Study Like a Boss
One of the most significant writers of the romantic period in American literature was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne wrote stories that opposed the ideas of Transcendentalism. Since he had ancestors of Puritan belief, Hawthorne wrote many stories about Puritan New England. His most famous story is the Scarlet Letter. This novel tells of the punishment of … Read more
The major theme of Siddhartha is that happiness comes from spiritual peace. Throughout the novel, the protagonist seeks such peace, which is finally achieved through several different stages of life. The first stage is that of an orthodox Brahmin’s son. In this stage, he reads the scriptures and performs ritualistic sacrifice. The second is an … Read more
Tom Sawyer, the mischievous, adventurous boy, always was looking for trouble to keep his life interesting. Tom, along with his friends, Huckleberry Finn and Joe Harper planned adventures to keep themselves busy. Tom, being the boy that always gets into trouble, was at the same time smart. He got out of his punishments, given by … Read more
The praised epic poem, Beowulf, is the first great heroic poem in English literature. The epic follows a courageous warrior named Beowulf throughout his young, adult life and into his old age. As a young man, Beowulf becomes a legendary hero when he saves the land of the Danes from the hellish creatures, Grendel and … Read more
It is my strong belief that the play, “The Merchant of Venice”, should be taught in classes. If this play was banned from schools it would most certainly be a form of censorship. The play teaches us about prejudice, and why it is wrong. People would see how everyone was hurt at one time or … Read more
Canterbury Tales tells many stories from medieval literature and provides a great variety of comic tales. Geoffrey Chaucer injects many tales of humor into the novel. Chaucer provides the reader with many light-hearted tales as a form of comic relief between many serious tales. The author interpolates humor into many tales, provides comic relief, and … Read more
You didn’t want to come. The average man don’t like trouble and danger. You don’t like trouble and danger. But if only half a man-like you Buck Harkness, there shouts Lynch him! Lynch him! ‘ you’re afraid to back down – afraid you’ll be found out to be what you are – cowards! ” In … Read more
The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, was a period in France during the 1700’s following the classical age. Within this time, philosophers placed the emphasis on reason as the best method for learning. It explored issues in education, law philosophy, and politics. It attacked tyranny, social injustice, superstition, and ignorance. This time produced advances … Read more
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn In recent years, there has been increasing discussion of the seemingly racist ideas expressed by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn. In some extreme cases the novel has even been banned by public school systems and censored by public libraries. The basis for these censorship campaigns has been the depiction of one … Read more
Throughout history women have played important roles in society. Women have gone through much adversity to get where they are today. Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront are some the pioneers of womens literature. Each shows their different aspects of a womens role in society in their books Emma by Austen and Jane Eyre by Bront. … Read more
The Professor and the Madman, written by Simon Winchester, is a biography about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Winchester, who is an author, journalist, broadcaster and foreign correspondent, has written for many magazines and newspapers distributed worldwide. In an interview between Winchester and a host of C-SPAN, Winchester was asked where the idea … Read more
In 1798, a poet named Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the poem called “Kubla Khan”. In his preface, he stated that he had dreamt the poem, and wrote it down just as it was “preserved”. The speaker also stated that the poem is merely a fragment, it is not complete. “With the exception of about eight … Read more
Development of character forms the single, most important element of most works fiction, and the way in which we respond to the character has a major influence on our interpretation and response to the text. For example, try to imagine the short story As Boys to Wanton Flies by Michael Wilding, without the development of … Read more
A Doll House is no more about womens rights than Shakespeares Richard II is about the divine right of kings, or Ghosts about syphilis. . . . Its theme is the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she is and to strive to become that person. (Bloom 28) … Read more
By the end of World War I, many America authors were ready to change their ways and views on writing. Authors were tired of tradition and limitations. One of these writers was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a participant in the wild parties with bootleg liquor, but he was also a critic of this time. … Read more
Shylock’s first scene in The Merchant of Venice is important because it sets the tone for the audience’s view of him throughout the play. I have never seen the play performed, but it has been my experience that an audience will form an opinion of a character upon first seeing them. There are many different … Read more
