5975 samples of this type
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of a mash-up poem created by mixing lines of two poems by José Olivarez and a song by The Beatles. The poems’ names are River Oaks Mall and You Get Fat When You’re in Love, and the song’s name is All You Need Is...
Trifles is a play written in 1916 by Susan Glaspell. It is categorized as feminist literature for highlighting how women are positioned in society as unimportant. The play carries a message for both males and females because it contrasts the women and men characters. It revolves around the murder of...
The whole plot of Twain’s novel is based on racism and the hypocrisy around white supremacy. David Wilson is a qualified lawyer; when he moves to Missouri, a small town in Downs landing, he is denied equal chances to practice his law skills. The whites view him as a less...
Imagery has a solid appeal to readers and is often used in poems to construct a sensual experience for readers. Poets seek to spark off the readers’ senses using figurative language that involves vivid and vibrant descriptions. According to DeGuzman, the aim is to enhance the reader’s experience of the...
Summary The short story “Desiree’s Baby,” written by Kate Chopin, touches upon various cultural, psychological, and philosophical topics. Within this story, Chopin discusses the issues of unconditional love, acceptance, self-identification, and race (Hassan and Tayib 139). The last problem has always been the severe obstacle to establishing understanding within different...
In the short story, How I Met My Husband, the author Alice Munro decries the imaginary love affair that a young girl has for an uninterested pilot. Eddie is working for the rich Peebles family who has just settled in the countryside. Both Dr. and Mrs. Peebles portray a little...
Two old stories that played a significant role in fate are the Aeneid and Gilgamesh epics. In these literary works, the protagonists Aeneas and Gilgamesh are obsessed with uncertainty, so these epic stories accurately reflect the ancient culture and society. From the story of fate, we can see that the...
Scholars have long debated whether or not Beowulf is a Christian allegory or a wholly pagan work with only a smattering of Old Testament allusions. This debate has lasted for the entire length of the epic. In biblical analysis, Cain’s image is often utilized as a metaphor to denote disorder...
Octavia E. Butler wrote a novel in 1993 that has gained popularity in the academic spectrum. It is a post-apocalyptic knowledge literature novel that addresses climate modification and socioeconomic inequalities (Iossifidis, 2020). Several people have ventured into the novel and strived to learn about the Earthseed area she created by...
Violence is the intentional use of physical power to threaten or cause harm to oneself or another. The essay features How to Read Literature like a Professor by Foster Thomas, The Things They Carried by O’Brien Tim, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, and Mallam Sile’s works to illustrate the theme...
It is important to note that identifying rhetorical situations and strategies is critical in order to comprehensively understand the underlying message behind a character’s speech. The key elements of such an assessment involve purpose, audience, speaker, and occasion, where the rhetorical strategies can be centered around pathos, logos, or ethos....
In “Earth Poem,” Darwish shares his love, grief, and expectations for the future in these Palestinian poems with other world peoples. Through his perceptive metaphors and detailed descriptions of the country, the author sounds the voice of the Palestinian Resistance. The main themes of his poetry are his nation and...
Water by the Spoonful is a play written by Quiara Hudes. The play narrates to the reader the story of the Iraqi war veteran and the group of drug addicts, including his biological mother. The author of this work raises several acute social problems, trying to address them through the...
Introduction It is complicated for young people to imagine that once upon a time, women and certain sections of society were deprived of the opportunity to get an education and their dream profession. Women, in accordance with paternalistic attitudes, had to work in the household and devote themselves to exhausting...
Comparing Tecumseh’s warlike uplifting speech with the poems of contemporary poet Sherman Alexie, one can find seemingly archetypal elements of the representation of the peoples of the Native Americans. Analysis and consistent comparison of these texts allows us to observe the deconstruction of the epic image of the Native American....
The Purpose It is a rather well-known fact that ancient tragedies were written in compliance with certain rules and components. One such component is anagnorisis, which is translated from Greek as recognition. The recognition scene is the one where the main character learns something extremely important and makes a startling...
The main character of the Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, is one of the most famous female characters in world literature. Heatedly condemning gender, social and cultural stereotypes, Elizabeth is a main figure of disobedience and pride. However, given the social mode of 19th century England, other models are available...
The Wars, written by Timothy Findley in 1977, is a novel that narrates the personal experiences of a young Canadian soldier amid World War I. As the narrative opens, we are introduced to Robert Ross. Following the tragic loss of his sister, Rowena, he decided to enroll in the army....
