Symposium: the Great Books Symposium Journal
A Wright College Publication for Community College Students
Sean Ogilvy The struggle between faith and the consequences of its absence lies at the center of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866). From the novel’s outset, any reader possessing the slightest familiarity with the […]
Alannie Cervantes Some have argued that Hamlet lacks a desire for revenge in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c. 1599). However, his contemplative manner, stemming from his scholarly background, fosters a more vengeful disposition and enables a […]
Sergio Romero William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (c. 1599) and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment (1866) are two works that have been widely acclaimed for their complexity and depth. Despite having been written more than […]
Anneliese Bucher “God is change” is a founding principle of Earthseed, the belief system developed by Lauren Olamina in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993). Lauren creates a new philosophy that claims that […]
Gretta Komperda The Oxford English Dictionary cites agency as the “ability or capacity to act or exert power.” Contemporary audiences and feminist scholars are drawn to powerful literary female characters. Figures such Euripides’ Medea from […]
Tristan Bruns “I tend to think of human beings as huge, rubbery test tubes, too, with chemical reactions seething inside. When I was a boy, I saw a lot of people with goiters. […] Those […]
Muhammad Saeed The period in England from 1603 to 1625, known as the Jacobean era, can be characterized by a significant shift in the understanding of the human self. Following arguably two of the most […]
Dear reader, I am here to tell you what others will not: if you value the coherence of a limited worldview, stay away from the great books. If you, like Victor Frankenstein, presume that the […]
Gretta Komperda graduated from Wilbur Wright College in 2024 and is currently a rising senior at Amherst College studying Neuroscience and English Literature. While Amherst has been academically rigorous and fulfilling, she remains deeply grateful […]