There are about 26 different editions of the novel of Frankenstein, and every movie that has been made based on the novel is different from the next. What you read in the novel is not necessarily what you see on the movie screen. There are a lot of good moments in the book that lost … Read more
Thomas Sterns Eliot wrote the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock over a period of six years and published it circa 1917 at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. As his first published poem, Prufrock revealed Eliots original and highly developed style. Its startling jumps from rhetorical language to clich, its indirect literary … Read more
In Hamlet, Shakespeare brings together a theme of madness with two characters, one truly mad, and one only acting mad to serve a motive. We can see this point through two characters namely Hamlet and Ophelia. The madness of Hamlet is frequently disputed. Ophelia’s breakdown and Hamlet’s brand of insanity argue for Hamlet having a … Read more
Gilgamesh is an epic that has been passed down for thousands of years. The epic narrates the legendary deeds of the main character Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is two-thirds immortal and one-third mortal; however, he cannot accept his fate that one day he too will die (Gilgamesh 1). The entire epic tells the story of how Gilgamesh … Read more
In the play Othello, the character of Othello has certain traits which make him seem naive and unsophisticated compared to many other people. This is why Iago, to get his just rewards uses him as a scapegoat. Iago told Roderigo, ” O,sir, content you. I follow him [Othello] to serve my turn upon him “(I, … Read more
A master artisan and innovator of the Greek tragedy, Sophocles’s insightful plays have held their value throughout countless time periods and societies. Through the use of common literary techniques, Sophocles was able to express themes and ideas that reflect all of humankind. On particular idea was that Sophocles believed that hubris is destructive and will … Read more
In T. S. Elliots essay, The Hero Cheering Himself Up, he takes the viewpoint that Othello is both influenced by and influences Seneca, the Roman philosopher and author of tragedies. It is not the Attitude of Seneca; but i is derived from Seneca(153). He also compares Shakespeare to other authors such as Chapman and Marston, … Read more
Comparing Two Extracts From Novels From Point Of View Of Language And Punctuation Jane Eyre is a book set further back in time and the language used in it is more old style, eg. And if I were in your place I should dislike her. In modern language we would say that morel like: If … Read more
“Young Goodman Brown”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a moralizing story. Hawthorne shows us the great importance of our faith in God, our family and friends, and at length ourselves. The plight of Goodman Brown indicates that without our “faith” we are unable to live life to the fullest possible extent. Faith is our key to … Read more
Ambiguity: Two different interpretations can be used to describe Georgianas character. At first she seems to be a strong confident women who is very self assured. Only after the constant focus of her husbands attention to her birthmark, does she begin to willow away. When Aylmer gives her the elixir to drink, Georgiana has submitted … Read more
The play, Othello was written by William Shakespeare in the later years of his career. Giraldi Cinthios, Tale of a Moor, based Othello on a story that was a mellow Drama, about a moor and his doubts about his wifes fidelity. In Shakespeares play the Moor (Othello) convinced by his jealous aid (Iago) that his … Read more
The Great Gatsby, a novel by Scott Fitzgerald, is about the American Dream, and the downfall of those who attempt to reach its impossible goals. The attempt to capture the American Dream is used in many novels. This dream is different for different people; but, in The Great Gatsby, for Jay, the dream is that … Read more
John Updike’s short story “A&P” is about a teenager who has to make a serious decision. The story is set in an A&P supermarket in a town north of Boston, probably about the year 1960. As the plot unfolds, Sammy changes from being a thoughtless and sexist boy to being a young man who can … Read more
In many literary works, family relationships are the key to the plot. Through a family’s interaction with one another, the reader is able decipher the conflicts of the story. Within a literary family, various characters play different roles in each other’s lives. These are usually people that are emotionally and physically connected in one way … Read more
In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorian ideals still held sway in American society, at least among members of the middle and upper classes. Thus the cult of True Womanhood was still promoted which preached four cardinal virtues for women: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Women were considered far more religious than men … Read more
Once Upon a Social Issue Fairy tales have always been told to us as children; whether to comfort or entertain us, they always seem to be a part of most everyones childhood. When Nadine Gordimer was asked to write a childrens story, she replied with a short story titled Once Upon A Time. Although the … Read more
“Trifles,” a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell, is a cleverly written story about a murder and more importantly, it effectively describes the treatment of women during the early 1900s. In the opening scene, we learn a great deal of information about the people of the play and of their opinions. We know that there … Read more
