5939 samples of this type
From ancient history to modern days, people have worshipped heroes. Whether they were living or dead, fictional or real, those extraordinary individuals inspired others to be better. In A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines explores the theme of heroes in a seemingly brief, but significant way. The novel’s plot...
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the most known tragedies in the English literature, while Hamlet himself is an illustrative example of a turbulent mind. His inner thoughts and his attitude towards his father is often at the center of the discussion, but his relationship with Gertrude, his mother, is...
In the twentieth century, many artists paid great attention to existentialism. In addition, the theater of the absurd became a remarkable phenomenon, which described in colors all the strangeness and meaninglessness of life. A striking example of such a work is Endgame by Samuel Beckett. One of its theatrical performances...
The work of the American writer Emily Dickinson determines the significant contribution to the world poetry of the second half of the nineteenth century. It coincides with a turning point in the history of American literature, as Dickinson’s poetry reflects the destruction of the Puritan worldview and the search for...
Introduction The following study reviews in brief three literary works; their authors, the historical and other influences that inspired their composition, the main primary literary devices that were used in their writing, and the major themes that were addressed in these works. The three literary works are then compared and...
Poems “We Old Dudes” by Joan Murray and “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks are going to be the primary focus of this essay. It might be easy to draw comparisons between the pieces as the poem by Murray derives its leading themes and literary elements from “We Real Cool.”...
All conventional norms established by members of society have a specific purpose and a prevailing ideology as a basis. Generally, rules are created by a hierarchical elite based on an ideology that is either initially shared by the majority as in Orwell’s Animal Farm or eventually imposed on it as...
Everyday Use is a short but succinct story by Alice Walker, an African American writer, and social activist. The setting takes place in the 1960s, when Mrs. Johnson and her daughters, Maggie and Dee, meet at their house. The story is saturated with the symbolism of family values and relationships,...
Introduction “Disgrace” by John Coetzee is a novel about loss, pain, and the efforts to reconcile with oneself. The main characters are disgraced and deprived of all dignity in different circumstances. Even though the characters David Lurie and Lucy Lurie have in common the suffering of facing traumatic sexual experiences,...
Facing lack of opportunities to earn money and good standing in their homelands due to political and economic crises, 20th century European citizens thought of migrating to America as a quintessential success. The overseas country promised wealth and stability to any person or family who was willing to dedicate their...
Introduction Contrary to popular belief, childhood is definitely not an easy period in human life. This time is characterized by many qualitative changes in the child’s physiology and consciousness, and their worldview’s serious reconstruction. In other words, in late childhood, the individual unconsciously prepares for adult life to become part...
Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” starts jovial and seemingly happy, with the population of a village gathering for the titular event. The event is annual, and the name describes it accurately, with it consisting of the drawing of lots by every resident of the town. However, as the process...
Published in 1854, Thoreau’s Walden focuses on the author’s experiences of living in a cabin near Walden Pond, in the woods owned by his mentor and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the text, Thoreau describes his social experiment, reflects upon simple living in natural surroundings, and seeks to understand existence....
Introduction The chapter presents selected information adapted from Hochschild’s 1997 book The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. In this chapter, Hochschild discusses the changing relationship between work and home life based on her research of working parents. The main conclusion of the author is that,...
Introduction of the author Eliezer Wiesel is an American-Jewish writer, the author of 57 books, and the Nobel Peace Prize, winner. The list of his accomplishments and achievements is long and his life is full of memorable events and experiences. The most horrible one is, without a doubt, the experience...
Introduction Dawn Powell’s play “Big Night” portrays controversial relationships both within a particular family and in society in general. The author uncovers the sad but true reversal of values in 1930s America, when love, friendship, kindness, and other aspects of ordinary life were replaced by the desire to make a...
Introduction to mythology Myths are the basis of our cultural construct. Myths are based on gods and heroes who narrators of myths insist should be emulated. Myths provide insights about the cultural past of modern society. Theories of mythology Euhemerism The euhemerism theory explains how myths are actual accounts of...
Over the years of its existence, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” may have lost its edge as a horror novel, yet it has entered the pantheon of horror classics due to the unique nature of its conflict. On the one hand, the story of an insane scientist trying to play God and...
