6089 samples of this type
Introduction The question of self-identity and personhood is one of the most important social issues shaped by cultural traditions and values. Self-identity defines the unique qualities of a person and his/her personal traits, life goals, and worldview. Emily Dickson vividly portrays that modern society is influenced by mass culture and...
Introduction Alan Greenspan’s Age of Turbulence is a personal memoir combined with the description of his role as Federal Reserve Chairman for the last 18 years. In this book, he traces his evolution from the life of an academic to the post of the Federal Reserve chairman. In this book,...
Introduction. Books are an integral part of our life. Develop imagination, transfer to the world where magical things are possible. “Haroun and the Sea” is written for a ten-year-old boy, Rushdie’s son. Reading is not just amusement. There is a couple of reasons why reading is important. They are sources...
Ursula K. Le Guin is considered to be an American writer being well known for her outstanding trilogy A Wizard of Earthsea. This book is the depiction of the fantasy world in which the readers are involved through the adventures of Ged, a young wizard. The traveling across the countries...
Samuel Clemens better known by the pen name Mark Twain speaks best about the American experience through is distinctive literary voice, and through his classic writing skills. His familiarity with local culture and use of local dialect, and his life experiences in the heart of America helped make his writings...
Introduction Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in Florida Missouri on November 30, 1835, is commonly known by his pen name or author’s alias as Mark Twain. Mark Twain is the author of the book “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. This novel accomplished the esteemed title of “The Great American Novel”. This...
Introduction The conflict has been one of the central themes of Hamlet, the celebrated play by Shakespeare, and the conflict between seeming and constituting a major part of the conflict theme. “The theme that remains constant throughout the play is appearance versus reality. Things within the play appear to be...
The stories “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston and “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald seem to be very different at the first sight. The first one is about the life of two young Afro-Americans who lived happily before meeting a rich white person named Otis D. Slemmons who...
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 The novella, Billy Budd depicts a unique character of Billy and his struggle. The form of the narrative is generated by the memory of the narrator. Several features of his narration contradict the closed-form of legal judgment which he tells about. Main body The narrator thereby reveals the dilemma...
Introduction Satire is one of the tools used by mark Twain to unveil social issues and changing values, new social relations, and self-understand of the main characters. Mark Twain’s satire can be characterized as moralistic and didactic aimed to teach readers. From a natural bent, Mark Twain is always interested...
Introduction The Afro American poets Countee Cullen and John Milton are closely connected with the so-called Renaissance of the African literature. The best known poem “yet, do I marvel” by Cullen is often been misinterpreted and consequently, it was regarded as just one more lament of a defeated soul as...
Among the African writers of world recognition one name that is often mentioned has been that of Nuruddin Farah. His work deals with effectively and in detail the social life and the characteristics of the culture in Somalia. All his works leave a significant impression of the life and culture...
Introduction While analyzing any work of literature, especially prose, it is of the crucial importance to give extra attention to the role of the narrator, because, the reader perceives the events through the eyes of this person. As a rule literary critics single out several types of story telling, like...
Introduction James Patterson is one of very few authors, specialised in the genre of criminal thriller, who provides his readers not with merely the possibility to “kill time”, during the course of reading his books, but who also allows them to get an insight onto the fact that the concept...
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin is a short story that particularly focuses on the feminine gender’s side of such marriage struggles. Caged in a patriarchal society, women have been rightfully fighting for a life worth living. In this story, it takes an accident, particularly her husband’s death,...
In all societies and all epochs, judging individuals by their appearance was a prevalent tendency, which normally allowed creating a first impression about the person, their possible nature, lifestyle, and behavior. However, there is a negative side to such practice, which consists of prejudices against those, who look different in...
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...
The novel “Felicia’s Journey” by William Trevor presents a story of a young girl who had a tragic love experience in her life. She had a love affair with Johnny Lysaght who abandoned her when he found out that she was pregnant. Some readers keep to the point that the...
This essay will analyze the article by J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, “Immersion Journalism,” and the article by Edward Humes, “What is an American.” The common theme of these essays is implicit and implied. Both authors describe different topics and issues but construct their works on the opposition between the...
Brief Summary Pelzer (1994) in his book A Child Called “It”: One Child’s Courage to Survive has related his story of the sustained horror of maternal child abuse that he underwent. Narrated in first person account, Dave Pelzer has told his story of how his alcoholic mother singled him out...
