6089 samples of this type
The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town by Helmut Walser Smith is a 2002 book set in a Prussian town in the early 1900s. The novel begins with Smith outlining the details and history of a grisly murder that occurred in Konitz. While the town is now...
Anne Bradstreet and Mary Rowlandson are American Puritan writers of the 17th century who focused their works on the individual, real-life aspects which were influenced by their spiritual development of personality and religious involvement. This period in literature was primarily associated with the religious influence on writers’ lives by focusing...
For the American feminist movement, the 1970s was a time of utmost importance in many ways. According to McBean (2018), even though the Women’s Liberation Movement started in the 1960s, it gained traction in the public sphere in the next decade. This contributed to the appearance of mainstream feminist fiction...
The fifth section of the second chapter in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, written by Joseph Campbell, “Apotheosis,” focuses on the hero’s path, in which enlightenment is achieved. The central claim of the considered part is presented in the sentence, “Having surpassed the delusions of his formerly self-assertive, self-defensive,...
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...
The Yellow Wallpaper enlightens the reader about women’s health, motherhood, mental disorders, and treatment. This story is about feminism and gender relations in America at the end of the XIX century. Although many details have changed, the story is semi-autobiographical. The author relies on her health crisis, particularly her fraught...
The Gilgamesh Saga belongs to the oldest literary monuments of the Sumerian civilization. However, the story of changing the personality through true friendship, overcoming adversity, and searching for immortality still resonates in the hearts of readers. The plot is based on the adventures of king Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu,...
The poem On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley is a poetic representation of dark period in American history when slave trade was prominent in society. However, despite the horrors of slavery, it is a poem of resilience and strength demonstrated by Wheatley on her journey. In...
Balzac’s short tale “The Unknown Masterpiece” contains several allusions to art. Porbus and Frenhofer have rationally presented two diametrically opposed concepts in the most aesthetically reflective manner imaginable. The two facets of an artist’s existence are depicted, namely love and art. Thus, this conflict is exemplified in the novel Gillette,...
World’s literary culture contains monumental works written by authors from different regions and living in different times. Japanese literature is also an essential element of world literature, in the context of which Murasaki Shikibu and his work “The Tale of Genji” cannot be overlooked. The story is about the heir...
Anaxagorou’s poem Text Message is about the changes in the contemporary world, more so those brought about by technology. The persona, who is living in the modern world, describes how things have transformed and the resultant effect on humans and the entire ecosystem. For instance, the use of information technologies...
Introduction Most literary works are created by their authors not only to entertain the readers but also to serve high purposes and provide people with unique ideas. Certainly, this objective may be achieved by certain plot and plot twists that directly convey the writer’s thoughts. However, sometimes the author does...
The idea of beauty has always been important to human society. People use specific standards to consider someone more attractive than others and provide them with privileged status. At the same time, failure to meet dominant standards might result in exclusion, isolation, and loneliness. Thus, beauty is one of the...
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a novel, created by Ken Kesey in the middle of the 20th century. The actions described in the book happen in Oregon psychiatric hospitals, and in general, this work of literature is devoted to the exploration of the human mind. It includes opposition...
In his article, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Peter Singer focuses on a topic that is essential for the whole world. The author considers famine, refugee crisis, and ways to combat these issues from a philosophical point of view. Singer takes a comprehensive approach to the problem since he introduces assumptions,...
In his story, Daniel Alarcon, raises an important topic and conveys the secret of all immigrants from disadvantaged countries. The author says: “leaving is no problem. It’s exciting actually; in fact, it’s a drug. It’s the staying gone that will kill you. This is the handed-down wisdom of the immigrant.”...
Introduction Unfortunately, much of human history consists of the events of one group of people conquering another and erasing the culture of the defeated nation, so the latter submit. Thankfully, the latter does not always happen, and sometimes the culture of those who lost replaces that of the invaders, or...
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....
Introduction The French Resistance to the German threat is the force of good keeping France hopeful during truly dark and desperate times. The Resistance plays a substantial role in the “Europe-wide struggle against fascism” (Faucher and Humbert 209). Nevertheless, the movement should be more mindful of its inner philosophy and...
A Madman’s Diary is a story written by a Chinese author in 1918. The story is divided into two parts – the introduction written by the author serves as a short preface. The second part contains excerpts from the diary the author’s friend led during the exacerbation of his mental...
