and is at first sympathetic, but becomes concerned that K is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces Josef K to an Advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse. K visits Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle's anger, and to the detriment of his case.
Chapter Seven: Advocate - Manufacturer - Painter
K visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. K returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.
Josef K is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. He explains: "You see, everything belongs to the Court." He sets out what K's options are, but the consequences of all of them are unpleasant. The labourious requirements of these options, and the limited outlook that they offer, leads the reader to lose hope for Josef K.
Chapter Eight: The Commercial Traveller - Dismissal of the Advocate
Josef K decides to take control of his own destiny and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K some insight, from a clients perspective. Block's case has continued for five years, yet he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate's unpredictable advice. This experience further poisons K's opinion of his advocate, and K is bemused as to why his advocate would think that seeing such a client, in such a state, could change his mind.
Chapter Nine: In The Cathedral
K has to show an important client from Italy around the Cathedral. The client doesn't show, but just as K is leaving the Cathedral, the priest calls out K's name, although K has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K a fable that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K's fate is hopeless. The gravity of the priest's words prepares the reader for an unpleasant ending.
Chapter Ten: The End
On the last day of Josef K's thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry and brutally murder him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!".

This text comes from Wikipedia.

John Osborne - Look back in anger

The three-act play takes place in a one-bedroom flat in the Midlands. Jimmy Porter, lower middle-class, university-educated, lives with his wife Alison, the daughter of a retired Colonel in the British Army in India. His friend Cliff Lewis, who helps Jimmy run a sweet stall, lives with them. Jimmy, intellectually restless and thwarted, reads the papers, argues and taunts his friends over their acceptance of the world around them. He rages to the point of violence, reserving much of his bile for Alison's friends and family. The situation is exacerbated by the arrival of Helena, an actress friend of Alison's from school. Appalled at what she finds, Helena calls Alison's father to take her away from the flat. He arrives while Jimmy is visiting the mother of a friend and takes Alison away. As soon as she has gone, Helena moves in with Jimmy. Alison returns to visit, having lost Jimmy's baby. Helena can no longer stand living with Jimmy and leaves. Finally Alison returns to Jimmy and his angry life.
The problem, which even a fine revival like this production has, is with the melodramatic qualities of the narrative. Osborne's script became almost a template for the new school of writers, and it is difficult to present his work without being aware that there is a faint whiff of formula about it. But despite the plot's shortcomings (which were recognised even by such a fierce admirer as Tynan), it still has the power to startle. There was an audible intake of breath from the audience when Jimmy fell into Helena's arms. Thanks to a fine performance from William Gaunt the sympathy felt by Colonel Redfern, Alison's father, for Jimmy came as a revelation, but still totally understandable within the framework of the play.
The language, too, still has the power to shock, such as when Jimmy, unaware of Alison's pregnancy, says to her:
“If only something—something would happen to you, and wake you out of your beauty sleep! If you could have a child, and it would die. Let it grow, let a recognisable human face emerge from that little mass of India rubber and wrinkles. Please—if only I could watch you face that. I wonder if you might even become a recognisable human being yourself. But I doubt it.”
It is a tribute to Gregory Hersov's direction and Michael Sheen's performance as Jimmy that this does not seem overblown or ridiculous.
Some of the imagery and language doesn't travel too well historically and reflects only the preoccupations of the era. It is difficult, for example, to imagine jazz being quite as exotic as it is for Jimmy. Or to understand the intellectual courage of saying about a gay man, “He's like a man with a strawberry mark—he keeps thrusting it in your face because he can't believe it doesn't interest or horrify you particularly. As if I give a damn which way he likes his meat served up”. At the time homosexuality was still illegal in Britain.
The production stays close to Osborne's original stage-image. This enables it to show the play as standing at a crossroads both of the British stage and also of political and historical epochs. Before the show, the title is projected onto the curtains like a jazz album cover. Between scenes, wreaths of cigarette smoke rise up the curtains. An era is evoked. Matilda Ziegler's Helena also captures a lost period of weekly repertory theatre, of companies travelling the country with precisely the sort of play that Look Back in Anger was attacking; a world evoked with such nostalgia in The Dresser. It was a time when actors auditioned in suits or the sort of starched twin-pieces that Helena wears before she moves in with Jimmy. The admiration of William Gaunt's Colonel Redfern for Jimmy's principles and his amusement at Jimmy's description of Mrs Redfern as “an overfed, overprivileged old bitch”, are set against his total lack of comprehension of what Jimmy's life actually means. Alison says to him “You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. Something's gone wrong somewhere, hasn't it?” Or as it was put in a Daily Express article from December 1959 which is quoted in the programme: “Out of this decade has come the Illusion of Comfort, and we have lost the sense of life's difficulty”.