Morrie Schwartz Morrie Schwartz – one of the protagonists of the novel is the professor of sociology. It is stated, that he got this job by default, nevertheless, he is an excellent teacher. The action of the novel takes place for the time when he retires, as he starts losing...
Introduction In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the main character Marlow continuously calls into question the modern assumptions that are made by his listeners as well as his readers, blurring the lines between inward and outward, civilized and savage and, most especially, dark and light. The bulk of 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 Book “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, written by a famous American author William Bryson is considered a brilliant combination of science and fiction books. It is worth mentioning that such a term as science fiction is not quite appropriate in this case because it does not show the...
Young Goodman Brown is a well-known short story written by an outstanding American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. This story is considered to be deeply psychological and grabs readers’ attention by its symbolism and imaginative expression; the author managed to reflect the contradictory world of the good and evil humanity sides. It...
Poetry is by far the most powerful means of expressing ones thoughts and ideas, although these ideas are not always explicitly stated. There is no aspect of human relationships that poetry cannot describe. The relationships between parents and their children have always been a subject of thorough analysis in psychology;...
Poetry has a beautiful ability to pull ideas and emotions out from the depths of one’s being with only a few short lines and a well-chosen metaphor. Through various literary devices, poets are able to paint pictures for their readers that more concretely define the feelings and beliefs that remain,...
Introduction It is a common knowledge that African-American experience due to its being sad and this is why dramatic always attracted attention of writers and playwrights as well as other people who could disclose to the world the reasons of oppression due to racial factor, depict, describe or portray the...
Introduction The need for guidance in life is something that people rarely admit, especially when they reach a mature age. The loss of such guidance could explain the fact that people do not appreciate the little things in life that they used to enjoy before facing real-life obstacles. “Tuesdays with...
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...
Figurative language or Metaphor encompasses almost any unusual way of expressing meaning through words. As a means of communication through careful control of diction, metaphor is most typical of poetry. “In rhetoric, a metaphor is a figure of speech in which for the purpose of emphasizing a particular quality, one...
Introduction The effective use of perspectives and narrative techniques add beauty to short stories and provide them with new dimensions. A good story writer arrests the attention of the reader through his innovative narrative techniques and builds up tension or conflict in the minds of the reader and at the...
Introduction Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, first issued in English in 1982, is one of the Nobel Prize winning writer’s shorter stories, but past and contemporary censors agree that the book’s small size conceals a huge work of art. The book’s supremacy is in the exclusive...
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 To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee is one of the most vehement novels that break the tradition of ‘ part pour l’art’ and proceeds to provide some strong lessons. Racism and classism are one of its major themes, and in course of exploration of such a theme,...
Introduction The term mateship as a specific Australian idiom can include various meanings in its essence. Its meaning can differ from the standard definition of friendship in a way that this form of relation or reference can be used between people who are actually not in friendship. This paper will...
Introduction Antoine de Saint-Exupery, to certain extent, can be compared to Leonardo Da Vinci, who, as one knows from the history, succeeded in painting, architecture as well as in exact sciences. Similarly, Saint-Exupery’s giftedness manifested itself in a number of directions: he studied architecture, worked as a sales manager and...
Anton Chekhov is one of the most talented dramatists, whose plays are included in the repertoire of theaters all over the world. The depth of the thoughts, expressed in these plays, makes readers and watchers seriously think over world history, relations among people. Chekhov himself once wrote: “We have inherited...
Slave trading in southern Appalachia Aaron Purcell is the author of the article, “A Damned Piece of Rascality: The business of slave trading in Southern Appalachia” The article has laid focus on Meek, Hayne, and Company, a firm that dealt with slave trading in Southern Appalachia. The article, which was...
The three works Everyday Use by Alice Walker (Walker, 1994), This is our life by Dorothy Allison and Sonny’s Blues by Baldwin (Baldwin, 1993) bring to light certain ethereal and sublime interpretations of everyday objects. To put it simply, everyday use objects acquire a new meaning and connotations and we...
For many minority families, identity and self-determination have been the main problems since ancient times. The play Trying to find Chinatown by Hwang and the short story Brownies by Packer describe life struggle and hardships faced by minority people in America. Both stories describe strong religious values and ideals kept...