Jesus’ Son, a related collection of short stories named after the lyrics of The Velvet Underground’s song, is often described as one of the most important literary works of Johnson’s generation. It was even included in The New York Times’ Top 25 Best Writings 2006 – a list of the...
Description of the issue The issue of discrimination among women continues to influence the experience of females in the modern world. Mainly, society continues to depend on prejudices that concern the role of women in society. Coffey demonstrates that this part of the population suffers from inequality in India because...
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...
Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of Jerome Salinger’s The Cather in the Rye, may be many things, but responsible is not one of them. Be that himself or other people around him, he rarely has a concern for anything. By highlighting his irresponsible behavior, Salinger contrasts the character’s rather self-absorbed focal...
“…the color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight… This wallpaper has a kind of sub pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where...
James Baldwin had a significant contribution to U.S. culture and literature. A collection of ten essays called “Notes of a native” by James Baldwin was first published in 1955. The papers mainly cover racism in America and describe the author’s personal experience of growing up in such a discriminatory environment....
Antigone is an ancient Greek tragedy written around 442 BCE by Sophocles, one of the genre’s pillars. It centers on the story of a young girl Antigone, whose brothers Eteocles and Polynices have recently died fighting each other over the throne of Thebes. The new ruler of Thebes, Creon, orders...
The civilization of Ancient Greece marks one of the most important chapters in the history of the world. This period has provided humanity with an array of important achievements, including the principles of democracy, theater, art, and sciences. These accomplishments have had an immense impact on the development of the...
Native language is usually taken for granted in most communities; however, the situation changes drastically after changing the scenery to that one of a different country with its own language, traditions, and culture. The challenges of immigration and the struggle to find a voice in a new community while retaining...
Introduction Numerous American Gothic Literature creators include mentalities that plummet into madness inside their accounts. Poe’s narratives review his self-existing emotions and encounters of seclusion and dejection that he had to manage throughout his life. He was never privileged with the introduction to the world with guardians; such as how...
As befits an epic hero, Beowulf possesses almost superhuman qualities when it comes to performing on a battlefield. His physical strength has no equals, his combat prowess is unmatched, and his bravery can put almost any man to shame. However, Beowulf is not only a formidable warrior but also a...
Since its first play in 1949, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is still recognized as one of the greatest dramatic pieces of the 20th century. The play was performed many times, collected a significant number of awards, and has ten cinema adaptations. The plot centers around the tragic...
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...
The works of Russian classical literature have gained a great deal of popularity around the world over many years. Their main characteristic is the stimulation of intense, often ambiguous feelings in the reader, which make him think. Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” was just such an example. The...
Introduction Everyday Use is one of Alice Walker’s most well-known works. The tale was first published in 1973 as part of the author’s collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble. The plot revolves around “Mama,” an African American woman who lives with one of her kids, Maggie. She describes...
Introduction Gender equality has been a revolutionary topic in the past centuries. As a teenager, Benjamin Franklin used the pseudonym “Silence Dogood” to speak on behalf of a widowed mother and offer some observations regarding women’s rights (Arch 222). In 1722, he published a series of anonymous satirical essays, expressing...
Introduction Sophocles, who is usually considered one of the best minds of his time, was an influential person in Athens and was elected to important government posts. He was also famous in the literature field, having written 123 works, of which only seven have survived, including the tragedy Antigone. Sophocles...
The stories written by Hans Christian Andersen have never been particularly cheerful, often having rather grim undertones and serving as cautionary tales rather than a fun pastime. However, even among Andersen’s rather grim narratives, “The Little Match Girl” takes a special place due to its somber plot. The story opens...
Introduction Numerous various texts exist in the world, representing different characters, ideas, and issues. Often, those texts address troublesome but significant topics, widely discussed in public. One such example is Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery. First published in 1948, the text describes a small fictional village and one of...
Although “Ender’s Game” is set in the distant future, the themes and ideas that it conveys are quite close to present-day readers. Child mercenaries, which the protagonist is supposed to embody, do exist, representing a major ethical concern and a moral issue for the modern world. Raising the questions of...
Traditions arise due to the accumulation of experience of generations and people’s interpretation of any events in the world. Traditions are a part of the culture and allow the preservation of language, foundations, and nationalities. However, traditions can harm the life and formation of a society. In The Lottery, Shirley...
