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Happiness: a Compulsory Choice

Have you ever reflected upon the way in which happiness is worshipped in our contemporary societies? Have you ever stopped to consider that this obsessive quest for happiness may be making us extremely miserable? In this essay we tackle this issue and present the ideas of some authors that have thoroughly analysed it.

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Close Reading: Analysing a Simile in McCall Smith’s Text

In this short text, we analyse an excerpt from Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to reflect upon the effectiveness of literary devices in order to convey different themes, feelings or thoughts.

«We don’t forget, thought Mma Ramotswe. Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are. And who am I? I am Precious Ramotswe, citizen of Botswana, daughter of Obed Ramotswe who died because he had been a miner and could no longer breathe. His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people?»

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith

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