It is clear from Osborne's script that there was no lack of a sense of life's difficulties around at the time. But the emphasis had shifted from the martyred expressions of the British ruling class and their “white man's burden”, as represented in Colonel Redfern, to a more serious appraisal of life for those outside that ruling class. Emma Fielding does a good job playing Alison, who has grown up with the one attitude but has been forced by her situation into the other. Fielding gives a good performance as the woman who tolerates Jimmy's invective, living constantly with the threat of something erupting in front of her. Helena on the other hand ultimately cannot stay with Jimmy precisely because of the destruction of all her old certainties.
Perhaps the only truly sympathetic character in the play is Cliff, here excellently played by Jason Hughes. From his role as Jimmy's foil in the early exchanges, to appearing as Alison's real friend, to the point when he decides that he does not want to stay in the flat, Hughes gives a magnificent portrayal of solidness. Whilst Alison is forced to accept Jimmy's rages because her family background has robbed her of any other viable option, Hughes shows us Cliff as someone who is keeping the peace by hiding his real character—by playing along with all the games.
In Jimmy Porter, Osborne created what came to be seen as a model of the “angry young man”—railing at the lack of passion of his age, entreating Alison and Cliff to show some enthusiasm. He is marvellously, unreasonably idealistic in a wildly unfocussed way. Kenneth Tynan, who described Jimmy as “the completest young pup in our literature since Hamlet”, criticised those who attacked the recklessness of Jimmy's attacks. “Is Jimmy's anger justified? Why doesn't he do something? These questions might be relevant if the character had failed to come to life; in the presence of such evident and blazing vitality, I marvel at the pedantry that could ask them. Why don't Chekhov's people do something? Is the sun justified in scorching us?”
It is just this “evident and blazing vitality” that Michael Sheen represents so well. Spluttering with indignation, retreating into his pseudo-literary takes on vaudeville, firing off his vindictive gags almost because he can do nothing else. Osborne, throughout his work, was fascinated by end-of-pier music hall and vaudeville. In The Entertainer, one year later, he used vaudeville and its washed-up performer Archie Rice in a brilliant take on the crisis in post-war British society. Here he has Jimmy and Cliff perform a variety-style number, “Don't be afraid to sleep with your sweetheart just because she's better than you”, as well as trading cheap cracks in true hackneyed music hall style.
More than any other writer of his generation, Osborne was fascinated by the tragedy lurking at the heart of the light entertainment performance. Michael Sheen adds another layer to this in his spluttering soliloquies, carrying with them an echo of Tony Hancock's ridiculous suburban pretensions. It is a fascinating comparison: Hancock, the parodist of lower-middle-class aspirations, and Jimmy Porter, the raging expression of the frustrations of the lower middle class. Sheen has a lightness of touch that suits Jimmy's failed jokes and misplaced comments, as well as his more furious denunciations of the absence of passion.
The impact Osborne had on British theatre is incalculable. With Look Back in Anger he brought class as an issue before British audiences. Under Hersov's direction, Sheen articulates the realisation of a man who has reached the limits of the possibilities open to him but is struggling to retain his dignity. “Why don't we have a little game?” he asks. “Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive”. Sheen gives a marvellous performance of a man running in circles trying to find a way out.
Osborne has often been criticised for not seeing a way out, and not explaining more carefully the crisis in which Jimmy finds himself. Robert Wright, reviewing the first production in the Star, wrote “He obviously wants to shake us into thinking but we are never quite clear what it is he wants us to think about. Is it the Class Struggle or simply sex?” This incoherence in Jimmy's rage is both strength and a limitation to the play.
It is apparent from the text that Osborne recognised this limitation, even tacitly. Helena criticises Jimmy, saying, “There's no place for people like that any longer—in sex, or politics, or anything. That's why he's so futile.... He doesn't know where he is, or where he's going. He'll never do anything, and he'll never amount to anything.” It seems almost a recognition that within his own work there are insufficient answers. This goes hand-in-hand with Jimmy's statement that “people of our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer.... There aren't any good, brave causes left.”
Such a statement could be read as the voice of pessimistic nihilism. Writing about Celine's novel Journey to the End of Night, Trotsky described it as “a book dictated by terror in the face of life, and weariness of it, rather than by indignation. Active indignation is linked up with hope. In Celine's book there is no hope.” That is clearly not the case here. Jimmy yearns for passion, and clings to the idea of it. When Alison returns to him he tells her “I may be a lost cause, but I thought if you loved me, it needn't matter.” There is a vision, however confused, of the possibilities of human existence. What makes Jimmy's statement so interesting is precisely the historical context in which it occurs.
Kenneth Tynan, who referred to the play's “instinctive leftishness” in his Observer review, wrote in a piece on “The Angry Young Movement” that Jimmy Porter “represented the dismay of many young Britons ... who came of age under a Socialist government, yet found, when they went out into the world, that the class system was still mysteriously intact.”
It is the mistaken association of the post-war Labour government with the failure of socialism per se that accounts for Porter's frustration. Osborne, active in various protests at the time, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, articulated his own sentiments through his lead character. In this respect, it is possible to see in the play expressions of the political impasse that had been reached in Britain during the 1950s, as a result of the domination of intellectual life by Stalinism and social democracy.
Nonetheless, it is also possible to see a challenge, albeit confused and unclear, to that impasse. There remains somewhere at the play's core, even if it cannot be explained, hope. There remains a belief that somehow people can survive the worst and perhaps even overcome it; a belief in humanity, and the possibility of a way forward.