Introduction ‘Kubla Khan’ is a fantasy epic authored by Coleridge, an English romantic poet in 1797. The poem revolves around the dream vision whereby a Mongolian leader called Kubla Khan orders some of his servants to build him a domed building for recreation and pleasure at the banks of river...
In this passage, there is a conflict between Desdemona and Iago over women’s nature, which ends with the victory of a rational and objective way of thinking. The woman argues with the man and is indignant at his feeble mind. Although she does not have so much experience in life,...
Literary fiction should never be regarded exclusively as a whim of a writer’s imagination. After all, any artist takes inspiration from their surroundings, which is why it is important to look deeper into a piece and decipher the true meaning of themes, characters, and settings integrated into the work. John...
Introduction Rudy Wiebe’s short story Where is the voice coming from? Focuses on life events of indigenous people and early white settlers. Wiebe’s work explores the conflict between Almighty voice and the Mounted Police and questions the aspects of reality in traditional indigenous stories (1974). The author examines how events...
The paragraphs I chose for discussion is in chapter nine and twenty-six. In chapter nine, Suzette, Lionel, their mother, and Saul were having dinner together. Saul was in their house and was the one who prepared the meal for that night. They were both asked to join the dining table...
Throughout Alison Bechdel’s tragicomic Fun Home, the author demonstrates her and her father Bruce’s opposing views on the concept of sexuality. Their different definitions of the significance of gender roles cause tension in their formation of sexual orientations in the presence of each other. The distinct ways in which they...
The Tell-Tale Heart is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s scary stories. The story is told on behalf of an unnamed narrator who killed an older man with whom he lived under the same roof. The narrator insists on his sanity, explaining the crime by saying that the old man had...
Introduction Sometimes, fate develops in an absolutely unexpected way: a rural orphan boy managed to become the president of the USA but did not get a chance to long this position long enough. James Abram Garfield was an incredibly talented and naturally gifted person who spent his youth in poverty...
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...
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...
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...
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, written by Michael Patrick MacDonald, is a sincere memoir published in 1999. The author uses his talent of putting life experiences and feelings into words to describe the place where he used to live in his childhood. The book starts with the author,...
“To His Coy Mistress” by Marvell is a carpe diem poem that calls young women to enjoy the pleasures of life. There are many literary devices used by the author to make readers believe in his philosophy. I want to note two devices that are metaphor and simile. Metaphors appear...
The narrative Hills like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway commences in a valley in Spain. The story is about a protagonist, the American, and the antagonist is the girlfriend, Jinn. The narrative revolves around the American man’s suggestion to the girlfriend to have an operation that she later agrees with...
As a tool of oppression, gender roles have been affecting the lives of women across the globe. The problem of rigid gender roles and the suffocating effect they produce on women and girls has been studied from various perspectives, including artistic and, particularly, literary works. In her seminal short story,...
Richard Godbeer’s Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 was first published in 2005 by the Oxford University Press with a total count of two hundred pages. As a historian, Godbeer gives a contextual and descriptive account of a much lesser known series of witch trials that occurred in...
Synopsis The Red and the Black is a novel by Stendhal, and it is also called The chronicle of the XIX century. The book reveals the tragic story of Julien Sorel, “in whose soul there is a struggle between natural nobility and dangerous ghosts of ambition” (Stendahl, 1967). The plot...
Jim and Irene Westcott seem to be ordinary people with no peculiarities. Their lives resemble the lives of their neighbors in many aspects. For example, all of them are married, have two children, go to the theater, and hope to live in a better place (Cheever 1). Westcotts appearance could...
The poem Theodore Roethke is a retrospective look of the poet himself on his childhood and evokes ambiguous emotions. While there are clear indications of somewhat rude behavior, the end lines indicate that the boy was still clinging to him (Roethke, 1942). Thus, the question for discussion is how exactly...
After finishing the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the reader may be left wondering about the validity of the events that took place during the narration. That hypothesis can only be tested through the assessment of clues that Poe leaves for the...
Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, describes a tradition in a small town where members draw lottery slips, and the winner is subject to death by stoning as a community sacrifice for good health and harvests. On the other hand, Sophocles’s play, Antigone, follows one girl’s fight against authority for...
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....
Introduction The paper responds to poems that deal with experiences and emotions experienced by soldiers on the war front. The first poem was written by a woman who provided humanitarian and medical care to soldiers, while the rest were written by men who fought in World War 1. Each of...
Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” brings out the theme of family relations and family history. The author explains that she started researching and writing the book to understand their family and better connect with her mom and dad and learn to love them. Although a vast gulf separates...
There are many issues faced by an average person in their twenties and thirties in the modern era where authenticity is difficult to achieve. It is possible to suggest that the playwright decided to tell this story precisely to draw people’s attention to the fact that young persons may struggle...
Oscar Wilde’s book The Portrait of Dorian Gray has constantly been mentioned everywhere in the world. This is understandable because the book presents a hedonistic worldview that was completely new back then. One of the quotes to be analyzed in this essay goes like this, “None of us can stand...
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the classics of world literature. His talent is multifaceted, and the author is considered the founder of the detective genre. In the stories, supernatural events occur, many of which are associated with death. The concepts of punishment and alienation are familiar to the author...
“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...
Children love fairy tales, which is not surprising as books contain worldly wisdom, allowing them to find a way out of many life situations and in an accessible form explaining the structure of this world. Many of the world-famous fairy tales were initially written for adult readers. Only transformed and...
Introduction In the short story Cathedral by Raymond Carver, the narrator is a husband who goes through a life-changing experience that teaches him not to be judgmental and also learns to listen. It is not only a tale of mutual understanding and acceptance, but it is also a cultural narrative....
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 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound combines the literary forms of lyrical drama and poetry to recreate and reanimate a classical mythological story. In the opening episode of the play, Jupiter, Shelley’s symbol of religious and political tyranny, punishes the heroic Prometheus for stealing fire from heaven and giving it...
Set in a village background, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” illustrates the height of human potential to execute violence, although, it is depicted as ritual practices, tradition, and community order. The story reflects the society of the ancient time, but it has remained relevant even to today’s society. Through the use...
One of the overarching themes in Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” is the theme of cultural heritage and identity. The main characters in both stories were born and raised in America, and both stories show them traveling to their motherlands: China and India....
One of the seminal literary works revealing the theme of historical legacy is The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written as the memoirs of a dark-skinned American slave. The book proper consists of eleven chapters describing, in chronological order, childhood, the stages of learning to write, the periods...
Introduction Racism and other forms of discrimination are among the major social issues affecting millions of people in modern society. Toni Morrison addresses these issues by narrating a story about African Americans who move to the town of Ruby. Here, residents lack trust in outsiders, especially people of other races....
Introduction: Summary and Major Themes The book, Song of a Hummingbird by Graciela Limon, describes the story of an indigenous woman named Huitzitzilin who narrates her experience to a Spanish monk. The setting is in 1582, when Huitzitzilin, the 82-year-old protagonist, talks about her encounter during the Spanish conquest and...
Women have for ages been victims of abusive domestic situations. In “The Story of an Hour” Louise Mallard, the main female character, fails to prove the validity of the information sent to her by Josephine confirming her husband’s death. According to the telegraph message from her husband’s sister, Brently Mallard...
Introduction The question of gender roles has been recurrently addressed in numerous works of literature. The presence of different outlooks on the issue allowed numerous contemporary and past authors to approach gender roles from numerous perspectives. The current research paper takes Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Paper and Susan Glaspell’s...
Langston Hughes and Claude McKay are prominent representatives of the dawn of African American culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Harlem Renaissance was a powerful movement that shaped African American literature and aimed at reinforcing the racial bias. Despite leaving a mark in American poetry and being...
Comparison and Contrast Both narrative accounts expose the reader to the perspective that a woman’s utmost desire is to have control over her husband. The wife and old hag in the two stories have the same perspective on what women want most in life. On the contrary, the prologue and...
The main character of Parable of the Sower, Lauren, is an African American girl who grew up in the family of a priest in a gated community in Robledo, California. The story takes place in a dystopian world experiencing a crisis of society and environment, which fills it with cruelty...
Chapter 19: Global Crisis, 1910 – 1939 World War I was the first modern war, and its consequences were fundamental on a grand scale. Adelman et al. (2017) state that WWI’s aftermath expedited the trend toward mass society and hastened the debates on how to measure progress and organize people...
During the semester, several works were studied. “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson were exciting pieces of literature. The “Everyday Use” is a short story that highlights the plight of African -Americas who were trying to redefine their social, cultural, and political identity. It mainly...
An antagonist is a character who opposes the main one on the way to achieve goals. The antagonist-protagonist opposition is one of the possible driving forces of the central conflict of literature work. The actions of the antagonist not only create obstacles that the protagonist must overcome but can also...