Introduction Transcendentalism, as an introspective philosophical movement, arose during the Romantic era in literature and held that each person could arrive at extreme certainties through sound reasoning, sensory experience, and the expression of oneself outside the conformity of society. The Romantic period elicited highly contrasting intellectual as well as literary...
Introduction “Acquainted with the Night” is a poem written by an American poet, Robert Frost. He is a famous figure in the literary world because there are no other poets except for him who managed to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. In this essay, the answer to the question...
Introduction Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman were both American poets during the 19th century. The end of both the First and Second World Wars resulted in civilization BUT for individuals who had been brought up in the previous century, they seemed to get lost and confused with this so-called civilization...
Introduction Jonathan Swift’s political satire, A Modest Proposal, introduces an extreme and appalling plan for reducing the financial burden Irish children had upon their poor families and society as a whole. There is much criticism in this political satire that is directed toward the landlords, government, and wealthy citizens of...
Introduction The essay analyses the novel Night by Elie Wiesel and examines the story of Eliezer’s struggle with his faith. It exposes Eliezer’s great faith and how it eventually weakens due to his experience. Eliezer’s Struggle to Keep His Faith in God In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, great...
Introduction Travel literature is a comprehensive genre that includes various categories, and one of the most popular is travel memoirs. Such works have been widely disseminated among readers who are interested in traveling to exotic countries. Two striking examples of this genre are presented in this work. They both describe...
Introduction The Great Gatsby is a literary novel written by Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. The story revolves around the American culture in the past and how it is expressed in the story of Jay Gatsby, a man who would place his full life around one heart desire of being reunited...
The stories about the Devil, Adam, and Frankenstein’s monster seem to have nothing in common at first glance. However, a more detailed consideration of each of them allows tracing certain similarities between them. People (or other beings) who have negative qualities always seem alike. They are united by their desire...
Introduction The book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the work of Harriet A Jacobs. In this sentimental work that with sheer plain language manages to bring out the life of slaves in the slave-holding Southern states of the United States of America, Harriet has managed to...
Introduction Ever since Freud’s methodology of psychoanalysis has gained an academic validity, during the first part of twentieth century, it became possible for psychiatrists to get an insight onto the actual roots of their clients’ mental anxieties, which were revealed as such that reside deep in people’s subconsciousness. In its...
Premiering in 1947, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play set in the late 1940s about the downfall of Blanche DuBois and the relationship between Stanley Kowalski and his wife Stella. Blanche and Stella come from an upper-class background in Mississippi, where Blanche lived and worked as a...
A & P written by John Updike is a short story of a teenaged boy of 19 named Sammy who worked at a local grocery store called A&P. Sammy relates in first person the three young girls in swimsuits who entered the store. He appraises them sexually, until the manager...
The Invisible Heart: By Robert Russel The book combines fiction and economic realities found within society. It combines Romance and ideas of economics. The author uses the book to radiate economic polemic in the form of an imaginary tale. The whole book is about a romance story that is intertwined...
The concept of the hero’s journey has been a driving concept throughout Western literature for centuries. It is plainly evident in some of our earliest and most cherished stories, such as the legend of King Arthur in his earlier years, and can even be traced through Beowulf, the earliest piece...
Tom Wolf in his book ‘The Right Stuff’ 1979 attempts to talk about the commitment of the pilots in US postwar research with the experimental speed-planes. The title, The Right Stuff dwells around the idea of having the right stuff. Wolfe also documents the tales of the initial development of...
Introduction By portraying the relationship between a young white boy {Huck} and a black slave {Jim} – a relationship that sees the racially prejudiced suspicion of the former dissolve and replaced by a warm friendship with the black slave – Mark Twain does well to depict the gross injustice of...
Introduction The current paper contains a discussion of the writing styles of two American writers Ernest Hemingway and Shirley Jackson whose works are now considered the classics of American literature. Some writers are influenced by others with a view to the chosen topics, manner of presenting facts and settings, the...
The novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin depicts love relations through the lens of the 19th-century ideology and social philosophy of life. To some extent, Austin idealizes love and romantic feelings portraying passion and pre-marriage arrangements. The plot of Sense and Sensibility develops through a set of sub-elements, both...
Every culture on Earth has developed some form of creation myth to explain how they came to be and how they were placed in their environment. This myth typically explains how the land they stand on was formed, how the creatures and plants on this land were made and how...