J.J. Rousseau - On the origins of inequality among men

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." But there is great probability that things had then already come to such a pitch, that they could no longer continue as they were; for the idea of property depends on many prior ideas, which could only be acquired successively, and cannot have been formed all at once in the human mind. Mankind must have made very considerable progress, and acquired considerable knowledge and industry which they must also have transmitted and increased from age to age, before they arrived at this last point of the state of nature. Let us then go farther back, and endeavour to unify under a single point of view that slow succession of events and discoveries in the most natural order.
Man's first feeling was that of his own existence, and his first care that of self-preservation. The produce of the earth furnished him with all he needed, and instinct told him how to use it. Hunger and other appetites made him at various times experience various modes of existence; and among these was one which urged him to propagate his species — a blind propensity that, having nothing to do with the heart, produced a merely animal act. The want once gratified, the two sexes knew each other no more; and even the offspring was nothing to its mother, as soon as it could do without her.
Such was the condition of infant man; the life of an animal limited at first to mere sensations, and hardly profiting by the gifts nature bestowed on him, much less capable of entertaining a thought of forcing anything from her. But difficulties soon presented themselves, and it became necessary to learn how to surmount them: the height of the trees, which prevented him from gathering their fruits, the competition of other animals desirous of the same fruits, and the ferocity of those who needed them for their own preservation, all obliged him to apply himself to bodily exercises. He had to be active, swift of foot, and vigorous in fight. Natural weapons, stones and sticks, were easily found: he learnt to surmount the obstacles of nature, to contend in case of necessity with other animals, and to dispute for the means of subsistence even with other men, or to indemnify himself for what he was forced to give up to a stronger.
In proportion as the human race grew more numerous, men's cares increased. The difference of soils, climates and seasons, must have introduced some differences into their manner of living. Barren years, long and sharp winters, scorching summers which parched the fruits of the earth, must have demanded a new industry. On the seashore and the banks of rivers, they invented the hook and line, and became fishermen and eaters of fish. In the forests they made bows and arrows, and became huntsmen and warriors. In cold countries they clothed themselves with the skins of the beasts they had slain. The lightning, a volcano, or some lucky chance acquainted them with fire, a new resource against the rigours of winter: they next learned how to preserve this element, then how to reproduce it, and finally how to prepare with it the flesh of animals which before they had eaten raw.
This repeated relevance of various beings to himself, and one to another, would naturally give rise in the human mind to the perceptions of certain relations between them. Thus the relations which we denote by the terms, great, small, strong, weak, swift, slow, fearful, bold, and the like, almost insensibly compared at need, must have at length produced in him a kind of reflection, or rather a mechanical prudence, which would indicate to him the precautions most necessary to his security.
The new intelligence which resulted from this development increased his superiority over other animals, by making him sensible of it. He would now endeavour, therefore, to ensnare them, would play them a thousand tricks, and though many of them might surpass him in swiftness or in strength, would in time become the master of some and the scourge of others. Thus, the first time he looked into himself, he felt the first emotion of pride; and, at a time when he scarce knew how to distinguish the different orders of beings, by looking upon his species as of the highest order, he prepared the way for assuming pre-eminence as an individual.
Other men, it is true, were not then to him what they now are to us, and he had no greater intercourse with them than with other animals; yet they were not neglected in his observations. The conformities, which he would in time discover between them, and between himself and his female, led him to judge of others which were not then perceptible; and finding that they all behaved as he himself would have done in like circumstances, he naturally inferred that their manner of thinking and acting was altogether in conformity with his own. This important truth, once deeply impressed on his mind, must have induced him, from an intuitive feeling more certain and much more rapid than any kind of reasoning, to pursue the rules of conduct, which he had best observe towards them, for his own security and advantage.