Huckleberry Finn (Huck Finn) is the protagonist of the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” written by the worldwide known author Mark Twain. Story is focused on the Hucks life path, his adventures and interactions with other characters. Mark Twain displays the boy as the moral center of the novel,...
The parallel realities might be closer than we used to think they are. One possesses an inexplicable ability to travel through time and space, and explore the worlds full of unknown scents, feelings, and senses. Fiction is a powerful and wise guide through each of the existing realities. One of...
The “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was authored by Martin Luther King (1963) while in custody. King references the church leaders as the audience in the first paragraph of the letter. In the article, the clergy term King as a sheer outsider who instigated the demonstrations. In the letter, King uses...
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the greatest American writers. Numerous poems and short stories are still being studied, and new facets and hidden meanings are being discovered. The life of the writer was not happy: early orphanhood, life failures, as well as the death of his beloved were significantly...
In the introduction to the book, the author explains her interest in the history of an 18th-century African American family. She begins her story by standing on her porch and thinking about Prince’s family (Gerzina 2009). Undoubtedly, their history was unusual but not well understood. At the same time, information...
Introduction Flannery O’Connor was known as a devout Catholic, and much of her work reflects this part of her identity. “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” one of her most well-known stories, is an example, as it features religious themes throughout the encounter with the Misfit. Initially, the grandmother...
Introduction Christian stories and parables carry deep meaning and contain valuable discourses about virtues, goodness, and the righteous path that people should follow to live in a healthy and peaceful society. At the same time, in addition to theological texts, works from popular literature also may contain profound truths that...
Introduction It might be stated that both realism and naturalism played a substantial role in the history of Spanish literature. Hence, the approaches of the founders of these genres are an appropriate theme to discover. It should be mentioned that French authors – such as Balzac and Zola – affected...
If anyone is asked in a small town, two-hour drive away from New Orleans, whether they know Lucie, their faces will be filled with joy as they begin speaking about the young, but already not so young, girl. Lucie is a brave and proud individual – she can make almost...
One of the fears described in dystopian fiction is the loss of individuality. People become uniformed cogs in an oppressive society, so the government could completely control them. Therefore, individualism can contribute greatly to maintaining freedom and independent thinking. In Harrison Bergeron, the author shares his vision of the future...
Introduction Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” was published in 1948 during the rebuilding of the world after World War II. Almost all the post-war period literature is, to one degree or another, devoted to understanding the consequences of what happened during 1939-1945. One of the cruelest and most inhumane episodes...
The short story written by Kate Chopin in 1894 raises essential feminist issues. Despite the short form of the literary work, it successfully and powerfully conveys the deprivations American women of the end of the nineteenth century experienced due to the dominantly patriarchal society in which they lived. Meticulously using...
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...
Romantic poetry started during the Victorian period and was characterized by a more plain language than previously, though still more formal and flowery than in twentieth century poetry. It was more conversational and emphasized high ideals. The poetry choose country over city and tried to reconcile animals and humans. It...
Socio-economic inequality is the unfair distribution of resources and opportunities to the different groups and races in a country. In the contemporary world of capitalism, this problem is widespread in almost any society. Capitalists have secured the means of production while workers provide the labor force. Corporates and business owners...
Joseph Conrad wrote the “Heart of Darkness” to portray a Congo River journey during colonial times. The “Heart of Darkness” shares themes of oppression and imperialism with “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and “The Tempest.” Oppression can be defined as an act of treating a person with no respect for their...
Woody Guthrie composed “This Land Is Your Land” in 1940 with the hope of proving the Americans to diverse views. The poem is well known, and it is considered the nation’s patriotic anthem. While the composition is supposed to promote patriotism, some of the song’s stanzas contradict the tune’s intended...
The Greeks are some of the renowned writers who have ever been known. Although most of their works were done in the past, scholars still use their poems up to date. The Greeks seemed to have mastered the art of poetry and tales since the pieces were done in a...
The poems “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth and “l(a” by E. E. Cummings could not be more different. Nevertheless, the theme of both of these poems is the same: loneliness and solitude. William Wordsworth weaves a vivid floral tapestry that invites the reader into the recesses...
Louise Erdrich received the wide critical acclaim of her literary works alongside with the popularity among ordinary readers. Her first novel Love Medicine, published in 1989, depicted the lives of the Native Americans of Chippewa tribe on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. The significance of the book is defined by...
