The University of New Mexico Best Student Essays

English

The Words of Unhappiness

By Melissa Hobbs
The search for happiness is the driving force in Samuel Johnson’s _History of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia_. By examining the two core words, _quiet_ and _novelty_, and exploring the lexicon used in relation to each, it becomes apparent that man cannot be happy in _Rasselas_ because the dual qualities that afford happiness are actually in fundamental conflict with each other.

Playing Dead: The Tomb-Trick and Its Various Effects

By Matthew Pridham
Of the many disguises adopted by characters in Shakespeare’s plays, one is most natural. One is always, indeed, a prefiguration of a guise every character must one day authentically wear: the appearance of death.

Lighting as a Creation for Darkness

By Alison Rodriguez
Film noir is a popular genre and style of film that has a pessimistic view of the American society in the 1940s and 1950s and expresses the hopelessness of good morals in a hostile world.

A French Trying to Understand American Football

By Pierre-Yves Barbeau
The game was to start in fifteen minutes and everyone got in line to enter the stadium. The line was incredibly long, running all along the fence of the back parking lot.

The Sensitive Editor and Ezra Pound

By Gerard Hebert
I took a fiction workshop as an undergraduate, and I remember the mantra that my instructor forced upon me: nouns and verbs, nouns and verbs.