The focal point of the paper is to present a critical response on George Stroud in the “Big Clock” by Kenneth Fearing, published in 1946. This book is a social depiction of the influence of mass media through the protagonist George Stroud, who is the editor of a popular magazine...
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...
It is difficult to identify as to who was the first feminist in the world and as to when the feminist movements had started, but majority of such movements can be traced during the last two centuries. However, there have been women feminists who have proved their abilities in this...
Introduction Epic is a significant combination of the style and the theme in the poem reproduction reflecting the flow of historical or legendary events. The world literature contains a lot of examples of famous epics covering the main features of this genre and highlighting the major moments of history. The...
Introduction The play Antigone is one of the best Greek dramatic works depicting life style of society and human relations between people. Antigone of Sophocles can be characterized as an astonishing achievement of world literature in which people are crushed by the entanglements of law whichever way they turn. Antigone...
The ancient Greeks, with their pantheon of gods, had deep religious convictions that reinforced many values we continue to hold sacred today, such as honor and loyalty to family and loved ones. Bravery was typically measured by one’s performance in battle or their ability to stand up to strange mythological...
Introduction English literature contains wonderful works related to royal families as well as common individuals that teach the readers ethical principles, moral lessons and codes of leading a dignified life on the one hand, and wide-open new horizons of intellect and wisdom to them on the other. The same is...
Introduction The Poem Dulce et Decorum Est and the story The Things they Carried are both about war, but more than fifty years apart. The geography and the weapons have changed, but the conditions are not that different. The men are much the same and war is as brutal as...
The play Death of a Salesman depicts the American dream and the inability of a person to understand the meaning of life and family happiness. The play is often seen as tragic because of the death of the main character, Willy Loman who wastes his life searching for the American...
Introduction The leading females in Oedipus Rex and Death of a Salesman are submissive characters who are unable to avert the imminent tragedies of the dominant protagonists in both the plays. In fact, both works tell the stories of the tragedies that the women characters themselves have to undergo; however,...
Introduction The main action of Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” is focused on the final two days in the life of an ordinary man named Willy Loman. At the opening of the play, it becomes apparent that Willy has been losing his sanity, yet he is still somewhat...
Introduction The book by Scot Fitzgerald is hailed as a criticism on the period of materialism during the post-war America when people seemed to pursue relaxation and individual satisfaction. It was a time when alcohol was controlled, and through this, a plot was begun: a bootlegger becoming rich in the...
Dystopia is the common setting in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies and Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby paints a depressing picture of the corruption of the American Dream during the roaring 1920s. On the other hand, In the Time of the Butterflies is the...
Rita Dove was born in Ohio in 1952. Their family was neither rich nor poor and had four children. Rita’s father had a master’s degree and worked as a chemist for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron. When she finished school she was put on the list of...
English Literature has witnessed the formation of four great fictional icons in the nineteenth century. They are Shelley’s Frankenstein, Melville’s Moby Dick, Stoker’s Dracula and Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus is rendered in opulent Gothic prose. It delves into the intricacies of the human mind...
Introduction Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman was a staunch supporter of women’s rights and development and was really not recognized as a major author of fiction and poetry until the 1960s.She was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut and wrote book length non-fiction tracts in support of women. She dies in...
Introduction One of the most common themes in short stories is the theme of coming of age. While this is the chief concern of several writers, John Irving expands outside of this theme just far enough to explore other elements of this critical process of maturation. Children grow not only...
Introduction For many readers who have acquainted themselves with Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, prior to reading critical reviews that praise this book as the work of genius, it often does not make a whole lot of sense that for her “masterpiece”, Lee was being given a Pulitzer...
The great poet and critic Mathew Arnold belongs to the Victorian period of English literature. He was very much influenced by the age he lived in. He was a staunch believer of religion. The religious disillusionment of his time pained him too much. His fear and anxiety in people’s loss...
Detectives and investigators, described in the writings of the corresponding genre of mystery novel, are usually experienced and competent specialists, but modern authors introduce novice detectives increasingly more often. These young explorers are normally children, teenagers or very young adults, who are enthusiastic and determined enough to find the core...
Introduction The War of the Roses, speaks of the period between 1455 to 1485 when two powerful dynasties in Britain fought to gain the throne of England. The two houses were the House of Lancaster with King Henry VI as the head and The House of York with King Richard...
