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Our shared humanity has many strengths, but also many flaws. Literature is a mirror which reflects these attributes, this is exemplified in countless scenarios throughout our society. Mirroring our human qualities is vital to understanding how our society functions and to ‘wake’ people up about what we need to improve on and change. We see Mordor from ‘The Lord of The Rings’ reflecting our flaws through greed and propaganda, the strengths of Romeo and Juliet meeting together even in times which are forbidden, and finally how the pigs from Animal farm portray how power corrupts. The well-known book series ‘The Lord of The Rings’ is a text which powerfully reflects our shared humanity. Mordor makes direct connections to Nazi Germany; we see both using propaganda to control and manipulate not just their citizens but other people from across the book. Manipulation use throughout the text is personifying our societies flaws, exemplifying how power persuades and corrupts everyone eventually. “Smeagol will swear on the Precious.” (Gollum, The Two Towers) In this quote Gollum is proving that the ring has taken control of him, he calls it “precious” and swears his life on it. The ring is a depiction of power and greed, epitomizing it’s affect on everyday people. Another direct reflection is when Gollum is tortured to gain information on Frodo’s whereabouts. They are torturing another living soul just for greed and power, this powerfully portrays how inhumane people will be just for any amount of power. When given the opportunity to gain power our society will lean towards greed over other people’s wellbeing, J.R.R Tolkien perfectly mirrors these flaws proving how literature reflects our strengths and flaws. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a timeless novel which epitomizes our societies characteristics transforming them into a flawless play. When Romeo and Juliet meet up for the first time it is representing our society testing its boundaries of how far we can go, this then turns into a true fight for love even when it is denied. “Under loves heavy burden do I sink.” (Romeo act 1 scene 4) Romeo is showing the world how love is affecting him, even because of this he continues to fight for love. This fight sparks new hope throughout the play inspiring many characters to question what they are even fighting for; this is seen at the end in many iterations of the play where the two families come as one to make the fight worth something. These star-crossed lovers are mirroring our societies strengths by showing us how we need to stand up to the useless fights and come together. This is especially apparent in the world currently with the Russo-Ukrainian War, although a much smaller scale Romeo and Juliet are trying to tell us that none of it is worth fighting for, as everyone is just losing eventually. These lovers are illustrating the way our society should function, they are proving to us that there is still strength in our shared humanity. One of the most famous books of all time ‘Animal Farm’ is a direct symbolization of our humanities flaws. The pigs are presenting to us how people can change just because power corrupts, at the start of the book the pigs are truly trying to help the farm have better conditions as they are being tortured on a day-to-day basis. But, once the Old Major dies the pigs start to give themselves more and more power to ensure they can control as much as possible, they drive out the humans making sure that there will be no one to rule over them, they then write laws that no one agreed to. Eventually we see the pigs going back to the lifestyles of the things they swore to destroy, the humans, they are sleeping in their beds, drinking their alcohol, torturing their animals, and all of this because they want to just reap the rewards of the farm. We see them selling their crops away so they can buy materials for their Napoleon Mill, and finally we see them sending Boxer to the Glue factory. "Napoleon is always right." (Napoleon Chapter 5) this is a perfect example of Napoleon bending the truth to make sure everything goes his way, he is also cementing his power. They use these to show strength and power when really, they are all suffering because of it, they use the sheep who are simple minded animals and take advantage of them for the use of propaganda. Boxer, the hardest worker of them all, who worked overtime everyday just been thrown away like he was nothing. These examples all prove how even the kindest of people will corrupt when given absolute power, this embodies our societies flaws as these are based of real-world events, showing us how people change because of our flaws. Literature is a mirror which reflects our shared humanities strengths and flaws. This statement is completely true, we have seen this throughout our society in many more examples than just these 3. We see how authors transform our real-world emotions and events into stories that will symbolise us as a whole. These stories take our strengths and flaws and transforms them so our humanity can look into a metaphorical mirror and see what there is that we need to improve on. Authors using how power corrupts, the hardship of love, and real-world events to manifest something that truly reflects our human attributes.