William Faulkner is often considered as one of the most widely accepted writers in English literature. Faulkner’s story ‘A Rose for Emily’ explains the story of Emily Grierson. Emily Grierson is a strong woman with a great sense of tradition and a very dynamic character. The final paragraph of Faulkner’s...
A hero strikes one as an individual whose personal attributes elicit admiration both before and after their death. Mythology presents a hero as one with great strength and courage, one who is widely celebrated for bold exploits. Making such a unique character entails a process as Joseph has explained in...
What is the place of a woman in modern society? Should a woman be a classical housewife and the ‘mother of the family’ or a modern independent businesswoman with a strong position in the so-called ‘men’s world’? Today we have a right to choose. Today we have equal rights and...
As we can see in “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, written by Tracy Chevalier, the author can be free in selection of facts and settings. The novel is a kind of composition on a free topic or the description of one’s feelings at the time of looking at the picture....
Introduction During the course of the last two centuries, the semantic meaning of Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “The Deserted Village” has been assessed from a variety of different perspectives. Whereas, some literary critics used to suggest that it was namely Goldsmith’s “pastoral idealism”, which served him as an inspiration, while he...
Overall, any work of literature should be analyzed from various standpoints such as for instance, cultural, social, historic etc, certainly if it is possible. It seems that only one approach cannot reflect all the complexity of art. Thus, it is difficult to single out only one method of criticism. However,...
Criticizing and evaluating a particular literary work is not an easy task. In doing so, the analysis of such works is addressed toward the reader to whom this work might be interesting. In that sense, such an evaluation is rarely done by the author of the work, where the author...
Introduction The issue of slavery was reaching crisis levels in 1800s America as the true cruelties of it were beginning to be realized. This ‘critical mass’ was the result of many voices, several of them black, revealing their experiences and having their words verified again and again as more and...
“In 1834 poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge described this play as one of three works of literature with perfect plots; in 1900 Freud plucked out the name Oedipus for his theory of a son’s unconscious sexual longing for his mother; in 1974 lyrics to a song in the film...
The story of Cinderella has been told in most cultures but the European version is the best known, partly because that version has been modified as times changed. It is mostly read as a rags-to-riches story of a virtuous girl who gets her just reward in this life rather than...
Introduction Nora is the main protagonist in The Doll House, a masterpiece written by the Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen. Nora is married to a struggling young lawyer, Thorvald Helmer, by whom she has three lovely children. The couple belongs to the middle class as shown by their home, described as...
Even though an old Anglo-Saxon poem “Beowulf” is assumed to contain motifs that are largely mythical in their essence, many of these motifs do relate to the realities of the time when the poem was written. In his article “Beowulf in Literary History,” Joseph Harris makes a good point when...
Introduction When stories about Ilia Muromets, Dobrinya Nikitich, and Alyosha Popovich were told in Kievan Rus’ – the Slavic nation was dominated by the mighty city of Kyiv (modern Ukraine) from the ninth until the twelfth century. At this time old English poetry, or as it also called Anglo-Saxon was...
Introduction Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a short story which reveals the dark side of human nature. It depicts the collective unconscious of the people of a village, of about three hundred people. The author brings them together to take part in an annual rite in the form of a...
The novel “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen is considered to be a masterpiece of classical literature that has gone a long way due to the vivid presentation of the conflicts and interaction of the characters of the protagonists, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. These characters have been the subjects...
Introduction The play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller depicts life and destiny of an American family which dreams about prosperity and high social position in society. in this play, Fundamental in this play is the fact that Miller does not mask the analysis of social values and low...
Every literary genre is unique and marvelous in its way, but the genre of drama stands apart from other genres of literature, as it possesses certain features that are characteristic for it only. These characteristic features of drama will be analyzed in this work using the example of an outstanding...
The Death of a Salesman is play written by Arthur Miller that touches upon the analysis of the downfall of an ordinary man. The play submits a more democratic interpretation of the ancient form of the tragedy where the main hero is in decline since he harbors misconception pertaining to...
The collected poems of Emily Dickinson include joyful ones and despairing ones. Some two hundred of them are regarded as poems of despair, some of them about literary recognition, others about her inability to engage with formal religion but most are about the absence of love in her life. As...
Introduction Aristotle, a well known and generally recognized dramatic tragedies pioneer, highlighted his vision of the true tragic hero which can be analyzed through the work ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare. The story is considered to be a masterpiece of the world literature disclosing the era of ambitious political leader...
