Literature Essays

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Narratives on the Evolution of Democracy

1 Page 573 Words
Democracy in the United States has been in a constant state of change. To this day, Democracy is still evolving to fit the times. New laws passed, old laws challenged or abolished, and ideas constantly being shared. Currently we get most of our current information about these changes from news media, but in the 19th century there were many writers...

The Bonfire of the Vanities' as a Stylistic Triumph

11 Pages 5173 Words
Since the beginning of his success as a creative force within the New Journalism movement in the late 1960s, Tom Wolfe has established himself as a major figure of American Letters. Born on March 2, 1931 in Richmond, Virginia, the son of an agronomy professor and a landscape designer discovered his enthusiasm for fiction and journalism even before high school...
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The Lottery Essay

1 Page 590 Words
The village lottery culminates in a violent murder each year, a bizarre ritual that suggests how dangerous tradition can be when people follow it blindly. Before we know what kind of lottery they’re conducting, the villagers and their preparations seem harmless, even quaint: they’ve appointed a rather pathetic man to lead the lottery, and children run about gathering stones in...

“Prodigal Summer”: Review of a Book

2 Pages 739 Words
This was an odd moment for me to finally get around to reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, which has been waiting on my bookshelf for ages. Bursting with energy and appreciation for all living things, the book reminds me that I am not a farmer, that I am not a naturalist––not in the true sense of those words, anyway. It...

The Crucible': Danger of Making Assumptions

1 Page 421 Words
In the play, 'The Crucible' Arthur Miller writes about a fire and its representation of hysteria and a crucible to depict that in times of hysteria, making assumptions will only create additional chaos and paranoia by leading one further from the truth. The concept of fire through symbolism and a biblical allusion demonstrates that assumptions will only lead one further...

Thanatopsis': The Role of The Unity of Nature

2 Pages 996 Words
In the speaker’s vision of death, nature plays a central role. Instead of dealing with abstract entities like God, angels, souls, or Heaven, the speaker focuses on the physical objects that make up the mortal world — think: dirt, rivers, trees. In doing so, the speaker suggests that human beings aren’t all that different from these physical things — that...

The Minister's Black Veil': Metaphorically Speaking and Short Description

3 Pages 1455 Words
The most common features that people hide are their downfalls. For example, when we commit something wrong, we tend to express ourselves differently to avoid our flaws. People hide their wrongdoings so others won't ridicule what they have gone through. The truth will sometimes require fighting in order to reveal itself.A parable is a brief story that can give spiritual...

Philosophy Of Socialism In Upton Sinclair’s 'The Jungle'

4 Pages 1991 Words
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle goes through a series of intense struggles experienced by a Lithuanian immigrant family who have migrated to the United States in hopes for a better life. Sinclair encompasses the realities the working-class experiences in the Urban America, he creates a sense of familiarity with the migrant family, making the struggles more deeply felt, ensuring that we...

The Theme of Mortality in We Must Die by Claude McKay

2 Pages 1015 Words
In the poem “We Must Die” written by Claude Mckay, the deeper meaning behind his word choice and structure of sentences is presented starting from the beginning of the poem. What stuck out in this poem was the eeriness of the words and the images that linger in your head when you try to comprehend what the author is trying...

Postcolonial Issues in Achebe's 'Antilles of Savanna'

3 Pages 1367 Words
Chinua Achebe, emeritus professor of the University of Nigeria, one of the greatpioneers of modern African literature in English, who published several outstanding novels,among which Things Fall Apart (1958), has already become something like an Africanclassic, and who is not only known for his stories, essays, and children's books but also forhis award-winning poetry, has given us another very fine...

The Quiet Greatness of Eudora Welty

2 Pages 882 Words
Like Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and a few others, Eudora Welty endures in national memory as the perpetual senior citizen, someone tenured for decades as a silver-haired elder of American letters. Her abiding maturity made her seem, perhaps long before her time, perfectly suited to the role of our favorite maiden aunt. But when I visited Welty at her Jackson,...

The World is Flat': The Contribution of Technology

2 Pages 775 Words
Regardless if the world is flat or if it is not, we still have an unprecedented situation to deal with. The world’s economy is being enlarged, or as Thomas Friedman explains, becoming tinier. At this very moment, a fifteen-year-old child in Spain can look at the exact same content as a college professor at Harvard. With this occurring all around...

Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America Book Review

1 Page 644 Words
Many historic figures prolong their legacy or importance through books, memorials, or museums. Abraham Lincoln is one of the most prestigious and important people in U.S history and for someone with a great amount of recognition, a biography is usually written about them.There are multiple different biographies out there highlighting Lincoln’s life, accomplishments etc. However, I believe that it is...

Faust': Dr. Faustus Vs Mephistopheles: Struggle of Opposites

3 Pages 1215 Words
Throughout the course of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, a complex relationship develops between Dr. Faustus and the devil Mephastophilis that can be characterized by Faustus’ total dependence on his counterpart and a mutual sense of possessiveness that inadvertently reveals the despair and longing of Mephastophilis. The pact that Faustus makes with Lucifer is similar to a dark ceremony...
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The Rainbow': Summary

2 Pages 816 Words
The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family,between 1840 and 1905. The Brangwens have owned and worked Marsh Farm in Nottinghamshire, England, for generations, and the family includes craftsmen as well as farmers. Tom Brangwen hasn’t much left the Midlands counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, where the farm is located. Tom works the land in near...

