Study Like a Boss
Comedy, Courtly Love, Drama, Fiction, Poetry, Protagonist, Short Story, Tragedy, 1984, A Raisin in The Sun, Animal Farm, Beowulf, Fahrenheit 451, Frankenstein, George Orwell, Hamlet, Into The Wild, Lord of The Flies, Macbeth, Of Mice and Men, A Modest Proposal, All Quiet on The Western Front, Allegory, Antigone, Between The World and Me.
In The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, Hoppie Groenewald is a train guard, conductor and star welter-weight boxer. While reading the book, the reader will notice Hoppie does not have as extensive of a role as some other characters but is undoubtably the strongest male presence in Peekay’s life. So far, a male figure … Read more
The journey from childhood to maturity is guided primarily by the search for meaning. In All the Pretty Horses, protagonist John Grady Cole leaves home to find the place where he belongs in the world. Throughout the novel, John Grady chased the ideal vision of the ranch lifestyle instilled in him by his late grandfather, … Read more
The novel Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Houng is a work that represents postwar Vietnam quite well, with the author holding nothing back in terms of her home nations virtues and ailments. So much is her unbridled frankness that the work has long since been banned in its country of origin, yet this … Read more
Bees making a commotion in somebody’s brain, a bright red hat, and a water pump in New York City. There seems to be no connection between those objects, but they all in fact have something in common; they are all symbols in the book Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson. In that novel, Isabel and Curzon, … Read more
In the book the Wednesday Wars, Holling Hoodhood is a seventh grader at Camillo Junior High in suburban Long Island in the 1967-1968 school year, with the entire book set in the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Holling’s teacher is Mrs. Baker, whose husband is in Vietnam; Mrs. Baker is teaching Holling whilst Mr. Baker … Read more
“For a moment [George] contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her” (Forster 55). This scene from E. M. Forster’s Room with a … Read more
“Language is not a neutral instrument.”[1] Literature is never without an ideology, whether intended by the writer, interpreted by the reader, inherent in the language, or implied by the context. Thus, an author or a playwright’s particular manipulation of medium – a particular style – always serves a purpose; the author’s, or the audience’s. The … Read more
Without a doubt, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses stays true to many common tropes within the Western genre. However; what makes this novel so unique is how McCarthy manipulates some of these important tropes. They are still present throughout the book, in fact, some of them are magnified through each part but as a … Read more
Character List Mick Kelly: A young girl who is always in her own world, constantly thinking about music and wanting to go to a different country. She lives in the same house as Singer, and many other characters. She is tall and thin with blonde hair and blue eyes, and dresses like a tomboy. John … Read more
Love is one of the fundamental principles of humanity. It is what ties humans together as a people, and is vital to society. As such, it has influenced the world in countless ways, just one of which being through literature. Les Miserables tells the tale of Jean Valjean, a convicted criminal who must escape his … Read more
In the graphic novel ‘Fun Home’ by Alison Bechdel, she talks about her family but more about her relationship with her father. She portrays her father as an emotionally disconnected man while still trying to understand his ways. Bechdel tells about how the two of them are completely opposite and uses her images to replace … Read more
The kite runner is a novel written by Hossein Khaled, an Afghan-American author. The book informs readers about a story of a young boy, Amir from the Kabul district. This story is set from a backdrop of events such as the Soviet military’s intervention in the fall of Afghanistan monarchy and the removal of refugees … Read more
Many people in today’s world have trouble when it comes to communicating. In literature many authors use communication as a way to either create relationships or to create barriers in one. In the novel The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat, many characters struggle when it comes to communicating about their past, while others thrive at … Read more
Widely celebrated as a cornerstone text of the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella Passing is concerned with its titular subject in more ways than one. While racial passing undoubtedly constitutes the text’s thematic center, Larsen’s narrative also implicitly addresses the theme of sexual passing. This is most readily observable in Irene Redfield, who manages … Read more