Brother, I’m Dying, a memoir by a famous Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, first published in 2007, is an outstanding literary work that pushes the boundaries of the genre. The author skillfully applies various elements of the memoir, conveying the life story of her family emotionally and consistently, alternating the course...
This paper will summarize the fifth article ‘Charlotte Brontë’s Circumvention of Patriarchy: Gender, Labour and Financial Agency in Jane Eyre’, by Owsley Lauren. The main argument is whether Jane Eyre functions as a primarily feminist text in the modern literary and gender discourse (Owsley). She does this by examining the...
For the most part, Daniel Deoe’s Robinson Crusoe tells a story of a man who lives on an island where the class of a person does not matter. Nevertheless, the concept of the middle class still plays a significant role in the book and its narrative. Robinson’s father is a...
American writers set themselves apart from their European counterparts due to their varying writing styles and focus on the continent’s development. One could determine that an individual is an American writer if their stories indicated a plot of decline. Writings such as The Great Gatsby begin on a high note,...
Irony can be a powerful instrument for a poet aiming to reflect on the current state of humankind. Although some of the most notable poems were written more than two centuries ago, the poets’ deep understanding of culture remains highly insightful. The movement from religion to science always has concerned...
A&P is a short story by the American writer John Updike published in 1962. It recounts an episode from the life of Sammy, a cashier working for the local A&P grocery store during the summer to help provide for his family. He contemptuously observes and narrates the inner life of...
Introduction The adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a controversial 19th-century humorous novel. Twain is “the leading humorist whom the United States has produced in any century” (Dudden, 1987, p. 38). Twain uses a variety of techniques to create a humorous atmosphere, which nevertheless hides a violent social satire. As with...
Introduction “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is a collection of interconnected short stories by Sherman Alexie, who published it in 1993 and added two new levels in 2003. It contains 22 short stories with the same characters, Native Americans living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The book’s...
Introduction “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” one of the first works to be associated with the name of William Shakespeare, doubtlessly is more than a story with a moral. It serves to illustrate the common laws of life, which work on human beings even without their understanding of them. In fact,...
“Out, Out” is a poem by the US poet Robert Frost published in Frost’s Mountain Interval collection in 1916, and based on the actual incident which occurred to the son of Frost’s friend. The poem starts in remote Vermont, where his sister calls a young boy chopping firewood with a...
In a society characterized by exponential change and gradually increasing complexity, those who act have greater power, especially those who can find self-determination and persistence to do so. Motivation is among the most valuable commodities, shaped by life experiences and inspiring behaviors to explore something new. In Alfred Lord Tennyson’s...
Tennessee Williams is a pen name of an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist Thomas Lanier Williams. He was born on the 26th of March, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, and died on the 25th of February, 1983, in New York City. Williams is one of the most renowned dramatists of the...
Introduction During his lifetime and after his death, William Faulkner was widely discussed both by the public and scholars. The latter’s contributions to the reception of this author were primarily connected to the discussion of the characters in his novels and stories, and, in the case of “A Rose for...
The subject of feminism is among one of the subtle and underlying themes of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley, the author of the story, primarily emphasizes the issues of male oppression and patriarchy through the use of subordinate women imagery. In addition, the fear of femininity and the power of womanhood can...
Introduction William Gibson’s story Burning Chrome depicts an advanced but soulless society where most technological advances are portrayed as distorted by commercialization and human mechanization rather than improving the quality of life. However, the main characters are depicted as completely dependent on technology. Technology is not only a global achievement...
Oedipus Rex is the masterpiece of ancient Greek literature attributed to Sophocles. This play is one of seven ones left undamaged, and the work describes Oedipus’s, the king, life path. The author pays considerable attention to the symbolism of different characters eyes and visions throughout the play. It is possible...
Introduction The problem of gender inequality has affected the relationships within society extensively, shaping people’s perceptions of themselves and the extent of their potential significantly. As a force that has caused multiple women to suffer injustice, gender inequality has been the center of numerous discussions and inspirations for artistic interpretations,...
From ancient times, people composed stories to entertain themselves and to teach others certain lessons. Over time, genres appeared to which each story could be assigned, which significantly facilitated the process of creation of new art since writers now had certain templates to build upon. Tragedy has always been recognized...