One of the most outstanding writers in the history of world literature, Mark Twain, was talented in describing people’s characters and nurturing inside them the truth of life experience and values that impact a person’s mindset and keep him safe from wrong in life. A teaching approach in his works...
Sutpen and his intention of building the Sutpen’s Hundred Thomas Sutpen is a mysterious man, in the sense that people never really understood him and his idea of building the Sutpen’s hundred was borne out of the fact that he realized while he was growing up that men are not...
It is hard to think of two poets whose lives are more different from each other’s than Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri of mixed-race parents, and was mostly raised by his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. He worked odd jobs, including a six-month...
Introduction In her short story The Management of Grief, Bharati Mukherjee describes the feelings of a person, who has lost her family. The author shows how the main character Shaila Bhave tries to overcome this tragedy. Apart from that, she compares her reaction to that of other people, who have...
Much is said and written about the unique, unprecedented, historical situation the world is in today. The so-called new type of warfare, terrorism, the economic and different environmental-related concerns are among the things that make this world situation seem unprecedented in history. This story is about the voyage to the...
In the history of the English literature Geoffrey Chaucer is undoubtedly the biggest poetic name up to Shakespeare, where the best of his works — “The Canterbury Tales” is certainly one of the greatest literary works of the English Middle Ages in which Renaissance features are clearly breaking through. The...
Introduction Gender roles in Greek society were determined by social and cultural traditions, position of women in society and their significance as citizens. The position of women in society was determined by absence of political rights acquired by men. Many Greek plays portray women as canny and jealous. The play...
Introduction The book Persepolis I and II, reflects on the life of Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian girl who fled to Vienna in Australia after the Islamic revolution in 1979. This occurred after the Iranian warfare augmented the government’s authority over its people. Satrapi’s parents saw the need to send their...
Introduction and Thesis statement Siegfried Sassoon is regarded as the preeminent war poet of the 20th Century. His works offer graphic narratives of the violence and brutality of war. What is ironic is that his background of wealth and privilege was about as far from the destitution of war that...
Introduction If there is a novel that can be closer to haiku, in terms of deep meanings that can be extracted from descriptions and short ordinary phrases, this would be “Snow Country” – a novel by Yasunari Kawabata that tells the story of love between a man visiting hot springs...
Introduction If we are going to compare Victor Frankenstein from the famous and the most disturbing horror novels by Mary Shelley to God, then we will probably suggest that God is ashamed, scared, horrified, and full hatred towards us, just like Victor towards his own creation. Looking at God, just...
Introduction Books are written to deliver ideas, whether they fictional or based on real facts. There are cases when delivering the idea requires that the author recreates the truth even if it is based on real facts in order to have the readers relive a particular experience. In the book...
In the novels, Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and One Hundred Years of Solitude by García Marquez, the authors depict an impotent role of women characters in the life of their families and destinies of the generations. Both worlds represent a unique mixture of reality and the spiritual...
The place of Alexander’s Pope’s An Essay on Criticism in English literature is that of Boileaur’s Art Poetique in French criticism. Keeping in line with the neoclassical tradition, Pope gives a detailed account of his views on literary writing and the art of criticism. His essay has been seriously studied...
Introduction In the novel, The House of Mirth Lily’s development as a character is certainly not negligible to the novel, her primary role is as the means through which Wharton reads and writes this culture. Thus, The House of Mirth is not primarily the story of Lily; it is rather...
It is a rather specific matter when one has to write about the peculiarities of the culture of a certain nation because not always people are acquainted with the national customs and traditions. It becomes even more complicated when the cultural peculiarities are to be studied with the help of...
Introduction Most feminist literature seems to argue against the traditional conception of woman as she has been envisioned in the white, middle-class suburban ideal. However, feminist issues extend well beyond this narrowly defined world into the lives of women of color, too, although there are slight amendments as to what...
Living in a society where each person can achieve success and respect regardless of their origin, gender, or race was a general idea of the American Dream at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the American Dream is slowly fading and becoming more of an illusion after the Depression...
Reading classic literature provides plenty of benefits to the reader such as a better understanding of other people’s feelings and thoughts and the consequences of their actions. Often, the perception of those benefits directly depends on the narrator of a book. Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights narrated by two characters,...