Taught by experience that the love of well-being is the sole motive of human actions, he found himself in a position to distinguish the few cases, in which mutual interest might justify him in relying upon the assistance of his fellows; and also the still fewer cases in which a conflict of interests might give cause to suspect them. In the former case, he joined in the same herd with them, or at most in some kind of loose association, that laid no restraint on its members, and lasted no longer than the transitory occasion that formed it. In the latter case, every one sought his own private advantage, either by open force, if he thought himself strong enough, or by address and cunning, if he felt himself the weaker.
In this manner, men may have insensibly acquired some gross ideas of mutual undertakings, and of the advantages of fulfilling them: that is, just so far as their present and apparent interest was concerned: for they were perfect strangers to foresight, and were so far from troubling themselves about the distant future, that they hardly thought of the morrow. If a deer was to be taken, every one saw that, in order to succeed, he must abide faithfully by his post: but if a hare happened to come within the reach of any one of them, it is not to be doubted that he pursued it without scruple, and, having seized his prey, cared very little, if by so doing he caused his companions to miss theirs.
It is easy to understand that such intercourse would not require a language much more refined than that of rooks or monkeys, who associate together for much the same purpose. Inarticulate cries, plenty of gestures and some imitative sounds, must have been for a long time the universal language; and by the addition, in every country, of some conventional articulate sounds (of which, as I have already intimated, the first institution is not too easy to explain) particular languages were produced; but these were rude and imperfect, and nearly such as are now to be found among some savage nations.
Hurried on by the rapidity of time, by the abundance of things I have to say, and by the almost insensible progress of things in their beginnings, I pass over in an instant a multitude of ages; for the slower the events were in their succession, the more rapidly may they be described.
These first advances enabled men to make others with greater rapidity. In proportion as they grew enlightened, they grew industrious. They ceased to fall asleep under the first tree, or in the first cave that afforded them shelter; they invented several kinds of implements of hard and sharp stones, which they used to dig up the earth, and to cut wood; they then made huts out of branches, and afterwards learnt to plaster them over with mud and clay. This was the epoch of a first revolution, which established and distinguished families, and introduced a kind of property, in itself the source of a thousand quarrels and conflicts. As, however, the strongest were probably the first to build themselves huts which they felt themselves able to defend, it may be concluded that the weak found it much easier and safer to imitate, than to attempt to dislodge them: and of those who were once provided with huts, none could have any inducement to appropriate that of his neighbour; not indeed so much because it did not belong to him, as because it could be of no use, and he could not make himself master of it without exposing himself to a desperate battle with the family which occupied it.
The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a novel situation, which united husbands and wives, fathers and children, under one roof. The habit of living together soon gave rise to the finest feelings known to humanity, conjugal love and paternal affection. Every family became a little society, the more united because liberty and reciprocal attachment were the only bonds of its union. The sexes, whose manner of life had been hitherto the same, began now to adopt different ways of living. The women became more sedentary, and accustomed themselves to mind the hut and their children, while the men went abroad in search of their common subsistence. From living a softer life, both sexes also began to lose something of their strength and ferocity: but, if individuals became to some extent less able to encounter wild beasts separately, they found it, on the other hand, easier to assemble and resist in common.
The simplicity and solitude of man's life in this new condition, the paucity of his wants, and the implements he had invented to satisfy them, left him a great deal of leisure, which he employed to furnish himself with many conveniences unknown to his fathers: and this was the first yoke he inadvertently imposed on himself, and the first source of the evils he prepared for his descendants. For, besides continuing thus to enervate both body and mind, these conveniences lost with use almost all their power to please, and even degenerated into real needs, till the want of them became far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been pleasant. Men would have been unhappy at the loss of them, though the possession did not make them happy.

