Book of Revelation

Question

QUESTION

1. In the following illustration to the Book of Revelation, to what extent does William Blake rework and revise the text and why? Your analysis should pay attention to composition, color and the postures of the figures. 

William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun, watercolor on paper, 1805

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2. What compositional devices does the illustrator Gustave Doré use to communicate and suggest John’s authority as the divinely inspired author of the text? 

Gustave Doré, “St. John at Patmos,” steel engraving, illustration for the Book of Revelation, 1866 

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3. How does the visual patterning and composition of the painting reproduced below let us “read” the painting as an apocalyptic story?

John Martin, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, oil on canvas, 1852

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4. What about the painting reproduced below allows it to be read as a vision of the apocalypse? Your analysis should pay attention to composition and color. 

Georg Grosz, Metropolis, oil on canvas 1911-1917

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5. How does the following silkscreen by Andy Warhol both engage with or refuse apocalyptic images and narratives? You should also comment on Warhol’s choice of medium (silkscreen on canvas).

Andy Warhol, Atomic Bomb, silkscreen on canvas, 1965

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6. This is the final image of Train to Busan. In the course of a detailed analysis of this image, discuss the extent to which the frame connects to story structures and patterns we have seen identified with catastrophic disasters.

Train to Busan, directed by Yeon Sang-ho, South Korea, 2016

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7. Using the passage below, discuss the meaning of the title Severance in relation to the text. You should also consider the use of first-person narration, imagery and tone.

As I drive farther downtown, Milwaukee Avenue becomes more congested, denser with rusting vehicles, taxis and buses that never reached their destination, until it becomes difficult to go farther. It’s as if they all abandoned their cars during a giant rush hour. I am forced to drove off-road on the sidewalks, bypassing clumps of cars. The pileup stretches for what seems like a mile. The Nissan emits a groan. The fuel light blinks furiously.

Still I keep pressing on, at a painful crawl. Up ahead, a tower crane has toppled onto the trisection, smashing all the streetlights and cars, blocking several routes. It is the cause of the frozen traffic. I attempt to maneuver around the fallen crane and turn onto the only street that isn’t blocked off. I’m not on Milwaukee anymore. The car manages another few blocks, until it stops with a lurch. I hit the gas hard, but it only makes a terrible sound in protest, then nothing. The engine stops.

Silence. It’s dead.

Up ahead, there’s a massive littered river, planked by an elaborate, wrought-iron red bridge. Beyond the bridge is more skyline, more city.

I get out and start walking.

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8. Comment in detail on the passage from Ragnarök. You should discuss the role of reading in the text and analyze imagery, narration andsentence structure.

She still read in bed at night, returning often still to Asgard and the Gods, and to The Pilgrim’s Progress, lying on her stomach on her bedroom doorway to catch the landing light on the pages, creeping back like a snake if she heard movements below. The blackout was over. Moonlight came in through her bedroom window and wild shapes flailed and gesticulated across the ceiling, whiplashes, brooms, rearing serpents, racing wolves. When she was very little she had feared them. Now she watched them with delight, and made stories and creatures from them. They were made by the wind in the branches of a wild ash tree that had planted itself, as those trees most tenaciously do, on the sill of the garden shed.

9. Use the page from Watchmenprovided below and analyze the paneling, layout, imageryand visual and verbal themes of the page in detail.   

10. Choose any two of the “lone survivor’s” tales from The Tales and comment in detail on the connection between the two tales you have selected and the themes of warfare and apocalyptic destruction in the text. You may also want to consider the connection between story-telling and the apocalypse.