It is very hard for any reader of Toni Morrison to escape her ‘black magic’. The reason is that this great Afro American writer speaks through history and ages in a language that is dipped in the dual hues of pain and poetry both. The two hundred years of horrid...
The Taming of the Shrew is a very light-hearted comedy written by William Shakespeare. It depicts the social attitudes to the institution of marriage as was in existence during the Elizabethan days. The theme of the play can be approached from several angles, but at the surface level, it is...
Introduction To a person who is reading Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives, for the first time, there is usually a predominant question in the mind: is the book really what it is: (an account of the lives of three people) or is there some deeper meaning hidden between the lines? The...
Introduction The book “Life of Pi” by Canadian writer Yann Martel, winner of the 2002 Booker Prize narrates delightfully, the story of Piscine Patel, who shortens his name to Pi. An elderly man in Pondicherry, India, tells the author that he has a story that can make him believe in...
Introduction The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudiah Equiano depicts personal courage a man who escapes slavery and fights for personal freedom and human rights. The narrative addresses many themes including slavery, religion, oppression, kidnapping, business relations, ideas of liberty and freedom, economic status of African countries and their...
Introduction Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois lived an intense life; the ups and downs of that altruistic life and his all-prevailing personality were all conscientiously and passionately documented by him in autobiographies, essays, notes, journal articles, and lectures through several decades. The Harlem Renaissance a.k.a. The Black Renaissance or...
Despite multiple attempts at addressing injustices observed at historical, systemic, and structural levels, the problem of race and the struggles that people of color face persists vehemently in the U.S. social context. The tragedy of the African American community is reflected impeccable in August Wilson’s 1985 novel Fences, which delves...
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...
During a lifetime, each person witnesses a large number of events. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, these instances become an inseparable part of the individual’s life. Because of the ability to memorize things, people keep many events in their minds forever, digging them out under various circumstances. Sometimes, one may desire...
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 In the modern world, many people like discussing the theme of true heroes and the required qualities. Ancient literature is probably one of the most frequent sources of information to be applied to find out good examples and evidence. During the last centuries, The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s...
First of all, it is necessary to mention, that the novel, written in 1984, and describing the epoch of the VIII century touch upon the matter, that had been fluctuated humanity for centuries. The striving for immortality and eternity occupied the minds of the greatest philosophers and alchemists. While viewing...
Introduction The pursuit of truth and justice is usually an essential part of the mystery novel; ‘Anil’s Ghost’ and The Lovely Bones approach the themes of truth and justice in unusual ways. The two stories have deep seated relationship regarding truth and justice. These qualities have been promoted, hidden, denied...
Coming across the line “They also serve who only stand and waited” in the well-known sonnet, a reader might wonder whether the modern tramps of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot would have been in Milton’s view the supreme servants of God. Intelligence, to prevent that murmur, would then remind the reader...
Women are an often-discussed topic in literature, not only in terms of their modern emancipation but also in terms of their previous idealized state and their ‘proper place in any given time period. As women gained more rights, more complete education, and greater freedoms, they began to respond to what...
“Don’t worry. I’m all right now and I think I’ll be all right. But I can’t forget-where I’ve been. I don’t mean just the physical place I’ve been, I mean where I’ve been. And what I’ve been.” – Sonny. Kicking the habit of taking in drugs – in this case,...
The current essay deals with a difficult but quite important topic tied with the role of race in Shakespeare’s Othello. As Alvin Kernan remarked Othello is probably the most perfect plays by Shakespeare in terms of the formal and structural design of its composition. Structural elements are organized in a...
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 Literary devices constitute certain elements of the story, without which literature would make little to no sense. One of the centerpieces of any story are their characters, since they are the driving factors behind certain events as well as the eyes and ears, through which the readers are allowed...
Science fiction and fantastic literature has been fascinating the readers since its very appearing. It is quite natural for people to dream, and imagine either alternative ways of history, or far future. As the discovering of the secrets which are concealed in space and far galaxies, and also the possibility...
Looking into the history of the cultures at large, it becomes evident that all human societies, from the most primitive to the most modern, have been divided into different groups, communities and strata. This stratification is on the basis of caste, class, clan, community, race, region, religion, ethnicity, gender, age...
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...
It is generally agreed that different symbols tend to be used as the way of the author’s ideas’ interpretation. In case of Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”, blood might be one of the metaphors which is reclaimed as a reference for either genetic relationships or committed crimes and their consequences. That is...