In “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, the waltz is used as a metaphor for describing the relationship between a father and his son. The readers are introduced to a visual flashback from the speaker’s childhood as to a night his father came back home intoxicated and proceeded to dance...
Introduction A manipulation is a form of influence that is neither rational nor coercion persuasion. This phenomenon can either be psychological or emotional, depending on what motivational factors are used. In most instances, it is aimed at achieving personal interests. Writers use the theme of deceit to teach the reader...
Introduction The poetic legacy of Robert Frost, as one of the foremost American poets of the 20th century, is rich and imbued with images and vivid stories. As an example, his poem “Birches” can be analyzed as a work that captivates the reader with its philosophical ideas about eternity and...
“The Broken Spears” is a fascinating and captivating book that provides an engaging and graphical account of the annihilation of Mexico by the Spanish. The book provides a more expressive and human perspective of the events of the military confrontation between the Spanish and Aztecs (Leon-Portilla 1992). This literary text...
In the Poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” by Phillis Wheatley, an in-depth interpretation will show that Wheatley contrasts dark vs. light imagery, and her use of language highlights race and religion. Furthermore, the author uses an ambivalent representation of the African race using the perspectives of white...
Classism is evident in the classical novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin on all levels. Social division is an obstacle shaped by the times that creates symbolic meanings worth discussing today. One of them is the role of class in a romantic relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy. A middle-class...
J.D. Salinger is one of the most intriguing figures in 20th century US literature. His only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is a worldwide bestseller. It is easy to read and understand, so readers can learn something useful from this literature even at a young age. The book covers...
Introduction Walt Whitman was a renowned American poet for his literary works and as a successor to Virgil, Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante. In his book, Leaves of Grass, he wrote poems that celebrated love, democracy, friendship, and nature (Turpin, 2017). This monumental work earned praise from the audience and influenced...
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most astonishing short stories that has been interpreted in numerous ways. Most notably, the work is considered to be an allegory due to the biblical image painted through the human foot crushing the head of a serpent (Saxton...
Both written pieces represent memoirs, which implies that those stories happened in real life, and it raises more exceptional emotions within the readers. Us and Them is a powerful piece discussing mindless beliefs and adaptation to something uncomplicated, like television. Sedaris’s purpose is to show how people are unable to...
Humanity has been striving for knowledge for centuries which became possible with the appearance of writing and books. Although even primary education was limited in many parts of the world in the past, people still sought education. Dai Sijie’s novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress tells the story of...
The Camel and His Friends is a short story, which was written as one of the five chapters of beast fables from India called Panchatantra. The story is attributed to a sage named Bidpai, who is thought to be the original narrator. In India, Bidpai is a legendary figure and...
Nathaniel Hawthorne is a renowned 19th century writer who combined romantic elements with science in his artistic works. For instance, in his stories, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “The Birthmark,” he emphasizes similar aspects revolving around human nature and its fascination for perfection (Resetarits, 2012). Hawthorne successfully integrates deep feelings such as...
Aguiar, Christian. Living class in John Updike’s “A&P”. The Explicator, vol.78, no. 2, 2020, pp. 58-61. Some analyses identify the specific variation of the short story interpretation referred to as the “living class” concept of Beverly Skeggs. It is known as a classism perception in A&P Story, another metaphoric tool...
Introduction A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen is considered one of the most prominent works of this influential Norwegian author. It tells the story of Nora Helmer, a young woman who goes from sacrificing her and her father’s reputation for her husband, Torvald, to becoming independent and free from her...
Introduction “The Persian Letters” are detailed accounts of the European experiences of two young Persians named Rica and Usbek. The intellectual tourists explore French manners and morality while their people rebel against the tyrannical authorities that have been subjected to years of misery. The seraglio, as defined in the text,...
In “The Masque of the Red Death” Poe uses a great symbolic work to depict fear of death and its inevitability for people. He has shown the unity of effect in the poem. According to Fletcher, he portrayed death in a form that destroys all the lifesaving plans of people...
Introduction Scientific fiction constitutes a fictional genre that addresses the effect accrued to imaginative innovation(s) which occur in science/technology, and several times in settings that are futuristic. It is different from fantasy within the story context due to the fact that its component of imagination is to a vast extent...