Introduction Winesburg, Ohio is a series of short novels written by Sherwood Anderson and published in 1919, which depicts the daily lives of ordinary citizens in small-town rural America. Throughout the book, the author offers us glimpses and snapshots into the characters’ frames of mind within specific moments in time,...
Argument The central argument that Michel Foucault puts forward in the Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences is that relevant points of history, knowledge, and humankind come in a specific order. By discussing the order, the author points to a series of assumptions that make up the relevant...
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is a famous short story by Joyce Carol Oates wrote in the 1960s. The story centers around Connie, an attractive girl aged fifteen that has a relentless focus on her appearance and gets in trouble after meeting a predatory man named Arnold....
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...
Embedded narration, or story within a story, is a technique widely used in The Thousand and One Nights. This approach implies the inclusion of extra-plot elements in the text that are not directly related to the plot but discuss the main topic. In most cases, the embedded narration is a...
Introduction Miss Emily, the main character of Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily,” is a controversial figure who evokes rather mixed feelings, but pity prevails in this plethora of emotions. On the one hand, she is a mentally ill murderer who kept the body of her victim in her house...
“O, Captain! My Captain!” was written by American poet Walt Whitman and was first published in 1865. The poem is created as an elegy in honor of Abraham Lincoln, whom the poet admired. Therefore, the work has a particular value from the historical context perspective as it refers to the...
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 Earlier Asian immigration to the United States was driven by dreams of a better life espoused in the American dream. Even today, America is among the most preferred destination countries by potential immigrants. For most people, the desire to migrate is to escape extreme poverty locally and build a...
A book called Night by Elie was written out of reflections of events that took place during the Holocaust when many Jewish men, women, and children were killed in what went down as the greatest atrocity in the history of the world. The book is a literary work that puts...
Introduction As the title suggests, the novel ‘Great Expectations’ is about the expectations of a young man as he moves into the harsh cruel world of reality outside his home. His tryst with destiny, first at the hand of a golden hearted criminal, Magwitch, and then at the hands of...
Children’s literature about good and evil, about various events, invented or occurred in the past, but simultaneously related to the present, allows readers to take part emotionally, empathize. Such books are an opportunity for kids to learn about many people and hear different opinions, ideas, and thoughts. Such literature is...
Koritha Mitchell’s Living with Lynching and James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” In the book Living with Lynching, Koritha Mitchel studies the so-called “lynching drama” and the role that lynching played in the American culture. She claims that the depictions of racial violence produced by the black and white...
Introduction In his article The Philosopher Stoned, Adam Kirsch describes Walter Benjamin, his way of life, views, ambitions, and the influence of drugs on his mentality. The author explores certain life periods of Benjamin, observes the progression of his character, and also tries to emphasize his book On Hashish. Kirsch...
The themes of oppression, alienation, and identity often permeate the well-known pieces of modern and classic literature. Conflicts that are understood on an instinct level are often engaging for the reader and broad with possible meanings. The basic issue at the core of a story can be expanded and turned...
A specific issue to discuss in the essay is the portrayal of Penelope’s loyalty and patience while waiting for Odysseus to return from his two-decade journey. Although it is natural for a woman to remain faithful to her man, it may seem that the main female character’s belief in a...
Art Creation It is impossible to overestimate the necessity of inspirational poems for people of all ages. Thanks to the works of the greatest writers of all times, persons can find meaning in their lives, strength to hold on, and motivation to continue whatever they are doing. After reading such...
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....
It goes without saying that there are multiple symbols in the short story “The black cat,” written by an outstanding American writer Edgar Allan Poe. As a matter of fact, the symbol of the black cat may be regarded as the most significant, and its changes throughout the story support...
The Things They Carried is a book that consists of fictional stories about soldiers’ experience during the war in Vietnam. The writer reflects on his participation in the military conflict by using a fictional hero – Tim O’Brien. Through storytelling, the author manages to explore his own feelings to convey...
Modern American poetry is characterized by a variety of themes and issues that capture poets’ minds and become continuously addressed in their works. Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry is particularly marked by the heterogeneity and complexity of intersecting themes. The poem entitled “The Fish” is one such works, where the themes of...
Introduction The most profound meanings are texts in which the conflict is expressed implicitly, and occurs inside the character. The story of the knight Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza is a brilliant example of how a writer skillfully recreates inner-personal conflicts leading to the radical metamorphosis. Thus, a...
Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out—” (1916) is a single stanza poem describing the accidental death of a young boy who cuts his hand off when sawing wood. The poem has powerful imagery and rhythmical structure that creates a vivid picture of the accident. When describing the scene, the author uses...
Paul Laurence Dunbar was born into a family of former slaves. He is considered the first African-American writer in the United States to be widely known. His poems written in dialect, a folk speech of the American South, were most popular. They reflect all the ambivalence, torment, and contradictions that...
Introduction Elizabeth Browning and Emily Dickinson are the most famous poets of the 19th century. While the masculine society insisted that women were not capable of doing poetry, Browning and Dickinson emerged as the refutation of this statement. Elizabeth gained popularity with her works on the abolition of slavery and...
The Masque of the Red Death is a horror story by E. A. Poe that talks about Prince Prospero and his masquerade ball during the Red Death plague spreading. The disease symbolizes Tuberculosis, an illness common during the writer’s lifetime (Jones, 2017). In the film, it is possible to see...
Introduction Writers and artists employ different tools, techniques, and literary devices to pass the intended message to the readers. Individuals should follow such works in an effort to acquire additional insights and relate them to some of the challenges they might encounter in their lives. While analysts and scholars will...
The plays of Moliere’s Tartuffe and Henrik Ibsen A Doll’s House are some of the most famous literary works. Both plays explore the all-consuming topic of money and the obsession with money, which are still relevant in modern society. A Doll’s House and Tartuffe depict the influence of money on...
“Skylark,” written by an outstanding Hungarian author Dezso Kosztolanyi, is a novel about the change of one senior couple’s life during the impermanent absence of their unattractive and unmarried daughter. At the same time, this work provides essential information about Hungary, especially its political environment, at the end of the...
The story “The Wrysons” written by John Cheever is a typical narrative about an American couple that preferred everything familiar to the unusual that they distrusted. The life of these people revolved around their comfort zone, and they were incredibly unwilling to welcome any change in their well-organized existence (Cheever...
The plot of Cormac McCarthy’s novel focuses on two people, the father and his son having a challenging journey across the post-apocalyptic continent. Throughout the novel, there is an idea of carrying the fire. Even in the end, the boy asks a stranger, whether he has been carrying it as...
The Lottery was written by Shirley Jackson in 1948 and contains many notable themes. It has an exciting plot that, simultaneously, can cause a contradictable sense of averse for the events that take place. It might be rational to suggest that The Lottery is significant and relevant to discuss. The...
Introduction Literature has a unique connection with the real world as, through literary works, writers reflect the complexity of human nature and relations. Especially through a first-person perspective, readers have an opportunity to understand a different mindset and culture better. In particular, in Alexie’s short story What You Pawn I...
‘The Laughing Man’ is a fictitious story told by Chief John Gedsudski to the Comanche Club members, a twenty-five-member group of baseball players, in between breaks from their regular sports. The Laughing Man was an only child to a rich missionary couple, abducted in childhood by Chinese bandits. His parents...
Introduction At the end of the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer introduced his Canterbury Tales, where several people share their stories about British history, identities, and values. Each tale has a narrator and main characters who make mistakes, develop relationships, and analyze their achievements through the prism of the already established...
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...
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...
Introduction The central idea of the Recitatif by Toni Morrison is race and racism, the “black-white” conflict. It must be noticed that the author’s approach to this subject is nonconventional, and the first sign of it is that she makes the reader guess who between the two protagonists of the...
This review dwells upon David Farber’s Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed. The book sheds light on diverse aspects of the war on drugs and the crack market in the USA in the twentieth century. The author attempts to identify the major causes of the problem...
Introduction William Shakespeare is one of the most significant figures of the United Kingdom and the whole world. His contribution to the development of culture and literary and theatrical art is priceless, and the fact that this ingenious writer lived and created literary works is a gift for all humankind....
Antigone by Sophocles describes the aftermath of a war in which two brothers, Polyneices and Eteocles, murder each other. The author centers the main conflict on individual conscience and the obligations to the state. The play depicts the clash between human and divine law in which Antigone and Creon deny...
Society’s influence on people and their way of life has two outcomes: liberating or oppressing them. It all depends on which standards one accepts at any given time. Most women live unsatisfied lives full of oppression in patriarchal societies that believe in male dominance and female inferiority in marriage. This...