Despite Guy de Maupassant’s ‘The Necklace’ being written in the late XIXth century, this story successfully transports its moral lessons to modern life. The author engages symbolism around the main object of the story, the diamond necklace, and the deep character portrayal of two heroines to reveal the common deceptiveness...
The Necklace by Guy De Maupassant is an intriguing story with an unexpected ending that any average reader might find at least interesting. The author is highly esteemed for the skillful structuring of his writings’ composition as well as for their plot. A massive part of his legacy comprises the...
Introduction “Antony and Cleopatra” is one of Shakespeare’s most dramatic plays; however, it has not been staged nearly as many as plays such as Hamlet or Macbeth because it is such a hard play to produce due to its enormous variety of content. However, the mere strength of the characters...
The beauty of literature is that it is one of the disciplines able to reveal already existing characters from different angles. King Arthur is present in many literary works and has become a cult character. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a Middle English poem by an unknown author...
Introduction Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the work of the unknown poet written approximately in the late 14th century, contains multiple topics for a discussion. The poem is referred to as an alliterative verse and medieval romance. Special interest of the work is the notion of the magical creature...
Introduction Widely considered to be one of the most significant American writers of the 20th century, Faulkner concentrates on themes that are universal. His novels, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom! Absalom! are experiments with shifts in time and narrative. A Rose for Emily is the strange story of love,...
What Does the Color Green Symbolize in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Introduction Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a medieval poem by an unknown author dated by the late 14th century. Some of the colors frequently mentioned in this poem have a symbolic meaning. A great semantic...
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a 14th century poem by an unknown author, describing the adventures of the knight Sir Gawain, nephew of King Arthur. The work continues the tradition of Arthurian chivalric romances and most fully reveals Gawain as a character (Florschuetz 158). In addition to the...
Literature is rather a particular topic to write on because it presupposes that the person who writes on it has a profound knowledge not only of the topic he or she deals with but also has a great amount of background knowledge of a certain country’s history, culture customs, and...
Most of the stories written by modern female writers reveal their intolerance against the oppressed life of women. Male domination, for several centuries, made them mere domestic animals, denying mobility and individual freedom. The urge to free themselves from this situation, from their domestic prison, is the main thrust of...
Introduction The novel All quite on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque was one of the first novels in modern European literature to present another side of the war which was rarely disclosed earlier in literature. Earlier war was mostly presented as a heroic glorious and patriotic event, described...
Introduction In both poems, Ethics written by Linda Pastan and My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, the author describe personal experience and perception of life events and ethics of life. In the poems, the narrator calls attention to problems of ethics and morality, and underlines child’s perception of the world...
“A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen is one of the most influential plays of Victorian times which not only opened new dimensions to the English Drama but also left an indelible impact on the future writers and dramatists at large. The theme of the play seems to revolt against the...
Introduction No one would deny the fact that Shakespearean works are timeless. They have survived during the centuries and continue to ask readers various questions the answers to which help them to understand the mysteries of life. Drawing parallels between the works of the great poet and playwright helps the...
Introduction The Song of Roland could be considered no more of a guidebook to what is known as chivalry than Homer’s Iliad. It does not demonstrate any sense of fair play or sportsmanship, there is not chivalrous treatment of one’s enemies. Roland exults about his past victims, vaunts about what...
The classic Antigone by Sophocles is one of three plays about Oedipus and his family. It tells of the daughter of Oedipus Antigone, who fights to bring her brother’s corpse home to a proper burial when the new king, Creon, rules against it for his “betrayal” of Thebes. Sophocles uses...
There are many instances in the novel “Antigone” that shows the relationship of cause and effect. It is particularly important to recognize such causes and effects for they are simply the highlights of the novel itself. Theses causes and effects are what makes up the novel and without them, the...
Homer’s Iliad is somewhat unique among the ancient tales because of its tendency to include human features in its heroes. Although it displays the same sort of adherence to the early ‘heroic code’, the heroes in this tale retain many of their human frailties and concerns. Each character displays a...
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...
The short story The Things they Carried portrays war and its impact on young soldiers, their life dreams and expectations, hardship, and fears. This short story can be seen as a reflection of the events which took place during the Vietnam War. O’Brien gives an insightful analysis of the deep...
The story compares commonplace details of current life with a barbaric ceremony known as the “lottery”. The setting is a small American town where the inhabitants display a commemorative mood as they meet on June 27 for their annual lottery. After an individual from each family draws a small piece...
Introduction Flannery O’Connor is the brightest representative of the Southern Gothic in US literature. Her prose is filled with violence, erupting evil and dark features of a human being, and many stories shockingly end on a note of horror. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” first appeared in a...
Introduction A human being is a very complicated structure with a set of different qualities. A single quality does not represent whether a human being is good or bad. However, this quality can give a push to make a negative or positive opinion. Though what is good for one person...
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 Everyone lives in a culture, where cultural norms, expectations, and traditions dictate what a fortunate or happy life is. They can choose to ignore these pressures or conform to them. Two authors, Shirley Jackson and David Herbert Lawrence in their short stories The Lottery and The Rocking Horse Winner...
Introduction The renowned African American author Maya Angelou said it best as she spoke the words “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.” I believe that this enduring resiliency of the youth comes from the fact that children are innocents who, for a major part of their...
Introduction To some extent, the unique social and spiritual image of the United States attracts the constant attention of many people, including researchers and writers. The latter, as a rule, tend to understand and convey the originality of the American society, its past, present, and possible future scenario in their...
Introduction The most discussed subject in the works of Chaucer and Jane Austen is the topic of marriage. It is still a hotly debated subject. What kind of relationship a husband and wife should have, how the domestic duties are to be shared, and whether both are equal, or whether...
Introduction Geoffrey Chaucer and Jane Austen belong to two different remarkable periods in English Literature. Chaucer was born in 1334 and Austen in 1775. The birth of the English language and literature in the fourteenth century provided a proper atmosphere in England for the growth of new trends and tendencies...
The Canterbury Tales is a book authored by Geoffrey Chaucer (1342 to 1400). The author was well known as a diplomat in the Royal Service, best known for his contribution to the world of literature in the form of writings on various subjects. His work has been notable for the...
Greek legend has it that when it was time for men to be created, it was delegated by the gods to Prometheus, the Titan who had sided with Zeus in the war with the Titans. Prometheus whose name means forethought was very wise, wiser even than the gods. Prometheus took...
Not once in my life, I was puzzled by the question: Where is the borderline between the reality we live in and the imagined world that this way or another we create every new minute of our life? The borderline is indeed rather fragile and the mystery of its existence...
All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous and influential book by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel is set in the western front of World War I and depicts the life of German soldiers. The futility of war and the devastating effect it has on human psychology are...
Introduction The Tale of Kieu is a Vietnamese epic poem written by Nguyen Du in the early 19th century. The work has become a crucial part of Vietnamese literature, with many people believing that it holds great significance to the development of Vietnamese arts and poetry. The story is focused...
The questions of gender equality and the role of women in family and society are central for Isabel Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits that was first published in 1982. Although Allende describes the life of her characters without directly naming the Latin American country they live in, it...
As a medium that allows one to communicate personal ideas and beliefs through different types of expression, art transforms people. “The Moviegoer” is a unique narrative in which two art forms collide, thus providing a masterfully written foil for the character development. The story of Blix Bolling, a New Orleans...
Fences is a play by August Wilson, an American playwright, a Pulitzer’s laureate, who wrote about the life of African Americans in different periods of the 20th century. He chronicled the African-American experience through a series of 10 plays. In the 1950s, the South was still officially segregated, and in...
Modern technological developments are transforming human activities, processes, and behaviors. The proliferation of handheld devices and smartphones is discouraging more people from visiting libraries physically. The traditional reading culture in this community has also been affected negatively. Many people are currently busy focusing on their career goals and aims. Long...
Introduction Augustine was one of the most influential philosophers in the fourth century due to his controversial prospect and his views on Christianity. Marino examines the main Augustine’s works and his thoughts on a person’s will, good and evil, faith, and God. The author demonstrates the main aspects of his...
Introduction Literature is one of the ways to express thoughts related to a particular issue or discuss people’s perspectives on it. Throughout all history of humanity, individuals have been trying to express their emotions and feelings by using the power of the word. Written texts, as the first potent tool...
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 epos of ancient works is rich in vivid images and characters that embody the ideas of heroism and convey the moral character of past eras. Nevertheless, the approaches of some authors with respect to the portraits of the main characters were different, which makes their work even more...