In his arguably the most illustrious artwork titled “Funeral Blues,” first printed in 1938, Wystan Hugh Auden presents a morose, sorrowful elegy that brilliantly outlines the feelings linked to grieving. The poet mainly talks about the immensity of pain through an unmentioned speaker experiencing great discomfort after his extensively cherished...
German myths have always been different from the overall European mythology. Aside from the setting, probably the most remarkable distinction is the hero. A shining example is Siegfried, who is a controversial figure in the medieval German narrative. He definitely acts with valor, fights the dragon, and dies at the...
Hospitality, the relationship between a host and a guest, is one of the most important themes that Homer portrays in his epic “The Odyssey”. In particular, Homer’s work provides excellent examples of how the ancient Greek societies had institutionalized hospitality. Indeed, hospitality was one of the most effective ways of...
Introduction The Odyssey is considered one of the first adventure novels in the history of humankind and a kind of encyclopedia of geographical representations of the ancient Greeks. Odysseus, in folk memory, is represented as a famous and even archetypal traveler. However, often readers forget that the legendary king of...
Introduction The novel Paradise was written in 1997, and it was Morrison’s first book after winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. Paradise stresses the affection of God, and it is the author’s third novel focusing on various kinds of love. All the chapters in the book are dedicated...
In her book “The House of Mirth”, Edith Wharton addresses several values that play an important role in the society of those days. One of the values, she discusses in detail and from different angles, is the value of responsibility to family and marriage. In the following paper, the influence...
Introduction A reliable narrator is a speaker in the story or test who can be trusted. It means that it can also be a person who has values close to the values of the author of the novel and can offer it to readers and other individuals. Thus, the discussed...
Jhumpa Lahiri tells a story of a female’s life in a new world in her short story “Hell-Heaven”. The author describes the experiences of a young Bengali woman who lives in the UK with her daughter and husband. The woman has to find her way in the patriarchal family with...
During many years, nearly two centuries, many literary critics and lovers of the literature are pointing out the great similarity between the works of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Some people approve that this is the one and the same person. Others claim that Marlowe is one of the predecessors...
Theme and Character Analysis Dagoberto Gilb’s story Love in L.A is an indication of how love in the modern society is considered. The story presents an ironic scenario of love in the modern society. Traditionally, two strangers would meet and after a short time of interaction, the strangers would fall...
Introduction The essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, written by a famous American humorist David Sedaris tells the story of a man on his way to learning French in a Paris school at the age of 41. The essay is full of emotions, personal struggles, and growth that speak to...
Introduction There are three critical themes explored in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children and Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. The three themes are a myth, fate, and prophecy. The authors of these two novels have vividly presented these themes through actions of the characters like Kafka, Saleem, Amina, Shiva, and...
Introduction Most talented authors have their own style, which is reflected in the topics, structure, and word choices of the writer. Stephen Jay Gould also has a “voice” in literature, which allows readers to recognize his work from the first lines and attracts most of them. This paper will explore...
Introduction Arguably, William Shakespeare’s works are a critical way of thinking about the different contemporary subjects existing today. In Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, various issues affecting society during the 16th century are discussed. Writers, historians, sociologists, linguists, and the public, in general, use Shakespeare’s works as a vital reference point and...
Introduction Poetry about nature and its features occupies a significant part of the world’s poetic heritage. At the same time, in addition to describing the world, many poets resort to the analysis of such a phenomenon as human nature that conveys aspects of people’s characters and their outlook on life....
Prewriting: Clustering Symbolism surrounds people in everyday life: it can be seen in certain colors like red for passion or aggression, culturally meaningful items such as rose as a symbol of love, etc. Symbols, as representations of certain ideas, exist to influence people’s opinions and directly or indirectly communicate a...
It is very early on a chilly morning that you wake up from bed and take a warm bath in the bathroom with water running out from the shower filter. You dress up in your cotton made clothes and decide to have a cup of brewed coffee before going to...
The concept of sight is one of the most complex metaphors used in the Greek tragic play “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles. As a metaphor, sight refers both to the literal meaning of seeing, as well as to the figurative sense of knowing and understanding. The relevance of this concept...
Any science is based on the analysis of evidence regarding diverse phenomena, individuals, or events. Historians try to unveil the secrets of the past by extracting information from different types of sources, including specific objects, documents, pictures, people’s accounts, and even literary works. Although the literature is associated with fictional...