Hobbes - The Leviathan

Types of commonwealth

There are three (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy):
The difference of Commonwealths consisted in the difference of the sovereign, or the person representative of all and every one of the multitude. And because the sovereignty is either in one man, or in an assembly of more than one; and into that assembly either every man hath right to enter, or not every one, but certain men distinguished from the rest; it is manifest there can be but three kinds of Commonwealth. For the representative must needs be one man, or more; and if more, then it is the assembly of all, or but of a part. When the representative is one man, then is the Commonwealth a monarchy; when an assembly of all that will come together, then it is a democracy, or popular Commonwealth; when an assembly of a part only, then it is called an aristocracy. Other kind of Commonwealth there can be none: for either one, or more, or all, must have the sovereign power (which I have shown to be indivisible) entire.
And only three:
There be other names of government in the histories and books of policy; as tyranny and oligarchy; but they are not the names of other forms of government, but of the same forms misliked. For they that are discontented under monarchy call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it anarchy, which signifies want of government; and yet I think no man believes that want of government is any new kind of government: nor by the same reason ought they to believe that the government is of one kind when they like it, and another when they mislike it or are oppressed by the governors.
And monarchy is the best, on practical grounds:
The difference between these three kinds of Commonwealth consisteth, not in the difference of power, but in the difference of convenience or aptitude to produce the peace and security of the people; for which end they were instituted. And to compare monarchy with the other two, we may observe: first, that whosoever beareth the person of the people, or is one of that assembly that bears it, beareth also his own natural person. And though he be careful in his politic person to procure the common interest, yet he is more, or no less, careful to procure the private good of himself, his family, kindred and friends; and for the most part, if the public interest chance to cross the private, he prefers the private: for the passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason. From whence it follows that where the public and private interest are most closely united, there is the public most advanced. Now in monarchy the private interest is the same with the public. The riches, power, and honour of a monarch arise only from the riches, strength, and reputation of his subjects. For no king can be rich, nor glorious, nor secure, whose subjects are either poor, or contemptible, or too weak through want, or dissension, to maintain a war against their enemies; whereas in a democracy, or aristocracy, the public prosperity confers not so much to the private fortune of one that is corrupt, or ambitious, as doth many times a perfidious advice, a treacherous action, or a civil war.

Hobbes - The Leviathan

Part II: Of Common-wealth

The purpose of a commonwealth is given at the start of Part II: THE final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men when there is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants....

The commonwealth is instituted when all agree to: I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner.

The sovereign has twelve principal rights:

because a successive covenant cannot override a prior, the subjects cannot (lawfully) change the form of government.
because the covenant forming the commonwealth is the subjects giving to the sovereign the right to act for them, the sovereign cannot possibly breach the covenant; and therefore the subjects can never argue to be freed from the covenant because of the actions of the sovereign.
the selection of sovereign is (in theory) by majority vote; the minority have agreed to abide by this.
every subject is author of the acts of the sovereign: hence the sovereign cannot injure any of his subjects, and cannot be accused of injustice.
following this, the sovereign cannot justly be put to death by the subjects.
because the purpose of the commonwealth is peace, and the sovereign has the right to do whatever he thinks necessary for the preserving of peace and security and prevention of discord, therefore the sovereign may judge what opinions and doctrines are averse; who shall be allowed to speak to multitudes; and who shall examine the doctrines of all books before they are published.
to prescribe the rules of civil law and property.
to be judge in all cases.
to make war and peace as he sees fit; and to command the army.
to choose counsellors, ministers, magistrates and officers.
to reward with riches and honour; or to punish with corporal or pecuniary punishment or ignominy.
to establish laws of honour and a scale of worth.
Hobbes explicitly rejects the idea of Separation of Powers, in particular the form that would later become the separation of powers under the United States Constitution. Part 6 is a perhaps under-emphasised feature of Hobbes's argument: his is explicitly in favour of censorship of the press and restrictions on the rights of free speech, should they be considered desirable by the sovereign in order to promote order.

A modest proposal

[...] I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.