MacLeod’s short story “The Boat” presents several crucial themes for analysis, including an exploration of the tension between duties and aspirations. The author depicts the boat named in the story’s title as the embodiment of the narrator’s long-lasting family heritage as well as that of many other families living in...
The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (My Soul Desired Yiddish) The short story, “My Soul Desires Yiddish”, talks about how the Jewish society rejected its language, Yiddish. It is important to discuss the author’s relationship to his subject matter. The writer is a member of the community...
Lorraine Hansberry’s play titled A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates readiness to challenge typical representations of minority families in theatrical pieces. The play has connections with two poems by Hughes, “Mother to Son” and “Harlem.” In his poem titled “Mother to Son,” Hughes refers to the exchange of experiences between...
Introduction The novel Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya is one of the most outstanding works revealing the problems and lifestyle of Mexicans in the United States in the 20th century. At the center of the story, such a family is represented, and the main characters are vivid and deep....
Introduction The book Grapes of Wrath is a national epic written by John Steinbeck. In this text, the author reveals the socio-political life of the country during the crisis years. Against the backdrop of this narrative, Steinbeck talks about the fate of the Joad family – one of many thousands...
Introduction The Story of an Hour, which is a short literary work about a woman who thinks that she has become a widow, was written by Kate Chopin in the 1890s. In her short story, the author describes the metamorphoses and the inner dialogue of Louise, whose husband, as far...
Edgar Allan Poe is well-known for his mysterious and horrific short stories with several significant lessons. “The Cask of Amontillado” is one example of a strait plot based on revenge but touches upon different aspects of life, including friendship, trust, deceit, and envy. Despite the intention to create honest and...
Introduction Detective fiction is known to focus on the figure of the detective; however, supporting roles are also of extreme importance for readers. Such characters may have several functions, including plot advancement, the introduction of subplots, developing themes, heightening the conflict, and development of the main character. In Devil in...
Introduction Sophocles’ work Oedipus the King belongs to the genre of ancient tragedy. This literary style is characterized by personal conflicts, as a result of which the main character comes to the loss of personal values that are necessary for life. The contrast of happiness and unhappiness is often shown...
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...
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...
Apology of Socrates is a work of Plato that contains a version of Socrates’ speech delivered by him in 399 BC in his defense. This work was one of many apologies written in defense of Socrates against allegations of corruption. This speech is a reliable source of the trial of...
It is important to note that there are significant similarities between Amanda and Jim, and Jim and Tom in various regards. Jim O’Connor is introduced by Tom as a person with a successful past but who undergoes daily struggles in the main timeline of the story. It can be compared...
The Tale of Kieu is one of the most important works of Vietnamese literature, and it is an exciting object of study and analysis. Throughout the poem, Kieu faces many different circumstances, including prostitution, poverty, slavery, rape, mental health issues, and more. The focus of the story is mostly on...
Analysis It is worth noting that Robert Lowell was a poet who did not use rhyme and rhythmic units to give his writings traditional sounding. Many of his works can be regarded as experimental poetry, and the author resorted to his creative method to produce the necessary impression on the...
Introduction Philip K. Dick might be one of the most significant authors of science fiction. His Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, published in 1968 for the first time, made a high impact on the genre. Dick discusses many issues through the prism of the atomic war threat making an...
Introduction Literary plots in which national identity and commitment to traditions are described are fascinating works that make it possible to immerse oneself in other cultures and their features. Alice Walker’s story Everyday Use is an example of such a genre, and despite its humor and irony, the essence of...
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...
‘Hills Like White Elephants’ by Ernest Hemingway is another short story with a cyphered message. At first glance, nothing special but a conversation between a man and a woman at a train station is happening. Here, a reader seems to be peeking through a keyhole. Along the peeking, the reader...
Puritanism was one of the main features of 17th society. It impacted the lives of many people and preconditioned their behaviors. In accordance with this paradigm, women had specific roles and duties. For this reason, many writers of that period devoted their works to this philosophy and its discussion. Anne...
Introduction Hemingway’s short story “The Killers” deals with the common for the writer themes of courage, death, disillusionment, and masculinity. The semi-autobiographical narrator of the author, Nick Adams, intends to show his heroism but is disillusioned by the outcome of it. Throughout the story’s development, it becomes clear that Nick...