Night by Elie Wiesel is one such book where the main character is forced to go through hardships in order to become a different person. It describes the difficult life of a Jewish boy who had to experience a horrifying experience of hunger, violence and losing someone he loves. Since...
Introduction Religion is a contemporary issue influencing civilization, morals, laws, and cultural societies globally. The American Born Chinese written by Gene Luen Yang’s narrates the experiences of immigrants in America using three different tales. This book conveys three major morals, which are resisting the urge to be assimilated, not denying...
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a depositary of themes that continue to fascinate readers and make literary critics argue about their expediency. The main hero’s desire for immortality is grounded both in the fear of decay and the man’s arrogance. Anticipating the failure of his struggles to find the secret...
Introduction Love, passion, and romance have always been an inherent part of human history, influencing individual lives and the stories of entire populations. The exploration of various sides of romantic relationships, therefore, lies at the core of the humanities’ research – it helps one understand how people acted towards each...
Rome and Greece are strongly identified with a culture, which credits heroes. The dynasties in ancient times would create their brave men and make them leaders who they believe in. The gallant notion has been passed on to generations through the word of mouth, to a point where it is...
“Lusus Naturae” by Margaret Atwood describes an unknown creature that everyone renounces at first glance. It is a girl with specific congenital syndromes that make her appearance strange and intimidating. The author uses Point of View (PV) to describe characters and set up a plot in which the main character...
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley was first published in 1818. It is now referred to as one of the first pieces of science fiction. The reception of the book was somewhat controversial, and literary critics’ views were mixed. John Wilson Croker’s review, published right after the novel...
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this first-person poem inspired by the Chamonix Valley landscapes near Geneva. The Romantic style of William Wordsworth significantly influenced Shelley’s poetry. The former applied a similar writing style by describing feelings and emotions with physical objects. The young Englishman visited the Arve Valley by Mont Blanc,...
Over the course of history, it has become clear that in a world replete with cruelty and mischievous triumph, people crave freedom even if it implies going as far as possible from the established behavioral norms and patterns. The undisputable eagerness to feel alive and find the new connotative meanings...
Fences written by August Wilson is a play that revolves around the conflict within an African American family that takes place in the year 1957 in Pennsylvania. The play’s title has a metaphorical meaning, and the unfinished fence the audience sees on stage symbolizes the uneasy relationship of the main...
The story about Frankenstein and his monster raises many questions. One of these questions is still unanswered. For example, people cannot decide what is more important in making a person, nature or nurture. The monster people were afraid of felt the beauty of the world with its “cheering warmth” and...
Introduction Reading the poem One Today, I think that the most important phrases start with the word “one.” One sun, one ground, one sky. These lines mean that all people in the USA live in one state, and they are all united by this fact. The author also refers to...
Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” presents a narrative between the author and her mother (470). The story tells of the conflicts and discrepancies between the US and Chinese cultures. The author employs the writing approach to discuss the two cultures since she is convinced that language acts as a powerful tool....
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is the most recognized play written by William Shakespeare and one of the most influential works in the history of world literature. The issue of revenge is the central theme of Shakespeare’s play, which concerns the main confrontation of two protagonists, Hamlet, and...
Introduction The short story A Good Man is Hard to Find, written by Flannery O’Connor, which holds the same title as her debut collection of short stories published in 1955, is deemed as her most disturbing work of fiction given its content. It is dark, and it centers upon two...
All conventional norms established by members of society have a specific purpose and a prevailing ideology as a basis. Generally, rules are created by a hierarchical elite based on an ideology that is either initially shared by the majority as in Orwell’s Animal Farm or eventually imposed on it as...
Introduction The main character of Battle Royal, a short story which was written by Ralph Ellison, describes the life of a young black man, who is forced to endure violent acts of racism towards him and other African-Americans. Even though it depicts the events from centuries ago, the issue that...
Introduction “Disgrace” by John Coetzee is a novel about loss, pain, and the efforts to reconcile with oneself. The main characters are disgraced and deprived of all dignity in different circumstances. Even though the characters David Lurie and Lucy Lurie have in common the suffering of facing traumatic sexual experiences,...
In Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish, the main character Edward Bloom is obsessed with water throughout his life. Water is the central theme of the novel, and it symbolizes the abundant life in which there are numerous possibilities of places to explore, challenges to face, people to meet, and ways to...
Love has always been an eternal resource of inspiration for poets. Sentimental and flattering, love helps to reveal the most hidden feeling and emotions. Therefore, the narrators use vivid poetic elements to describe this flourishing phenomenon. This paper seeks to explore how love is addressed in the poems “The Passionate...
Betty Keller’s essay Tea Party is one of her best works. It demonstrates the talent of the author as far as the reader may observe how many themes may be covered in such a short story (Betty Keller). This essay is like a hymn to the remote love between two...
Introduction The narrative opens with an exposition of the protagonist. The author describes the persona’s background as being one of discontentment characterized by envy for a better life. (Maupassant 4). However, the persona is only able to dream of her objects of envy as her life provides limitations. The opening...
“Oedipus the King” is an enigmatic tragedy account where fate makes the main character to kill his father and marry his mother unknowingly. Sophocles borrows heavily from Aristotles’ tragedy ideas to make a tragic hero with a noble personality who is made to fall by mere errors in life caused...
Introduction Conscience functions as a judge in one’s mind and thus plays a great role in defining individuals’ behavior. It also helps one to differentiate what is right and wrong. Conscience is a universal inner feeling that shows one the standards of laws required of them, which gets embedded in...
Introduction The current paper contains a discussion of the writing styles of two American writers Ernest Hemingway and Shirley Jackson whose works are now considered the classics of American literature. Some writers are influenced by others with a view to the chosen topics, manner of presenting facts and settings, the...
Introduction Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” is an illustration of the problems faced by Latin women in a culture laden with racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Society as depicted in the book is being dominated by men, while the Latin women are treated without equality, akin to second-rate beings....
Othello is one of the classical literary masterpieces written by William Shakespeare. Known as the dark-skinned Moor of Venice (Encarta Encyclopedia, 2002), Othello is a story of the mighty warrior whose life turned into a tragic downfall as he was corrupted by suspicion and jealousy over his wife Desdemona and...
Introduction Lewis Carroll, the author of the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, managed to illustrate the fantasy world being full of anthropomorphic creatures through the depiction of morality themes; the tale is considered to be a gradual way to self-recognition and values perception. It is necessary to underline the fact...
Emily Dickinson was a famous American poet. She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a brilliant family with respectable community ties. Despite that, she lived rather a solitary and isolated life. After graduating from the Amherst Academy, she entered a Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and returned home to Amherst. She...
It is undeniable that life for women during the Victorian period was very different from life for women living today. With the growth of the Industrial Revolution, women were able to find more opportunities to support themselves without remaining dependent on men, particularly within the cities. However, success was not...
The idea of excessive pride plays a monumental role in Greek tragedy. Pride in itself can be seen as a positive attribute, but when it is expressed in arrogance and defiance of fate and the gods, it becomes a fatal flaw that leads to downfall. Aristotle stated, “the tragic hero...
Supernatural power The Iliad by Homer in his character analysis uses supernatural strength to describe the development of the story. He uses Achilles to link a close relationship between humans and the gods. This superhuman strength describes the character as a warrior in the Achaean army. He uses this character...
Supplication or petitioning can be considered a kind of prayer where a person asking his superior for something. This prayer can be for himself or for someone else. The person who is making the supplication is referred to as a supplicant. Normally the supplicant is the inferior of the person...
Introduction Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a short story which reveals the dark side of human nature. It depicts the collective unconscious of the people of a village, of about three hundred people. The author brings them together to take part in an annual rite in the form of a...
The Role of Women During the 19th century, one major priority of women was marriage. In most cases women married for attraction and social status. It was hardly for true love. At times cases of happiness within the marriage context was purely based on whether the female was beautiful and...
The events of Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman take place in 1949, four years after the Second World War has come to an end. America is enjoying a postwar economic boom, but the World War has caused a shake-up in American society, changing the way people view business,...
The modern world is full of different points of view about failure and success. Different people think that success is a big family with ten children, the others consider success as a financial part of life, and some people think that it is a success when they have achieved something,...
Jack London, in his short story, To Build a Fire, narrates the tale of a lone, unnamed man who embarks on a mission of travelling along the banks of Yakun, on a treacherously cold winter morning, to a base camp where his boys are waiting for him. He is comparatively...
Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” depicts the inner struggle of a woman unbalanced by post-partum depression, a problem for which even today’s doctors have no treatment. Her husband and brother are both doctors who have her best interest at heart but whose recommended rest cure is based on the accepted...
Over the years, society has advanced to such an extent that we all live in a multi-cultural environment that seems to have enough space for everyone. However, with the growth, certain values, beliefs, and standards that have evolved with society have led to greater alienation of individuals within the society....
John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath harshly criticizes American culture during the years of the dustbowls. He suggests the hardships of the people were driven not by the environmental factors as much as it was by the capitalistic fixation on economic profit regardless of the cost to the common...
One of the most outstanding writers in the history of world literature, Mark Twain, was talented in describing people’s characters and nurturing inside them the truth of life experience and values that impact a person’s mindset and keep him safe from wrong in life. A teaching approach in his works...
Introduction The contest between men and women has always been one of the main struggles in the world. Both, men and women want to take dominant positions in the society. The times were changing and the influence was also different in different times. Matriarchy and patriarchy were present in the...
Introduction The story of Helen and Penelope in both works by Homer displays different destinies of the two most eminent heroines in terms of their participation in the development of actions shown in both books. In this respect it is necessary to admit that The Odyssey and The Iliad touch...
Introduction “The Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad is based on the Greenwich Bomb Outrage of 1894 when a man named Martial Bourdi, had, like Stevie Verloc, the main protagonist of “The Secret Agent”, killed himself setting off a bomb in Greenwich Park near the Royal Observatory. Thus, the terrorists in...
The short story Happy Endings written by Margaret Atwood is considered to be a selection of possible human relationships experienced between loving people. Margaret Atwood managed to create a story in which the readers are the mover of the plot. John and Mary, the protagonists of the tale, experience various...
Robert Browning is now viewed by many literary critics as one of the most prominent English poets and playwrights. Among his most famous works, it is possible to mark out the following ones: “My Last Duchess”, “Sordello”, “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” and many others. Yet, the dramatic poem “The...
In the twelve books of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the poet not only weaves an elegant story depicting the Biblical story of the fall from Eden and the nature of hell but presents his readers with a concept of God that remains somewhat ambiguous. Depending upon the way in which...
In all societies and all epochs, judging individuals by their appearance was a prevalent tendency, which normally allowed creating a first impression about the person, their possible nature, lifestyle, and behavior. However, there is a negative side to such practice, which consists of prejudices against those, who look different in...
The attitude towards death in the epic literature symbolizes the wish of people of those epochs to be heroic, ready to sacrifice their lives for the holy aims. Even literature of different epochs represents comparatively similar attitudes towards death. The Epic of Gilgamesh touches upon people’s nature profoundly and still...
Introduction In the two plays, “Oedipus Rex” and “Death of a Salesman” there are many parallels. One major parallel is courage and cowardice. The main characters of both plays are classic tragic men, and the themes center around the wisdom to see the truth and the courage to face it....
Introduction The Poem Dulce et Decorum Est and the story The Things they Carried are both about war, but more than fifty years apart. The geography and the weapons have changed, but the conditions are not that different. The men are much the same and war is as brutal as...
Introduction The novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald can be called a bitter satire to the American dream, which according to the ideas of the majority implies the heap of the happiness, which is missing to many, and in reality gold outer shell is converted into the empty...
There can be no doubt as to the fact that the title “Pride and Prejudice” suits Jane Austen’s novel much better than the original one – “First Impressions”, even though that this is not because the revised title corresponds more to the novel’s semantic properties. “Pride and Prejudice” implies high...
First of all, it is necessary to mention, that the novel, written in 1984, and describing the epoch of the VIII century touch upon the matter, that had been fluctuated humanity for centuries. The striving for immortality and eternity occupied the minds of the greatest philosophers and alchemists. While viewing...
It is generally agreed that different symbols tend to be used as the way of the author’s ideas’ interpretation. In case of Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”, blood might be one of the metaphors which is reclaimed as a reference for either genetic relationships or committed crimes and their consequences. That is...
Introduction Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane is one of the most famous realist novels, which stands in line with masterpieces like Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. This book tells the story of a girl who enters into an arranged marriage and eventually becomes its victim. The novel’s plot is centered...
The monsters are numerous and distinct in The Odyssey, serving as the main antagonists in the epic journey of Odysseus. They symbolize many things, from divine punishment to spiritual guidance and difficult choices. The beasts come in many forms: ruthless chthonic creatures like Scylla and Charybdis, more human-looking beings represented by...
The story “Because My Father Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock” opens with Victor, the story narrator, recalling his father’s past life, how he was thrown to prison for assaulting a Private member of National Guards during a peaceful demonstration....
The purpose of Candide according to Voltaire was to “bring amusement to a small number of men of wit”. (Aldridge 1975, p. 251–254) Voltaire’s biographer, Ian Davidson, describes Candide as “short, light, rapid and humorous”. (Davidson 2005, p. 54 52) Voltaire is positioned with Jonathan Swift as one of the...
Thesis of the Book The undeniable strength of great leaders has always governed world history. From the religious point of view, Moses is shown as such a special leader in the Holy Bible. His actions, perception, and knowledge make him a role model for current leaders, as well as for...
Introduction The epic poem, “The Odyssey” by Homer is a great work of literature that narrates the story of Odysseus as he returns to Ithaca from Troy. Due to the patriarchal nature of the Greek society, the reader observes that the relationship between father and son is a major subject...
The work of the American poetess Sylvia Plath is traditionally considered the birthplace of such a genre of poetry as confessional poetry. The name of the writer is not only well-known to the Western reader but became a kind of myth, embodying the tragic fate of a raging woman poet...
‘The Last Night of the World’ is a short story by Ray Bradbury written in a genre of speculative fiction. It presents an evening dialogue between spouses who are drinking coffee and watching their daughters play on the rug. It is an entirely ordinary evening except for the dream they...
Introduction Death of a Salesman is a stage play that was written in 1949 by Arthur Miller, an American playwright and literary activist who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play is a famous piece of art, which is considered as one of the best theater works of...
Introduction The Great Gatsby is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which was first published in 1925. The work is a recognized classic of American literature with the characteristic idea of that era – a dream that transforms into a tragedy eventually. Detailed characters and the irony of human relationships...
It is not a rare occasion that authors include some details from their personal life in their works. Sometimes, they explicitly remark that a book or a story is autobiographic. In other cases, writers entitle their characters with some features pertaining to themselves. Finally, there are also situations when nothing...
Billy Collin’s poem The First Dream is clearly an expression of the feeling one has when one tries to explain an abstract experience. In Collin’s case, the abstract experience is a dream. Arguably, people tend to distance themselves from mystery as human beings tend to prefer real-world occurrences that can...
Introduction The book The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry presents a detailed model for understanding poets’ artistic styles and their precursors. Since its publication in 1973, it has remained a source of argument or debate among literature students and educators. This short essay gives a personal reflection of...
Introduction The concept of capital punishment is a highly controversial and widely discussed subject. The article discusses the topics of atavism, arbitrary condemnation, and sanctioned violence. The author makes an attempt to argue that capital punishment can be abused in someone’s interest because the victim will no longer have a...
Introduction It is worth noting that the book The Things They Carried is a series of stories about the life of American servicemen that was written in an ironic tone. The work created by Tim O’Brien reveals the physical and mental traumas experienced by soldiers during the war (Liu 57)....
Introduction Myths and works of ancient literature based on these myths represent archetypal heroes who have to cope with obstacles and challenges on their life paths that are viewed as universally common. The most vivid example of an archetypal hero is Odysseus presented by Homer in his epic poem The...
Introduction The Necklace is a short story written by French writer Guy de Maupassant at the end of the 19th century. In the story, the main character Mathilde Loisel lives a humble life of a middle-class housewife believing that she is meant to be rich. She borrows a diamond necklace...
The power of classic literature and dramaturgy is in their ability to withstand the influence of time and remain relevant for society even after years since creation. This assumption might be applied to Henrik Ibsen’s play titled “The Doll’s House.” It was written at the end of the 19th century...
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” is one of the more famous works of the author. It tells the story of a grotesque plague that is sweeping the land. Instead of dealing with it, Prince Prospero gathers a thousand of his friends and travels to...
This is an American story by William Faulkner. It revolves around the burning of barns where this article will major on the burning of the first barn. The themes of this short story are class conflicts, racism, vengeance, betrayal, father influences, etc. The characters of the stories are Sartoris Snopes...
Hamlet is one of the most significant works by Shakespeare. More so, this is one of the most famous plays in the world literature. The author considers various important issues and this makes the play so influential. This play makes people think of some of the most meaningful issues. Some...