Ibsen’s drama ‘A Doll’s House’ appears to be influential literary work, as it revises and reconsiders traditional male and female roles and reveals the threats underlying gender discrimination. The author definitely portrays courageous and goal-oriented women, who struggle with the challenges of the androcentric society and find their niche in...
The role of women in the ancient world is generally accepted to be that of possession and house-servant, mother and decorative status symbol, but not human, not thinking and not individual enough to act upon her own volition. This impression comes from a long line of ancient texts and documents...
Introduction Since the time of its publication, the book “Self-made Man” written by a famous American journalist Norah Vincent has always been a subject of heated debate. The question arises what is the reason for such close attention to this work of literature. The thing is that the author tried...
There can be no doubt as to the fact that the title “Pride and Prejudice” suits Jane Austen’s novel much better than the original one – “First Impressions”, even though that this is not because the revised title corresponds more to the novel’s semantic properties. “Pride and Prejudice” implies high...
Introduction The problem of faith is a rather controversial one. Different people have different views on what faith is. Some consider it to be a code of moral principles without which one cannot exist; others find faith a human’s failure to explain the life around. As long as humanity goes...
Introduction Absalom and Achitophel was written for the King Charles II in 1681. This poem represents a political satire and critically depicts the Court and royal manners. The uniqueness of this poem is that it presents not merely a series of pictures of personalities, but the whole situation and in...
Introduction Literature is a priceless heritage of humanity that provides people with an opportunity to understand people’s nature, their motifs, ideas, fears, and beliefs. Being an effective way to convey messages, novels, stories, or poems contributed to the increased attention to the events in history that were significant for the...
Hope is an ambiguous feeling to describe. It is the shining candle in the gloom and the final sprite released from Pandora’s Box to mitigate the swarm of gloom that Pandora inadvertently released. When Flannery O’Connor makes this statement, she speaks with a conviction of a person who knows the...
Introduction Self-consciousness, as a significant part of personal identity, largely determines not only the views on certain concepts but also the ability to adapt to society within the framework of specific living conditions. Those communicative, religious, and other beliefs that a person follows are the background for the perception of...
Introduction Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton (Paton, 1948) is a classic story of South African apartheid in the years after World War II. The story is about a Stephen Kumalo a Black pastor who is searching for his son Absalom in Johannesburg. The son has been charged with...
Introduction In the early novels of Thomas Mann, the readers can often follow the rethinking of Friedrich Nietzsche’s postulates. The influence of philosophical attitudes can be traced concerning the art of dance in the novel Death in Venice, written in 1911. In this story, Thomas Mann addresses his favorite topic...
Introduction William Faulkner is a master craftsman in the history of novel tradition who spins the masterful artistic pieces by conjoining very similar parts of the whole tied together to form the strong webs in the form of novels that attract the readers to rule their fictional world with the...
There are times when a person would just want to find solace in a place where they can hang out and do nothing but feel they are just drifting over their weary existence in the outside world. It is just one of the nights when depression sets in and a...
“Pride and Prejudice” was first issued on 28 January 1813 (Bloom, 1987). This book is considered to be the most well-known of Jane Austen’s works. This novel is related to one of the first works in the genre of romantic comedy. The author of the novel Jane Austen (16 December...
Introduction Season of Migration to the North is an award-winning novel that explores many socio-cultural themes. Throughout it, the author Tayeb Salih makes direct comparisons and references to other popular cultural works and symbols. The character Mustafa Sa’eed is directly compared to Caliban from William Shakespeare’s renowned play The Tempest,...
Introduction The Victorian era in English literature coincided with great reformations in society due to changes brought upon by the Industrial Revolution. Traditional agrarian communities were dissolved, family units became smaller, and the degree of economic instability grew. The expansion of cities and the creation of factories in major English...
Introduction The genre of a detective novel always attracted a large audience with its suspenseful premise and a satisfactory and often revelatory ending. One can argue that this genre has a set of traits that were established once and had not changed significantly since then (Rosenheim 81). Many short stories...
Introduction John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums focuses on the theme of gender roles and the discrimination of women based on their gender. The author tells the story of Elisa, who is trapped in her roles and responsibilities of being a perfect wife and housekeeper that is expected to take care of...
