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Robert Louis StevensonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Requiem” is something of a war poem in that it is a verse bravely launched against two opposing forces that in the closing decades of the 19th century fiercely contested for the heart and soul of the British people, indeed of Western civilization itself: religion and science. “Requiem” challenges both, mocks both, endorses neither, and ultimately offers a vital alternative, a way out of the hokey dead-end, no-win High Noon dramatics of these two diametrically opposing worldviews.
Ironically, everything about “Requiem” would anger the Judeo-Christian community that provides the poem’s title and that had, for millennia, executed the Requiem service as a way to affirm a grand, cosmic purpose to existence. The Requiem service was designed as a sober celebration of passage, the body at last relinquishing its tight hold on the soul that was free now to seek its greatest reward, its greatest translation. Live fully and purposefully, the argument went, as a way to enjoy the consolation and reward of the afterlife. Every effort, every move, every decision in a person’s life, no matter how small, had consequence, cosmic consequences, because of the God who demands in the end transparency and insists on accountability accountability that has caused some to view the Judeo-Christian God as an omnipotent Accountant-God, the all-seeing Divine Bookkeeper.
By Robert Louis Stevenson
At the Sea-Side
At the Sea-Side
Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson
Markheim
Markheim
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Black Arrow
The Black Arrow
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Bottle Imp
The Bottle Imp
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Land of Counterpane
The Land of Counterpane
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Master of Ballantrae
The Master of Ballantrae
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson