6038 samples of this type
Introduction “On Being Brought from Africa to America” is one of the most famous poems written by Phillis Wheatley. The author’s experience as a small child who was sold into slavery and taken to the American colonies in 1761 is described in the poem. Wheatley makes the case in this...
Introduction In the translated poem “We Are Many” by Pablo Neruda, the speaker delves into identity and the challenge of self-discovery amid life’s intricacies. Through vivid imagery and a sense of self-deprecation, Neruda conveys the idea that societal expectations and personal insecurities often overshadow one’s true self. The poem reflects...
Abstract By presenting the way unfilled love impacts a person, Jhumpa Lahiri makes an attempt to show how important it is to make an alliance between people based on mutual feelings. Through the character Aparna, the author shows how a woman who finds herself in an arranged marriage experiences a...
Summary In “An Old Woman Remembers,” by Eulalia Perez, the author describes life in the California missions around the turn of the 19th century. Eulalia Perez’s narrative gives a distinctive viewpoint on the missionary system and sheds light on how women—especially widows like herself—are seen in these communities. This story...
Introduction Neil Gaiman’s short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” was nominated for a Hugo Award, won the Locus Award, and is now a film, despite being previously seen as a failure and being rejected inclusion in the anthology for which it was written. Reading Gaiman’s books is...
Introduction Nancy Mairs is a renowned author and disability rights advocate whose work has been recognized for its frankness and willingness to tell her story to increase recognition in the disability community. Despite several severe disabilities, this person has achieved excellence in education and has become a prominent author. Mairs...
Introduction The discussion in this essay will revolve around the short story, Young Goodman Brownwritten by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Four voices—those of the narrator, author, characters, and readers—dominate the narrative, as is evident from once. These voices besides helping control the events of the story are critical in communicating the author’s...
Introduction Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a famous and exciting novel addressing a few essential themes. For example, the literary piece addresses the topics of love, slavery, masculinity, and the supernatural. The author managed to focus on the life of the protagonist, Sethe, to demonstrate what challenges people experienced after the...
Introduction “Hills Like White Elephants” is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story takes place in a train station in Spain, where an American man and a woman are waiting for their train and having a conversation about a crucial issue in their relationship. The story is considered...
Introduction While Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish” may seem too simple or meaningless, only describing the lyrical hero’s fishing experience, it is actually a quite deep and impactful literary work. The poem illustrates how an ordinary situation can change one’s views or intentions. All living creatures, even different kinds of...
“Ode with a Lament” uses imagery and metaphors effectively to convey themes of death, sorrow, and brokenness. The speaker compares the woman’s skin to “a bell filled with grapes”, an image of illness that prompts the reader to readjust any presumption of the relationship at hand. In a world of...
In Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno, Dante and Virgil continue their descent into the 8th circle of Hell – the one that hosts all sinners who deceived those who did not trust them. Here, in the 8th bolgia, where to sit counselors of fraud, they meet the famous Greek hero...
Introduction It is important to note that Bacigalupi’s book titled The Water Knife is an outstanding piece of dystopian storytelling, where the essential commodity for human survival is made scarce. Water is a major source of value for the three key states involved, which include Nevada, Arizona, and California. Due...
Introduction King Lear is a play written by William Shakespeare and originally published in 1606. It is the story of the old king of Britain who needed to give up his power to his daughters. Having no experience identifying people’s true beliefs, he is deceived by the hypocritical praise of...
Introduction The context of the modern Netherlands and Europe, in general, is shrouded in the pathos of protecting personal information. Many people, unfortunately, do not realize that modern corporations can easily use their data, as users of social networks and the Internet are often indifferent to this. The central surveillance...
Aeneas is the main character of the Aeneid; he is the son of Trojan ruler Anchises and Venus, the Roman goddess of fertility and beauty. In IV’s book of Aeneid, he is depicted as “the most handsome of them all,” who “walks, as lightly, beauty like the god’s shining from...
Introduction The book’s exposition takes us to the time of the Nazi concentration camps and tells about Simon and his friends’ life and hard work. Simon, Adam, Artur, and Jozek are Jews who work in a section of a concentration camp where medical waste is thrown out to prisoners. They...
The story of The Kite Runner begins in the pre-war Afghan city of Kabul in the 70s, where there were children who did not know what shelling and explosions were. A favorite pastime and, at the same time, a very serious matter for all the residents were kite competitions (Hosseini)....
Introduction In literature, poetry is a truly unique phenomenon since, unlike the rest of the genres, it does not seek to tell a story; instead, its purpose revolves primarily around conveying a specific message and appealing to the reader’s emotions. Therefore, the thematic richness of a poem is inevitably connected...
The novel Atonement by Ian McEwan is a romantic war tragedy metafiction that follows Cecilia and Robbie’s lives as the protagonist. They experience conflicts trying to fulfill their dream of eternal love and separate, shutting down all their achievements. McEwan intertwines irony and symbolism to explore the theme of love...
The “Questions of King Milinda” is a Buddhist text written between 100 B.C – 200 B.C. It is a fictional dialogue between the Buddist Sage Nagasena and the Greek King Milinda. Although it is not included in the Pali Canon, it is cherished because it addresses Buddhism’s most complicated questions...
Ode on a Grecian Urn is doubtlessly on the list of the best-known poetic works by John Keats, a British romanticist of the early 19th century. In the writing under review, the author, presumably, seeks to express his perspective on what messages art is able to transmit. In addition, he...
The English Patient is based on the love story between the mysterious English patient who later turned out to be Hungarian Desert Adventurer László, and Clifton’s wife, Katharine Clifton in the years before the Second World War. Burnt badly after an amnesia-stricken aviation accident, Almásy is taken to a fortuitous...
Introduction Contemporary American literature is largely dominated by white male authors. These authors are limited in their empathy and imagination by their own experiences and inherent privilege that comes with being on the top of the social hierarchy. Therefore, they were unable to authentically portray the lives, thoughts, and experiences...
When I began to read The Odyssey, I had some background knowledge of the events and characters described by the author. For example, as a student, I read about the myths created in ancient Greece, and the characters always described by Homer fascinated me. For example, I can speak about...
Many people associate drug abuse with antisocial behavior such as crime. However, drugs do not necessarily lead to such behavior. In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” drugs, such as marijuana, alcohol, and heroine enhances creativity and also enables self-discovery. Alcohol and marijuana enhance the communication between the...
Folk tales are an integral part of the culture of any nation. These stories were passed down from generation to generation and were constantly interpreted depending on the time period. It is essential to understand that each folk tale carried a special message, which was instructive in conception. In other...
Introduction In “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant depicts Mathilde’s character transformation through her interactions with various settings. Discussion The protagonist begins the story as an unhappy woman dissatisfied with her life and longs for wealth and luxury. However, as the story progresses and Mathilde experiences the consequences of her actions,...
The novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson tells the reader about the girl Melinda who entered high school. People begin to understand why the story has such a name. This is a story about a girl who, due to certain circumstances, became very close and stopped trusting people. The book...
Nowadays, many peaceful adults go to war not out of ideological convictions but only for the sake of saving their children and ensuring they have a brighter future. Kids should be valued and protected all over the world, both by their relatives and strangers. However, this view was not shared...
The book focuses on contemporary communication problems, considering the philosophical and historical context. The central problem of this work is the excessive use of communications by people in the modern world and the dynamics associated with this problem. Powers uses observations and statistics relevant to the modern world combined with...
When poetry and prose are compared, it is sometimes difficult to find common ground in tone, theme, and syntax. However, for Ashley Hope Perez’s “What Home Is” and Alice Walk’s “The Flowers,” which are a poem and short story, respectively, the connection can be built in terms of these three...
Introduction Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, The Birthmark, centers on the relationships between Aylmer, the brilliant scientist and alchemist, and his wife, the beautiful Georgiana. Despite the story’s main focus on Georgiana’s mysterious birthmark, the author explores many themes by explaining the main character’s thoughts and perceptions. Moreover, even though the...
Introduction Two German brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, penned the Cinderella tale in 1812 that showcases success despite life’s obstacles. The tale points out how parents should be a symbol of protection to their children, but this is contrary to the tale’s significant happenings that depict negligence. The parent stays...
Notably, Homer’s Iliad is the oldest extant work of Greek literature. Schein (2022) emphasizes that the artifact is most likely the outcome of extraordinarily sophisticated procedures that involved both orality and writing, resulting in the creation of a fixed manuscript in the late eighth century. In historical terms, the heroic...
Kenzaburo Oe, the author of the book “Teach us to outgrow our madness,” has displayed several ways to uphold our passion and original vision for things. A fascinating account of the 1964 Christmas Eve party at Yukio Mishima’s house, where Nathan first met Oe and fellow novelist Kobo Abe, serves...
Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry remains rather controversial to many modern literary critics. Many consider her an outstanding poet that is attentive to detail, while others believe that the author’s lack of much literary production makes it difficult to analyze her poetry. It is also criticized that Bishop had no personal experience...
Introduction “The Lady with the Dog” is one of the most famous short stories by Anton Chekhov. This Russian author is famous for his prose works that perfectly address and describe such essential issues as mood, character, feelings, and settings. Numerous international critics and experts highly appraise Chekhov’s short stories...
Essay Summary In the essay under analysis, the author examines the play Oil by Ella Hickson through the lens of postcolonial ecocriticism and such concepts as environmental activism, place, and borrowed time. The writer introduces the playwright and briefly describes the play, its structure, and style, giving an example of...
Introduction David Walliams employs imagination and humor to highlight the relationship between adults and children at a hospital. The story has irresistible characters and highlights many relatable issues that cannot be forgotten. The author further uses different themes to perfectly present his message. Additionally, his work acts as a clarion...
A Farewell to Arms, an Ernest Hemingway novel, has a distinctive anti-military rhetoric. While the war is not directly condemned, its atrocities are described vividly, showing that something wrong is happening. Its main character, Frederic Henry, is an American lieutenant serving in the Italian Army ambulance during World War I....
Introduction Joyce Carol Oates and Maya Angelou are two American writers whose works are translated into different languages and known all around the globe. There are different themes addressed in these authors’ works, and female perspectives within the framework of modern reality are one of the major topics. Two stories,...
Native American cultures have a strong sense of connection to and unity with nature, an aspect of characterization. Like other folklore, the Cherokee story explains how the creation of the world and environment. However, what sets this origin tale of the Native Americans is that its lessons about respecting nature...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s literary work The Yellow Wallpaper is often considered an important early work of American feminist literature that illustrates general social and physiological attitudes toward women in the 19th century which are still relevant today, even in spite of their enormous age. There have been a number of...
Introduction The topic of discrimination on various grounds, including racial ones, is not new. People who differ in skin color and culture often become outcasts in society. The very existence of a divergent person gives rise to a societal conflict. Shakespeare’s Othello deals with such a confrontation, showing the viewer...
Introduction 1776, written by David McCullough, is a follow-up to his earlier biography of John Adams and is intended to expand the reader’s understanding of the early stages of the American Revolution. The book provides a fresh viewpoint on those events in a clear and exclusive manner. This review essay...
Introduction In this book, Erich Auerbach has adopted distinct rhetoric and philosophy of communication that significantly advanced my theoretical knowledge of concepts. For instance, the author assumes a persuasive form of writing whereby he coins around words to present an idea or a thought. Firstly, the book has boosted my...
Autobiographical literature and memoirs can be efficient in teaching history. The strict difference between history and literature is not vital when the situation is related to autobiographical resources. For example, the Coming off Age in Mississippi, written by Anne Moody, represent the detailed process of the identity formation of the...
Introduction The works of the British novelist Rowling collectively referred to as the Harry Potter series, are classified as fantasy. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley are all enrolled at Hogwarts School in the novels. Major plot points revolve around Harry’s battle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, who...
Introduction Their Eyes Were Watching God novel explores various personal relationships between the characters as a mirror of the society they live in, how the masses relate, the stereotyped relationships between men and women, and what is socially expected of every gender as per the societal norms. Through Janie’s relationships...
Introduction Most storylines require a villain or, at the very least, an antihero. Shakespeare’s plays are a case in point in this regard. The plot is typically advanced by the antagonists, who pave the way for the protagonists to either succeed or fail. In Othello, Iago is the villain who...
Introduction 1001 Nights have several translations, many of which Western specialists make. The author of the collection is unknown, and it is unclear which short stories were included initially and which appeared in later versions. Most readers in Europe and the United States are familiar with Scheherazade’s tales through Western...
Blazing the trail for a new philosophy is always a challenge; however, the task becomes excruciating when the idea in question is as unpopular as the concept of feminism at the dawn of its development. Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the few American poets who managed to skewer...
Many literary works assess various aspects of life, and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll‘s House explores important social matters. Ibsen was born on the southeast coast of Norway, and his childhood was not particularly easy (Gundersen). His parents were relatively affluent and had five children, with Henrik being the oldest son...
Introduction Literary works provide different perspectives on various aspects of life. For instance, Jack London’s short story To Build a Fire illustrates an individual’s fateful relationship with nature by describing how the main personage perceives the surroundings of his journey. London’s story is unique due to the use of literary...
In order to understand “Tribal Ceremony,” the communal feature of minor literature is used because it depicts the tragedy of an entire community. The communal feature can be described as representing the problem of a particular society, not only concerning the author of the poem. In “Tribal Ceremony,” it is...
Pearl S. Buck’s story The Good Earth raised several significant problems in China. Exploitation, a desire for riches, family troubles, and contempt for elder Chinese culture are among the conflicts that the protagonists confront throughout the novel (Gupta 90). Wang Lung faces several challenges as he attempts to escape poverty....
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a classic gothic novel depicting the complexities of life when people exhibit distinct personalities. The novel gives us a tour into an admired life of an England- based physician Dr. Jekyll. The protagonist Henry Jekyll is a composite that strengthens the theme of good...
The short story by John Steinbeck follows Elisa Allen, a proud and strong lady, who is upset with her current existence in The Chrysanthemums. Her dissatisfaction originates from her inability to have a child and her husband’s lack of romantic admiration for her as a woman. Her flower garden, where...
Langston Hughes raises a number of philosophical issues in his short poem ‘Mother to Son’. The poem itself, though seemingly small, is capable of surprising even sophisticated readers with its content. Everyone who reads the poem will be able to see themselves in it and try on the role of...
Krutch describes the beauty of snowflakes and crystals with delight and admiration. He describes their diversity and forms and says that only with a microscope he manages to understand what beauty means by looking at crystals. They capture his spirit and amaze his imagination, and it is not for nothing...
In her critical paper, Virginia Woolf introduces various binaries and complicates them by placing the opposite states into the contexts of time and place to illustrate and deepen these distinctions. For instance, she elaborates on the binary of women and men by explaining the two as complex socio-cultural categories in...
Like many other sonnets by William Shakespeare, sonnet number 116 has no title of its own and is named after the first line: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds.” This sonnet rejects the theme of love, which is regularly encountered in the works of the author. In...
Introduction In the play “Death of a Salesman,” written by Arthur Miller, the main themes are portrayed with the help of a variety of symbols. They are intertwined with the memories of the main character, Willy Loman, who reflects on his failure as an employee, a husband, and a father....
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...
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the most famous short story by Flannery O’Connor included in a collection of ten tense stories, filled with supernatural horror and fraught with the explosion, filigree combining realism and absurdity. Those accustomed to a more optimistic view of surroundings, the obligatory “happy...
Picture books use not only verbal but also visual means to build a story, including codes, structure, and narrative. William Moebius (1986) suggests looking at different codes in order to understand how text and pictures interact to create meaning. According to the researcher, positioning, perspective, framing, line, and colour can...
Introduction Homer’s epic poem Iliad is one of the most influential literary works in western literature, and it is a detailed description of the values, norms, and beliefs of Ancient Greece. The author depicts the Greek pantheon of gods and their multiple interactions with people. One of the major peculiarities...
An example of free indirect style in Atonement by Ian McEwan can be found in chapter six as the author describes the acts and thoughts of Emily Tallis. The author takes on Emily’s thoughts and expressing that she considered it important not to provoke the pain in his head lest...
Introduction A Rose for Emily recounts the lonely life and odd relationships of Miss Emily Grierson, the protagonist in the story. Emily’s father brings her up in isolation, but after his death, she yearns for relations that paradoxically fail due to her obsession. The grotesque is a theme that is...
Introduction The Awakening is one of the most popular novels by the American writer Kate Chopin, who is famous for her brave illustration of sexuality in her works. The story tells about a woman named Edna, who struggles to fight the societal perceptions of motherhood, which define her as the...
In Greek mythology, Oedipus, the king of the land of Thebes, portrays a king who brings disaster to himself and to the people he governs by killing his father and making his mother his wife. In search of the truth, Oedipus cares less about the danger his actions are about...
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in Cumberland, England, under the reign of Queen Victoria. He began his poetry in England as a young boy while in school before completing his college studies. Wordsworth related his composition to the people’s affair with nature and advocated language utilization including, the lecture...
Oedipus Rex is a tragedy since it satisfies Aristotle’s criteria for a tragic hero in Poetics. The protagonist of a classic tragedy of a heroic and noble person whose downfall is triggered by a defect in his character. His frailty causes him to become caught in events that overwhelm him,...
Introduction Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is one of the best-known classical examples of Gothic horror in literature. The story, delivered by a first-person narrator, retells his experiences when visiting an increasingly hypochondriac friend Roderick Usher, who lives a largely solitary life in his familial...
A plot is a series of events in a story. The plot in the short story “A Rose for Emily ” is well–developed. A plot must be chronological or non-chronological; chronological means the events happened in order of their occurrence. Non-Chronological implies that there were regressions into the past from...
A great tragedian, Sophocles, gave Greek tragedies their conventional form. Specifically, he started the tradition of including a tragic hero with four distinctive characteristics: the presence of a rank, a tragic flaw, a downfall, and a recognition of mistakes. In Sophocle’s “Antigone,” the eponymous character initially seems like the story’s...
Edgar Allan Poe is a well-known master of macabre stories, saturated with Gothic atmosphere, madness, and decay. One example is “The Tell-Tale Heart,” similar to other authors’ works, such as “The Black Cat,” because of the murder and concealment motif. However, the story is distinctive insomuch as the wrongdoer is...
Introduction Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is one of the most classic and exemplary works in the tragic play’s genre. The greatest poet skillfully and masterfully revealed in his creation the theme of love and freedom of choice, the problems of anger, revenge, and unforgiveness, as well as the piece of...
Love in literature Love is an obsession: everyone wants it, everyone is looking for it, but few will ever achieve it. True love is hard to find and hard to keep; many spend their lives looking for that one person who makes their life worth living. Novels were the basis...
The question of what exactly a woman’s place in the marriage has long been a ground for heated discussions. Our society has come a long way from perceiving women as merely the property of men to today’s development of the feminist movement. However, even though nowadays, emancipation is a must...
Mark Twain’s famous novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer illustrates the Romanticism tradition in depicting the characters. Even though the romantic literature was in a state of collapse at the time of the novel’s writing, Twain preserved the inherent image for this movement. The dreams and desires of the main...
A Rose for Emily – William Faulkner’s Storytelling by Emily Grierson. The yellow wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about the young woman Jane. Both stories illustrate girls who became recluses in one way or another. If Emily did not let anyone into her house after her...
Emily Dickinson was a famous American 19th-century poet born on December 10, 1830, in New England to a Puritan family that had lived in Massachusetts since the 17th century. Emily’s father, Edward Dickinson, was a lawyer and politician, who for a long time resided in the House of Representatives and...
In the feature article “My Life as a Muslim in the West’s ‘Gray Zone,’” the author, Laila Lalami (2015), expresses her thoughts and fears regarding the current status of Muslims in the world, specifically in the United States. The article suggests that Muslims are not entirely welcome in the U....
The philosophical and satirical story of the renowned famous French writer of the Age of Enlightenment Candide was created in the late 50s of the 18th century. One of the most glorious works of Voltaire has an unexpected destiny. It was forbidden for a long time, and the writer himself...
There are many books which tell about the struggles of protagonists and how they manage to overcome them, attaining a better life for themselves or the people around them. Yet, not many of them show how the personal problems of the main character reflect the overall historical context of the...
Summary Future and self-imagination go hand in hand. Whether or not to take a step to the next level is a personal decision that requires a cognitive evaluation. For instance, Coyote’s journey is the book that indicates the outcome of the next step, which is often uncertain in the real...
Tartuffe is one of Moliere’s most famous comedy plays. Although the first version was published back in 1669, the play is still present in the repertoire of modern theater companies. The reason for this is the bright comedy plot, as well as memorable characters. This essay aims to analyze one...
The inevitability of the life cycle and procreation has been the subject of several interpretations of “Rapunzel’s” moral. Other versions of the narrative emphasize the conflict between the young and the old. Rapunzel is imprisoned in a tower in the midst of the forest by the old witch at one...
Introduction Literature reflects the author’s world, showing their unique experience and illuminating the daily affairs of the members of their communities. Thus, in her novel Myal, Jamaican-born writer Erna Brodber explores Afro-Caribbean spirituality and culture and the effect colonization by the British Empire had on them. Furthermore, the author discusses...
Based on a bizarre yet surprisingly engaging premise of a distant future where farms could mutate into living and rather ominous beings. Charles Stross’s “Rogue Farm” allows using the unique narrative to make the characters particularly compelling. Though Maddie is not placed at the forefront of the narrative from the...
The fight against the segregation disease turned out to be successful for the US’s people of color. However, at the time of the debut of A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, the movement for the rights of black people led by Martin Luther King had not yet won its...
Introduction Postcolonial theory claims that the members of decolonized cultures develop a specific postcolonial identity, shaped by the unequal power dynamics of their colonial past. This identity is based on the collective trauma and exists in response to the oppression the identity holders had experienced in the darker parts of...
Summary “Defender of the Faith” is an original story about a Jewish American Army Sergeant Nathan Marx who resists attempted manipulation by a trainee Jew Sheldon Grossbart to exploit their mutual ethnicity for a particular benefit. The fiction focuses on the conflict between two powerful characters, Marx and Grossbart. They...
Interpretation and understanding of truth is a very ambiguous thing. Everyone has their own unique opinion regarding what is true and what is false. The reason is that language is not a perfect instrument for communication. The language is limited because we can only hear the words. When people listen...
Introduction Helen Thorpe’s work Just like us: The true story of four American girls coming of age in America made a significant contribution to the development of literature and politics. The main problem of this book revolves around the topic of illegal immigration to the United States. This story is...
Introduction “A Worn Path” is a short story written by Eudora Welty in 1941 which describes the journey of an old African American woman. The Hunger Games is a novel by Suzanne Collins first published in 2008 that depicts a dystopian world. At first, these two books can be considered...
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1981), Gilman describes the wallpaper using different epithets, metaphors, and comparisons. Among the most interesting ones, there were phrases concerning the pattern, It “commits suicide” and “destroys itself in unheard of contradictions” (78) as if it were a living creature. The paper is the cause of...
Henry V is one of the famous war plays by William Shakespeare. The play can be presented to be both anti-war and pro-war. The play is pro-war; this is because a part of it glorifies war through Henry’s speeches where he urges his troops into battle and through the chorus...
In his work, Mark Twain extensively used satire, which is defined as the intentional humorous exaggeration and irony, mostly aimed at exposing people’s stupidity and failings. In the books, stories, and essays, Twain sought to shed light on the stupidity and hypocrisy of people around him, specifically to ridicule the...
In 1997, over the span of one night, Harry Potter took the world by storm when the book sold 11 million copies within 24 hours of its release: 2.7 million copies in the UK and 8.3 million in the US. And as of 2021, More than 500 million copies of...
There are many different negative features that are common for people of all times, be it the eighteenth or the twenty-first century. Greed, indifference, anger, corruption, immorality, and the readiness to sin for one’s own benefit destroy humans and everything good in society. To show the full horror of the...
At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a toxic enchantment with the West in Japan, which transmitted an extremely negative imprint on women who got influenced by it. Junichiro Tanizaki investigated Japan’s fascination with the West for many years and documented his observations in numerous writings. The central...
Introduction Modern advances in psychology allow us to take a fresh look at fairy tales known to everyone from childhood, finding new meanings and interpretations that differ from the usual ones. The moral of the story is much more contradictory, complex, and ambiguous than the usual interpretation. In the article...
Anne Bradstreet, born in 1612 in England, was married to Simon Bradstreet and graduated from the University of Cambridge at 16. A couple of years later, after moving to America and having eight children, she became one of the first poets in the American colonies. Phillis Wheatley Peters was a...
Knowing, preserving, and passing on one’s cultural heritage are significant components of one’s cultural identity. In her story “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker addresses the problem of African Americans’ heritage, namely, what they considered to be their heritage and how they treated it back in the 1960s. In David Cowart’s article,...
Sherman Alexie’s book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a narration about a 14-year-old Arnold Spirit Jr., called Junior in his family and community. The subject of the book is interesting and edifying because it focuses on the coming-of-age story and the feeling of belonging and community....
In Albert Camus’s The Plague, a classical masterpiece, a deadly outbreak begins with rats and spreads to humans, decimating half of Oran’s population but sparing the least likely: Joseph Grand. Readers meet Joseph early in the novel, just about the same time news breaks about rats supposedly having an epidemic,...
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which was published back in 1953, remains one of the most notable plays of English literature because it is full of themes that transcend time and are still relevant today. For readers to understand the intentions behind the story, it is imperative to dig deeper into...
Paul’s Case by Willa Cather is a short story full of temperament lessons. It is a narration of a few months’ events in Paul’s life. Paul is a student at Pittsburg High School, who prefers theater and music to class. The story begins when Paul is suspended from school; he...
Sherman Alexie’s short stories “War Dances” and “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” describe the life of Native Americans who have to deal with vices and vulnerabilities in everyday life. Their values and suffering have different causes, but they are similar due to the degree of pain projected onto daily...
Introduction The poem “Desert Places” by Robert Frost depicts the speaker’s lonely mind in a deserted place, resonating with the current times; the inevitable return of depression and universal human loneliness. The poet uses simple vocabulary, “the loneliness includes me unawares,” which underestimates the actual extreme loneliness of human beings...
Blues for Mister Charlie is a play in three acts by James Baldwin. It revolves around the murder of Richard Henry, a black man, committed by Lyle Britten, a white store owner. The play addresses the theme of institutional racism and injustice African American community faced in the 1960s United...
Introduction The book Coraline mainly focuses on courage among children, as depicted by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman’s children’s novel, Coraline, is about a tale of a child and mother, belonging, and the variances between reality and fantasy. After Coraline moved into a new apartment located in a remote area, she...
Measure for Measure is one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, as it raises politically sensitive topics such as justice, morality, and corruption. The collision of power, religion, and sex can be perceived utterly differently over the course of time. Even though many literary critics have tried to find the pitfalls...
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...
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...
Child of the Americas is a poem focused on one’s multicultural ethnic background, where the main character’s identity became multifaceted and complex. The author is well-aware of the general heritage she possesses, and she is not inclined to dismiss any aspect of her history. The poet fully understands that her...
The Misfits depicts a group of friends rejected by others, known as the Gang of Five, despite having only four members. They are Bobby, Joe, Skeezie, and Addie, the only girl in the circle. Each has a distinct personality and certain reasons for being ostracized, and later the quarter joins...
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...
The Garden Party is a short story by Catherine Mansfield that depicts the family of Sheridan and their workingmen from the point of Laura, the daughter of Mrs. Sheridan. The events occur in the 20th century in England, where the differences between upper-class and lower-class families were especially pronounced. The...
Introduction The Hours by Michael Cunningham is a novel, which follows and describes a day from three women’s lives. The main characters are Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown, and Clarissa Vaughn. The actions of these women take place during different timelines and locations. Virginia Woolf is an author who is writing...
Kindred significantly contribute to the character, values, beliefs, identity and status of an individual. When kindred suffer loss due to divorce, illness or death of an individual the impact is felt by others. In Toni Cade Bambara’s short story, “Raymond’s Run,” the protagonist shows how she relates with her brother...
This poem dramatizes the conflict between the fight for women’s empowerment and rights. Rich’s oeuvre is characterized by the extended metaphor at the heart of this poem. She speaks about the struggle for women’s empowerment by using the image of a woman training for a deep-sea scuba dive and discovering...
“Everyday Use” is a short story written by Alice Walker, which depicts a family gathering where one of the two daughters comes home to visit her mother and sister. Dee studies at a University and her perspective on the African-American heritage differs from that of her relatives. Moreover, for her...
Introduction Stephen Aron is a historian specializing in the history of the American West. He has published several books and essays in various magazines and collections. In particular, the collection of essays American History Now is devoted to the modern view of historians on American history. The purpose of this...
A novel in Spain is an ancient and truly democratic literary genre, rooted in folklore. Therefore, it absorbs folk wisdom, cheerful mischief, and practical judgment. The novelistic tradition is still alive in Spain; evidence of this is the collections published annually and individual stories in newspapers and magazines. There are...
Introduction Dystopian fiction is gaining popularity due to its deeply reflective nature and futuristic perspectives on the social order. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley is a dystopian fiction novel written and published in the early 1930s. It presents a society living in the so-called World State, where a strict...
Introduction The play The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare contains distinct elements of comedy although it depicts issues of grave importance in the society today. For this reason, some scholars consider it a tragedy while others regard it as a tragic-comedy. However, the comic aspects present in the play are...
Holocaust is a sad tragedy that left its terrible traces in the hearts and souls of millions of innocent people. Among them is also Elie Wiesel who shared his sad experience in his book “Night”. At the end of the book, the readers find a very special scene when Eliezer,...
In his book, “Who moved my cheese?” Johnson (1998) explores change by narrating the story of four characters searching for cheese. He also depicts how each of the four characters goes about finding cheese. All four characters live in a maze where they are searching for cheese. According to Johnson...
Tragic heroes often embrace unconscious irony, leading to their downfall. In any literary work, it becomes fascinating when some of the characters are self-denial after engaging in different heinous actions unknowingly and later face the consequences after realizing the truth. Denotatively, unconscious irony is when various characters within the play...
Introduction The problems of public life and power are central in any culture, and their poignancy is expressed throughout the history of literature: literary forms are often seen as a safe place for ideas to dwell. The desire to achieve a lawful legal order and a moral and ethical climate...
We all have a friend who yells during a movie that this moment was shown differently in the book. At the same time, another friend says that he or she is bored with reading and would rather wait for the movie adaptation. Both of these friends can be right, since...
Introduction The sea is frequently the central theme of many authors’ compositions. The poem “On the Sea” by John Keats (1800) illustrates the incredible power and subtlety of the waves, as well as their capacity to treat troubled eyes and torn ears. It demonstrates freedom and solace that can be...
The plot of “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner involves Colonel Sartoris Snopes or Sarty, a little boy from a poor family, whose father decides to burn barns of the people he works for. The setting of the story is early spring in rural America in the end of the 19th...
Introduction A special place in world literature is occupied by works belonging to the genre of utopia and dystopia. The authors of utopian novels tried to predict a beautiful future, promising immense universal happiness and social harmony. Anti-utopians have debunked the myth of the possibility of global equality, brotherhood, criticizing...
Hamlet by Shakespeare has similar elements in its plot and main characters with Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. This essay aims to show the common features of Oedipus and Hamlet, the main characters of eponymous plays. Both texts are tragedies; this genre largely defines the main characters of respective works and...
Introduction Flannery O’Connor wrote probably the cruelest and piercing stories in American literature. They addressed a wide range of social topics and revealed peoples hidden tools and behavioral motivation. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the development of characters is described adequately through the prism of communication to...
Julius Caesar is known as one of the greatest and most influential rulers of the Roman Empire. With the proclamation of Caesar’s power, Rome quickly started to rise, which scared and simultaneously fascinated many. Before becoming the ruler of the Roman Empire, Caesar showed himself as a talented general of...
The story recounts the friendship of two girls, Twyla and Roberta who meet at the St. Bonny’s shelter after being abandoned by their families. Their relationship experiences both ups and downs highlight the dynamics of their respective characters as well as external circumstances. At first, they dislike each other given...
Mental health is an important aspect of people’s lives that requires immediate attention and careful consideration. However, the topic of mental illnesses has been a taboo to discuss and portray for many years. Today it becomes more and more acceptable to talk about one’s health freely, especially in art. The...
“Young Goodman Brown,” a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is surrounded by the historical context of Puritan New England. Even though the historical events are not central to the literary work, they significantly define the main themes and issues addressed by the author. “Young Goodman Brown” tells a story of...
A Raisin in the Sun is a highly controversial but critically appraised play written by Lorraine Hansberry and performed for the first time in 1959. It tells the story of a struggling African American family living in the poverty of Southside Chicago and looking for a better future. The play...
First of all, before analyzing the main contents of the essay, it would be fair to say that the author manages to grab the reader’s attention by discussing the issue of perception. He begins the analysis by asking if lies affect people in a negative way. The writer also poses...
“The Raven” is one of the most well-known poems by Edgar Allan Poe. This work of art can be seen as a hymn to remorse and emotional distress. The story starts with a description of a man who is “weak and weary” whose negative emotions and despair intensify with every...
Introduction Animal Farm written by George Orwell during World War II is one of the prime examples of an allegorical novel. The images of animals presented in the book personify social vices and attract readers with realism and similarity to history, which are shown openly in the plot. Despite the...
“The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane is a story about the victim of a shipwreck who spent 30 days stranded at sea. The central theme of the story is the idea that nature is unforgiving, which contrasts with the sentiments of Romanticism writers. For instance, poets from the Romanticism era...
Introduction The given literary analysis will primarily focus on The Leavers by Lisa Ko, which narrates the story of an abandoned child and his search for belonging. The main character is Daniel or Deming, whose mother is Polly Guo. The narrative focuses on the continuous abandonment of the protagonist, which...