Types of Blindness in Oedipus Rex and The Glass Menagerie

2 Pages 937 Words
Life is full of things that humans wish to forget. Using blindness as a buffer from reality is a natural response to dangerous stimuli. The types of blindness are easily classified into many categories. These classifications make understanding stories and characters much better. The characters in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams are easily classified...

Waiting for the Barbarians': Plot Summary

1 Page 686 Words
The main protagonist of the novel is a nameless civil servant, who serves as magistrate to a frontier settlement owned by a nameless empire. The Empire, a vague colonialist regime, sets itself in opposition to the “barbarians,” mysterious nomadic peoples who live in the wild lands bordering the Empire. The magistrate is looking forward to a quiet retirement, and hopes...

Annie Dillard on Nature as Strength Source

2 Pages 1092 Words
Nature can be a therapist, for example, walking in the woods, listening to the leaves agitating themselves in the breeze, a sense of seclusion and tranquility can be gained; nature can also be destructive, for instance, floods, hurricane and avalanche deprive thousands of lives. In 1979, at the sight of a total eclipse, Annie Dillard has learned about the unpredictability...

The Rape of the Lock': Close Analysis of a Book

2 Pages 929 Words
Alexander Pope constructs The Rape of the Lock as a social satire as he utilises satirical techniques to comment upon contemporary society. This passage displays how Pope toys with structure and form to parody the popular genre of the epic by creating a mock-heroic piece, voicing how society focuses on such trivialities, as opposed to truly important matters. In addition,...

The Hero with a Thousand Faces': Joseph Campbell's Concept of the Monomyth

2 Pages 1011 Words
Joseph Campbell’s analysis of world mythology in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, reveals the concept of the Monomyth, an idea that states that all myths contain a basic, near universal structure. Dave Whomsley further dissected Joseph Campbell’s recipe for stories in his short summary titled The Hero with a Thousand Faces The book by Joseph Campbell, discussed...

A Vindication of the Rights of Women': The Main Goal of a Book

1 Page 575 Words
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft manufactured A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to enforce the idea of equal education for women within the minds of males and other intellectuals of her time period. She stresses the variances between men and women are solely caused by the drastic differences in education. During the eighteenth century, women are ineffectively taught because their...

“The Wife of His Youth”: Analysis of a Book

1 Page 582 Words
The construct of class and race can have a considerable impact on the life choices of individuals. In “The Wife of his Youth,” Charles Chesnutt describes the story of Mr. Ryder, a prosperous African American with light skin which meets his wife, Liza Jane, after a long period of being apart. Even though Mr. Ryder wishes to marry Molly Dixon,...

Geoffrey Chaucer as the Father of English Poetry

2 Pages 957 Words
Chaucer is referred not only as father of English poetry but also as father of English language and literature. Even today English literature is incomplete without reading him. Every student when get admission in English literature he has to read poetry from the very beginning. For this, he reads Chaucer’s poetry in detail especially his book “The Prologue to the...

Origin, Definition and History of The Witches and Witchcraft

4 Pages 1861 Words
A witch, in the most simple form, is a woman believed to have magic or supernatural abilities and that these powers are used for evil or nefarious purposes. Many people accused of being a witch were thought to be associated with or worshipping Satan himself. In addition to worshipping Satan as a holy figure, which was extremely against Christian belief,...

Thanatopsis': Theme of The Inevitability of Death

1 Page 618 Words
'Thanatopsis' was written by William Cullen Bryant—probably in 1813, when the poet was just 19. It is Bryant's most famous poem and has endured in popularity due its nuanced depiction of death and its expert control of meter, syntax, imagery, and other poetic devices. The poem gives voice to the despair people feel in contemplating death, then finds peace by...

Oedipus Rex: Metaphor of Blindness and Insight

2 Pages 915 Words
Oedipus Rex is a sad tragedy in which Sophocles clearly demonstrates the metaphor of sight and insight, which shows that for one to see the truth and/or reality, one does not need physical sight. Oedipus was ignorant of his reality regardless of his vision. Teiresias, then again, could simply see the truth. Oedipus's mental blindness left him beaten and obliterated...

Courtly Love and Chivalry in the Later Middle Ages

12 Pages 5633 Words
My subject is courtly love, that strange doctrine of chivalric courtship that fixed the vocabulary and defined the experience of lovers in our culture from the latter Middle Ages until almost our own day. Some of its traces still survive -- or at least they do in the old Andy Hardy movies. if you are old enough to have seen...

The Hot Zone': This Book about Viruses Changed Everything

3 Pages 1164 Words
With the COVID-19 pandemic raging, I found myself looking through my bookshelves for a paperback copy of Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller, The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story. It’s worth noting that one of the bio-disaster movies that everyone seems to want to watch these days is 1995’s Outbreak, with Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo as government scientists trying to...

Arnold's Works and Hidden Radicalism in Them

3 Pages 1148 Words
Matthew Arnold was born in 1822 in Laleham-on-Thames in Middlesex County, England. Due to some temporary childhood leg braces, and a competitiveness within the large family of nine young Matthew earned the nickname 'Crabby'. His disposition was described as active, but since his athletic pursuits were somewhat hindered by this correction of a 'bent leg', intellectual pursuits became more accessible...
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