Introduction The book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America gives a detailed analysis and comparisons between the United States and the Roman Empire. The author’s main subject matter revolves around the practices and developments recorded in the United States that have the potential...
August Wilson is one of the renowned American playwrights who displayed the complexity of the American society. Fences can be seen as one of his most referenced works that dwell upon the challenges of African Americans’ lives in the USA of the 1950s. The play uncovers the story of the...
The play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller is a prominent and well-known work with vivid and deep characters, and each of them had one’s own story. Willy Loman aspired to the American Dream and wanted to have the support of his loved ones. As a result, he received...
The Main Idea of I, Rigoberta Menchú The book titled I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala is an autobiography of Rigoberta Menchú that is written in the form of the testimonio. The narrative was dictated by Menchú during interviews and then transcribed by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. Rigoberta is a...
Similar to the case of painting, a talented writer manages to convey his or her message and emotions without creating idealized and flawless images and characters. In her most famous literary work published in 1955, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor tells the story of an ordinary...
Introduction In the early 16th century, when Italy consisted of city-states ruled by princes, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a handbook for princes and dedicated it to Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino and the ruler of Florence. This work became infamous because it justified criminal deeds committed for the sake of...
Eudora Welty is considered one of the most sophisticated prose writers of the US of the 20th century. Her stories began to be published in the 1940s and immediately marked the emergence of a new and genuinely distinctive voice in literature. Moreover, the author gained a plethora of medals, honorary...
Introduction The Arabian Nights take its readers on an exciting, even though slightly morbid, journey of an endless tale that serves as the main salvation for a woman who faces the threat of constant impending doom. The cunning and resourcefulness of the main character, who also doubles as the narrator,...
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is one of the brightest examples of how a sophisticated theme can be transferred within only a few pages of a short story. However, this is not the greatest feature of the piece. In “The Lottery,” the use of narrative techniques favored by the writer serves...
Introduction Being one of the most famous Ancient Greek plays, “Odyssey” has entered the realm of global culture, having left its mark on countless artworks and generations of readers. The poem addresses a large variety of themes, yet the father-son dynamics is one of the more subtle ideas integrated in...
Introduction Literature as art aims at retrieving readers’ emotions by conveying accurately created characters, plots, and symbols. In such a way, those who read a literary work obtain an opportunity not only to receive information but also to relive it through the author’s experience. In its essence, therefore, literature cannot...
The idea of personal change as an unavoidable aspect of growing up and coming of age is one of the core themes in Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron.” The story follows Sylvia, a young girl who moves to the country and meets an ornithologist who wants to capture a...
In a dimly lit room, a dark figure of King Claudius occupies a large sofa. He occasionally stands up and walks across the room, his appearance disheveled, and they look exhausted. Think Dylan Moran is doing stand-up comedy at one AM after a party. Others are gathered quietly in the...
Children learn about morality while being educated by their parents and teachers in the contexts of certain communities and cultures. Depending on what they see and perceive as ethical and normal, children form their own views and behavior. In her short story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson discusses numerous provocative themes...
E.E. Cummings’ poem “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” consists of nine four-line stanzas characterized by a dynamic rhythm and frivolous punctuation. The main theme of the literary piece is the survival of individuality in a hostile world that is biased against uniqueness. The inhabitants of a “pretty how...
In the tragedy, Oedipus the King, the writer Sophocles poses one of the most important issues of his time — the will of the gods and the free will of humans. The mythology served as the basis for ancient poetry, especially for tragedy written by Sophocles. The writer used the...
The end of the Victorian era may be viewed as a period when the movement for female equality gathered momentum. Before that, women enjoyed much fewer rights than men and occupied a lower, subordinate position in society. However, throughout the 19th century, many females aimed to oppose the established situation,...
Introduction The topic of sacrifice has been a subject of numerous works of literature since it refers to the range of qualities and actions that people do in order to bring good to others. Discussing sacrifice in the literary context is seen as beneficial because the acts of selflessness are...
James Joyce’s “The Boarding House” is a short story published in 1914 that focuses on the life of Mrs. Mooney, a butcher’s daughter. After divorcing her husband because of his alcoholism, Mrs. Mooney sets up a boarding house, where her daughter engages in a premarital relationship with one of the...
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates, and A&P by John Updike are both short stories that explore the subject of rebellion. The key conflict in Oates’ text is between Connie’s freedom to explore her beauty and sexuality and the views of people around her....
Introduction Guy de Maupassant is one of the most prominent writers who enriched French literature with a plethora of brilliant short stories. One of his most famous short stories is built around the main character’s distorted self-identity. This essay will provide a brief summary of The Necklace that will cover...
Introduction The aim of this paper is to analyze a situation and the protagonist of a drama by Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People—Doctor Thomas Stockmann. In highlighting the nature of the doctor’s character and rebellion that takes place in the play, the virtue of selflessness and the role...
This paper discus Everyman, a morality play performed during the medieval ages. The morality plays are also known as allegory essays and focuses on the behavior of man in earth and life after death. In this play, the main character is Everyman who has been used symbolically to represent the...
Introduction A poem can be defined in several ways. For example, we can define it as a piece of writing in verse form, which conveys strong feelings about a given subject. Poets always write poems for several reasons. For instance, one can write a poem to show his attitude or...
Introduction The novel The Age of Innocence written by Edith Wharton presents a critical or even satirical description of the social norms and values adopted in the upper-class society of New York at the end of the nineteenth century. In particular, the author focuses on such a concept as innocence,...
The summary of Olaudah Aquino’s story from free life in his native Africa to slavery in the Americas and acquisition of freedom has revealed that several issues need to be investigated based on the story and history of slavery. Quite clearly, the presence of several texts and historical accounts tend...
Introduction Fences, a play by August Wilson, was published in 1986. The play details the African-American experiences and deals with the themes of racism, infidelity, and forgiveness. This paper explores how Cory, son of Troy and Rose, has avoided following in his father’s footsteps and learned to manage his anger...
In both Shakespeare’s Othello and Garcia’s Chronicles of a Death Foretold, the themes of love, passion, and death are connected. In most cases, death occurs as a result of the violence that is ignited by passion, which seemingly originates from love. However, a critical reading of the texts begs the...
Chedgzoy, Kate. Shakespeare, Feminism, and Gender: Contemporary Critical Essays. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Recently, feminist criticisms of Shakespeare’s works have greatly expanded. Chedgzoy notes that the modern field of feminist criticism is not as obsessed as it once was on whether Shakespeare’s works were feminist or proto-feminist, or in the...
Introduction The term ‘author’ can be used to refer to someone who “…….originates or gives existence (or life) to something” (Hodges 2002). In the context of literature, an author can be described as an individual who originates or gives existence to a piece of text. This is for example a...
Introduction The poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” by John Godfrey Saxe depicts the actions of six blind men in their attempt at trying to discern what an elephant is like based on their perceptions. The result is a series of rather humorous descriptions wherein each man ascertains the...
In the article, the author begins by pointing out the various issues that stand out in the eighteenth-century novel “The Female American” by Unca Eliza (McMurran 323). The author of this article outlines several facts that are specific to eighteenth-century society. The article proceeds by laying out the peculiarity that...
Type Although the story is narrated from the third-person perspective, the primary source chosen for the analysis can be defined as an autobiography since the events described in it occurred in the authors’ life as well. Title The autobiography was published under the title of Leaves from a Slave’s Journal...
Flannery O’Connor’s short story A Good Man is Hard to Find has always attracted the attention of various critics since this literary work can give rise to various interpretations. Moreover, it is possible to identify various themes that the author explores, for example, one can mention religion or social change....
One of the main indications that a particular literary piece represents a high literary value has traditionally been considered the psychological soundness of how the featured characters address life-challenges. The reason for this is quite apparent – it is specifically one’s deep-seated unconscious anxieties, which largely define his or her...
Introduction When it comes to writing a novel, authors must first make sure that the would-be produced literary work will have what it takes to prove discursively relevant. This, in turn, can only be accomplished if the novel’s themes and motifs are consistent with the prevailing socio-cultural climate, on the...
Introduction Robin Hood faces a number of problems. The first of these problems is that he intended to dispose the High Sheriff of Nottingham from power. This led him to launch a rebellion against him. What began as a personal crusade developed into an idea that many people came to...
Introduction Sinking is a chef-d’oeuvre piece of classic literature written by Yu Dafu. The story revolves around an alienated and depressed nameless protagonist whose life is sinking and he cannot seem to rescue himself. However, the author’s subtle message addresses a crisis that many Chinese intellectuals have continued to face...
