I cannot say definitively what marks the works we've read up to this point as contemporary other than the fact that they were written more recently but I can say for sure that the essay I just read by Montaigne is certainly antiquated. I found it to be utterly incomprehensible. I'm still not sure if what I just read is a story or just a long pretentious display of run on sentences separated by entirely too many comas. It read like a bombastic list of archaic places, names and big words that I honestly was able to take nothing away from. It is because of works like this that I am glad we have blogs so I can express my feelings about them since I feel like I could never say this to a teachers face for they would call me ignorant or dumb, which I am not. I just cannot enjoy that which I cannot understand.
On the other hand, Orwell's story Shooting an Elephant was a tremendously enjoyable reading experience for me. It was written in plain, simple English. It delt with a real, tangible situations and human emotions that I can relate to. Not only was it an interesting story ostensibly but it dealt with much deeper issues; such as serving as a satire for oppressive tyrannical empires. It was also cathartic of real personal issues and emotions we all deal with everyday such as peer pressure, anger, fear, guilt and shame. The details were vivid. I felt like I was right there in the protagonist's shoes as he felt pressured into shooting the elegant beast and I shared in the terrible pity he felt after shooting the poor creature. It captured my attention from start to finish and moved me deeply which is something I wish I could say for the previous work.