The paper, William Golding: A Pessimistic Moralist: A Study of His Novels confirms the thesis that William Golding is caught in the ineluctable paradox between pessimism and morality; therefore, his view of man combines the duality of his vision. As a pessimist, Golding believes man is selfish, willful, egocentric and morally irresponsible. As a moralist, he perceives a faint hope that a change in behaviour and a re-awakening of moral responsibility is possible if man (in the case of Golding, this paper argues, he means his reader) is forced to see into himself. This dissertation shows how Golding's novels illuminate man's destructive actions and his willful decisions which reveal his nature. Through the vision of man presented in his novels, this dissertation argues, Golding hopes the reader will be persuaded to alter his own behaviour. The focus of the dissertation concerns how Golding's vision of man is revealed by three basic techniques that thread and unify all his novels. First, he creates distant and fabulous settings which correspond to Golding's moral ideas. He concentrates on creating real worlds out of unreal settings where his characters may reveal their true dark natures. Second, the paper discusses how Golding patterns each novel by developing distinct and separate symbols and metaphors that command and control each novel. The idea of darkness within man expresses Golding's vision and this paper shows how darkness as a term and as a vision filters throughout all his works tying them together. Third, Golding is concerned with the concept of reversal. As discussed within this paper, Golding reverses known stories or myths, and he shifts or alters his point of view at the conclusion of each novel. He shifts from the protagonist to an indifferent and distant observer. These reversals focus on Golding's vision and are meant to persuade the reader to see how man should behave, not simply how he does behave.

Because of the significant and sensitive role of verb tenses in learning English, the current study examined the occurrence of the twelve verb tenses that native writers (NWs) utilized in their selected academic papers at the college level. In doing so, the study created a baseline of relative frequency of verb tense usage that may benefit further studies, especially those connected with the teaching grammar to English learners. The main linguistic items targeted for tabulation in this study were the 12 verb tenses, modals, perfect modals, and imperatives. These items were elicited from an original corpus of 31 research papers written by undergraduate students studying at UCF. The total size of this original corpus is 103,181 words, with the length of papers varying from 1,964 words to 6,676 words. In order to analyze the data and facilitate a more accurate counting process, the researchers used a code coloring method. The results revealed that the most frequently used tenses were present simple, past simple, modals, and present perfect, while future progressive, future perfect, and past and future perfect progressive were almost never used by NWs. These findings could contribute toward the development of the methodology of teaching verb tenses as well as help English learners to comprehend and master this important grammatical area. The pedagogical implication of these results is in improving the teaching of the verb tenses to English learners, as it accentuates the difference between which of the twelve verb tenses could be given more class time as well as those that could be given less attention.

The aim of this thesis is to compare works of drama regarding the suffering of the human being in the context of life and literature and in relation to the issue of justice, which revolves around the impact of Justice, Humanity and God. My aim is to look at the development of the genre of suffering starting with the Ancient Near Eastern Literature, to define the genre in its development and to characterise its features in the various literatures discussed, especially with respect to the Book of Job. The book of Job is well known for its input in world literature on the theme of suffering. It is therefore important to trace the genre of suffering from its literary origins in the ancient near east and from there to Job. Hence, I will look at ancient works on suffering from Sumeria, from Babylon and from Egypt, and then at the book of Job. I will compare and examine the differences in their approaches and their understanding of God and of justice.

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Though literature and literary study have needed defense for most of their respective histories, the current crisis in academic literary study and the humanities more generally has forced scholars into the uncomfortable position of selling their disciplines and simultaneously warning students about the risks involved in earning what the dominant public considers to be "useless" degrees. The paradox, of course, is that dissuading would-be studiers is both ethical and destructive: it is necessary to inform students of the frightful instability of careers in literary study, but doing so renders such careers even more unstable. While some argue that the decline of the discipline is a result of practices within the discipline, I suggest that the root of the problem lies in the dominant discourse, which forces scholars to defend the discipline according to dominant notions of success. Using Frank Lentricchia's "Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic" as a hinge between discussions of the value of literary study and elaborations of the antisocial thesis in queer theory, I contend that the discipline is not socially valued for the same reason it is socially valuable: it facilitates the pleasure of experiencing and envisioning new possibilities in and through the circulation of discourse. Since this aim does not (easily) translate into wealth accumulation or employability, it does not read as "success" and therefore the discipline has difficulty being socially valued. Rather than explaining the various benefits of earning a degree in literature, I argue that the discipline should embrace (its) failure as both a challenge to and re-imagining of dominant notions of success. / English