Introduction The poem “the originator” by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is an example of free-verse and a worthy representative of the modern American popular culture. It is a part of her book “TwERK,” printed in 2013. The author’s origin from Harlem has probably influenced her literary style, introducing the signs...
Philosophical ideas about the meaning of life, the role of death, and causes of war are discussed by many writers and thinkers in their works because of the importance of the mentioned issues. However, writers often use different effective approaches in order to attract the readers’ attention to the discussion...
A tragedy is an act of human suffering. This act invokes feeling in viewers’ hearts which seem to enjoy the process of someone suffering. In view of culture, tragedy refers to a form of drama in a given tradition. The term drama in the context of tradition has been the...
Introduction The author’s desire to convey topical and vital issues of modern society is often one of the primary goals of literature. The ability to reflect the problem as sharply and clearly as possible is an indicator of the writer’s talent, and if readers can appreciate the creative message of...
Introduction Symbolism is often used in fiction to describe pressing but controversial issues. Through subtle comparisons and allegories, authors can connect simple objects and situations to more complex problems. The novel Disgrace, written by Coetzee in 1999, uses a number of symbols to strengthen the message of the author. First...
Introduction In the chef-d’oeuvre book, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton highlights a form of innocence that comes by simulation. The strict societal rules that govern every aspect of living impose this form of innocence that does not come by one’s choice. In a bid to understand the context of...
In the twenty thousand leagues under the sea, Nemo comes out as a captain who does not value the chain of command. He believes in himself and thinks that his decisions are his visions. In chapter nine of part two, he shows up in the submarine only to exit with...
On reading “The Yellow Paper,” I established that the premise of writing bases on charlotte’s experiences. Before seeking medical attention, she had faced frequent nervous breakdowns. The physician advised a rest cure as the most efficient way of managing her condition (Gilman 34). According to the medical practitioner, rest cure...
Abridged Production History The history of British dramaturgy cannot be discussed without mentioning Ben Jonson’s comedy Volpone, as such that represents a particularly high dramaturgic value. In its turn, this can be partially explained by the fact that the themes and motifs, contained in this play, did not only correlate...
Books 1-5 The story told by Herman Melville in his book titled Pierre; or; The Ambiguities that was first published in the middle of the nineteenth century attracts the attention of the readers to a network of conflicts and troubled relationships between the protagonist and other characters. At the beginning...
Introduction Mary Rowlandson, a middle-aged female settler who moved from England to Massachusetts Bay Colony and then to Lancaster, was captured by the Wampanoag Indian tribe during King Phillip’s War. Mary Rowlandson’s experience as a hostage became a foundation for A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary...
Introduction: Relevance of the Topic to Early Modern Literature Although most of the early modern English plays seem innocent to the present-day audience, in fact, exploration of sexuality, ranging from playful and comic to tragic and taboo, was one of the most popular topics among playwrights. Sexuality in the early...
The passage chosen for the textual analysis in this assignment is the one from Mundus et Infans. This play is one of the brightest examples of the Medieval morality plays (Lester 2002). The drama doctrine of this period is characterised by the ability not only to depict the heroes with...
St. Louis Shakespeare’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest was staged in 2010 and performed at the Grandel Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri. The play was directed by Jerry Vogel, the stage set by Cristie Johnston. The cast of this critically acclaimed performance includes Robert A. Mitchell as Prospero, Betsy Bowman...
Introduction The book Herland written by an American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells about young men who randomly got into an unusual place where only women lived. The way of life of local inhabitants was completely different from a standard order. These women have special laws for raising children; they...
Pulitzer prize winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies by the Indian-American writer, Jhumpa Lahiri is analysed in this essay from feminist and postcolonial perspective. Grouped among migrant writers, Lahiri like Salman Rushdie, deliberately create characters that have a plural and/or partial identity. The crisis created among the female...
The Cay is a children’s war novel written by Theodore Taylor. It is a classic story about hard survival in an island engulfed by war. The protagonist in the story is an American boy called Phillip who experiences a harsh reality of war on the coast of Venezuela. A blast...
Oedipus Rex is a Greek tragedy play written and directed by Sophocles who lived many centuries ago. The play is a classic master piece of Greek talent in theatre and drama and has generously contributed to modern forms of theatrical arts. The play revolves around the tragic fate of Oedipus...