Debut novel by hip-hop rap artist Sister Souljah, whose No Disrespect (1994), which mixes sexual history with political diatribe, is popular in schools country-wide. In its way, this is a tour de force of black English and underworld slang, as finely tuned to its heroine’s voice as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. The subject matter, … Read more
Shakespeare lived and wrote in the Elizabethan age, a time when his society was branching out and making itself known throughout the world by colonizing other cultures. Great Britain was reaching for new heights of power. In the play Shakespeare questions the value of this new concept of British imperialism. The Tempest is called Shakespeares … Read more
In the play “Oedipus the King”, the main character, Oedipus tries intensively to figure out the truth about himself. There were many instances where Oedipus was looking for the truth but instead was led away from it. As Oedipus searches the city of Thebes for the truth, his ruin is ironically mentioned and foreshadowed in … Read more
The Yellow Wall-paper is an amazing story that demonstrates how close-minded the world was a little over a hundred years ago. In the late eighteen hundreds, women were seen as personal objects that are not capable of making a mark in the world. If a woman did prove to be a strong intellectual person and … Read more
In the late 1990’s playwright, William Shakespeare’s, Othello was successfully produced in the United States and around the world. One might wonder why this classical tragedy gained so much popularity with today’s society. In my own opinion, this play was successful due to the themes and issues addressed. Societies still deal with these situations today. … Read more
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, it is clearly evident that the fluctuation in attitude to the dual role and situation and tribulations imposed upon the character of Viola/Cesario ends up in a better understanding of both sexes, and thus, allows Viola to have a better understanding for Orsino. Near the opening of the play, when Viola … Read more
Throughout the play, Julius Caesar, opinions over important matters clash. Brutus and Cassius, both senators of Rome, have two completely different ways of looking at matters. Brutus, an idealist, has a more nave way of looking at things. He tends to see only the good in a person. Cassius, on the other hand, is a … Read more
Death is such a contradicting situation. It is always a sad event, but in some perspectives it may or may not be a joyous event. Not to say that death should be celebrated, just to point out that life may have been a more dramatic experience. For my first novel in G. T. I read … Read more
Emily Dickinson’s two poems, “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died,” revolve around one central theme, death. Though the two do centralize around the theme of death they both have slightly different messages or beliefs about what is to come after death. By discussing both of the … Read more
Upon viewing the documentary, Paradise Lost, one of my first impressions was a feeling of shock at the hysteria surrounding the case, and how heavily it impacted the trial. Another area of concern was the tenuous (or nonexistent) evidence tying these youths to these horrible murders. The entire essence of the prosecutions case was a … Read more
The purpose of this study guide is to help you find your way around the text, and to introduce subjects which may be set by examiners. It is not a substitute for close study of the novel. Ideas presented here need to be supported by textual reference (either summary of narrative detail or brief direct … Read more
Throughout the novel The Call of the Wild, we follow a dog named Buck through his journey through the Klondike. We experience a transformation in him, as he adapts to the cold, harsh land where he is forced to toil in the snow, just to help men find a shiny metal. Buck seems to almost … Read more
All human beings will, at some point carry some amount of guilt with them. Whether they could have prevented what happened or not, humans tend to carry guilt. Hester Prynne will forever carry the guilt of committing adultery. This is shown when Hawthorne writes, Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most … Read more
Most criticism and reflection of Nathaniel Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown centers on a good versus evil theme. Critics also debate interpretations of the main characters consciousness; is Brown awake or dreaming. What is certain is that he lives and dies in pain because his belief in his righteousness isolates him from his community. It is … Read more
With our view of God, it can sometimes be difficult to comprehend the actions and thinking of the Greek deities. The Christian God does not tend to take such an active role in the affairs of people’s lives, where, on the other hand, the Greeks regarded direct involvement by the gods as a daily, uncontrollable … Read more
The book A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a classic about the love story of a nurse and a war ridden soldier. The story starts as Frederick Henry is serving in the Italian Army. He meets his future love in the hospital that he gets put in for various reasons. I thought … Read more
Every mother should want to make life easier for their child. This is shown in Amy Tans novel, The Joy Luck Club. It consists of stories about the lives and relationships between the mothers and daughters of the Joy Luck Club. An-Mei Hsu is always trying to help her daughter, Rose Hsu Jordan, through the … Read more