In Clifford R. Shaw’s novel, The Jack-Roller, the autobiography of a teenage boy named Stanley, who lives in Chicago, Illinois, during the late 1920s is discussed. In the novel, Stanley vividly details the abusive home he regularly runs away from, the delinquent acts he constantly commits, and the changing social situations he is a part … Read more
Hatchet was written by Gary Paulsen. In this novel, thirteen year old Brian is flying on a bush plane when the pilot suddenly has a heart attack and dies. Brian manages to keep the plane level until it crashes into a lake. Brian survives the crash, but that is just the beginning. Brian must find … Read more
While windows are technically supposed to show a viewer the outer world, in Broken April they are used to give the reader a peek into the inner feelings of the main characters. When ‘Bessian put(s) his head close to the glass’ and ‘stay(s) a long while in that position’, (pg.167) he is looking at the … Read more
During war, men and woman are swept by emotions that make it difficult to overlook their experiences in war. Jack Croasdile, a prisoner of war, drew under his captivity in 1941 by the Germans a picture titled Anticipating 1942. Featured in the picture, he and his deceased wife are covered by a shadow with their … Read more
The power of myth and tradition to shape and control the shared consciousness of communities is a recurring theme in Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise. Morrison uses the residents of the town of Ruby and the nearby Convent to illustrate the irrationality of dogmatic adherence to mythical beliefs and traditions without reason while also proving that … Read more
The Book of Jeff Kinney starts with one of the main characters Greg Heffley, he makes himself ready for the start of his career in the high school, he was being bullied by his brother called, Rodrick because their mother bought school accessories for Greg. Greg also has a little brother, his name is Manny … Read more
Often times the protagonist of a bildungsroman will undergo a cathartic revelation, shifting their perspective from one of innocence and childhood to one of understanding and adulthood; John Grimes, the protagonist of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, experiences said journey of realization and self discovery, which builds up to the climax of … Read more
“Yes, if you understood me, Mama, you’d see I was trying to explain it, in blues, without words, the explanation somewhere behind the words. To explain what will always be there” (Gayl Jones, Corregidora, p 66). In Gayl Jones’ novel Corregidora, the past is presented as a terrifying and dominating force that practically physically infects … Read more
The relationship between the ideal and the reality is many times pictured in black and white. The ideal can be defined as a conception of something in its perfection, whereas reality is defined as something that exists independently of ideas concerning it. In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton blurs the relationship between ideals and … Read more
Throughout the novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, written by Junot Diaz, sex and masculinity is the vital element in being a Dominican male. Dominican males according to Yunior, the narrator of the novel, is someone who has power and pizzazz, dominates women, controls female sexuality through physical violence and verbal aggression and … Read more
Notions of sins and their corresponding atonement have permeated throughout Khaled Hosseini’s incisive fiction The Kite runner as a major theme, where in the novel, the protagonist Amir’s sin towards his father Baba and his best friend Hassan, as well as Baba’s sin towards his best friend Ali are respectively disclosed, and their attempts for … Read more
This story is about kino finding a pearl and the effects of this. Kino and juana are the main characters of the story and want to change their poor life circumstances to a wealthier lifestyle when they found the pearl. They encounter many conflicts throughout the story. In the end of all this they lost … Read more
In Ann Petry’s novel The Street, even the most simple, everyday objects take on fiendish personalities and shifting, threatening aspects. From the cruel wind in the story’s opening chapter to the hard, bitter street itself, glaring situational cruelty and injustice brings vivid color to the narrative. Even the walls, as Petry describes, “were reaching out … Read more
Commonly referenced in Western Europe and around the world, the story of the Faustian bargain—in which a remarkable individual trades soul and salvation for vast power—has appeared throughout history in poems, plays, newspapers, and novels describing characters’ dilemmas. In The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, the narrator falls in love with a machine-generated … Read more
One of the most striking elements of Paradise of the Blind is its constant discussion of food. Through imagery and description of traditional foodstuffs, the novel emphasizes the Vietnamese’s deep cultural connections to and love of food. These descriptions serve to describe family and cultural dynamics of Hang’s childhood as well as highlight the differences … Read more
In Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American, Greene portrays American character and foreign policy during the 1950’s. He does so by maintaining three important themes; the insufficiency of theoretical thinking, the fear of innocence, and the difficulty of remaining neutral. Throughout the novel, Greene emphasizes “that innocence and idealism can claim as many lives as … Read more
The River Between The novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, The River Between, tells the story of two tribes that hold very different beliefs central to themselves. However, though they agree on very little, there are still people that believe in peace and unity. The clash between the two villages is over the traditional Gikuyu belief … Read more
Pioneering, or the act of breaking new ground, is what has established the United States as the enormous international presence it is today. From ideals represented by manifest destiny, the Declaration of Independence, institutions such as Wellesley College, and the Second Amendment, the United States has created a home for pioneers such as Frederick Douglass, … Read more
The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Waddell Chesnutt utilizes inequalities tied to the era of the American South where the Wellington Insurrection of 1898 occurred as a result of growing racial tensions coupled with the growing divide of economic opportunity among the people there and the relations between these inequalities and divides to paint a … Read more
The Holocaust was a barbaric event, a genocide which led millions of innocent civilians and soldiers to their deaths. Though many groups were targeted during Hitler’s tyranny, the Jewish often faced the worst torment. Believed to be less than human, those who were Jewish were methodically removed from their homes, subjected to hate crimes, and … Read more
Lonely mansions, ghostly apparitions, and magic are some of the elements that create the atmosphere in Gothic stories. In his novel Wieland, Charles Brockden Brown uses most of these to create an aura of mystery and suspense. Brown once said that the Gothic novel was a literary form that could “engage, and transport, and chain … Read more
Stories are an important part of society, an element that provides humanity with a way to connect, separate, cry, laugh, be happy or be sad. In fact, life is nothing but a story. Human history is a story. The universe is just a massive collection of stories that make up one big dissertation that put … Read more
In many cultures, wind has taken on its own personal identity. Through story telling wind has been given power of the supernatural in order to be used by the gods to influence or punish the heroes of Earth. The supernatural power of wind can be found within works across the world, including the Epic of … Read more
Annies Mother Normally, parents would always try to give their children an affectionate upbringing. But sometimes they find it difficult to guide their children through the complex process of growing up, and so, they may fail to help their offspring during adolescence, for instance. This seems to be the situation in the story Annie John … Read more
The book The Giver is about an supposedly ideal society, however as the book continues it seems to be more of a dystopia with a totalitarian government. Everyday life is the same and almost never changes because the consequence is so severe, which could be public humiliation to releasing. In our Society you can do … Read more
Imagine spending the first five years of your childhood in a garden shed with no windows, no human interaction other than your mother and no knowledge of a world other than that inside of the shed. Room is a book written by Emma Donogue. The book is mainly set within a garden shed and then … Read more
Setting is an important part of Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion, symbolically underpinning the novel’s conceptual concerns. This narrative can be understood as a sweeping contemporary myth in which the setting works ironically and movingly, humorously and poignantly, to mirror and enhance the ideas the text presents. Throughout the novel, setting … Read more
Harsh climatic conditions, no food and hard work; all of these aspects symbolize the daily life of a prisoner inside the Gulag. The horrifying treatment of the prisoners is very well documented in many prison novels. However, the way that the conditions are described can vary from novel to novel, depending upon the author’s purpose. … Read more
Perhaps the most iconic scene in Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1962) begins at 11:38. When Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) and going to meet Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) to spend the evening together, and Catherine excites the scene by sporting a costume of Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp. When the men enter Catherine’s room, … Read more
Robert Anthony once said, “The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity”. Zamyatin’s We depicts the advantages and disadvantages of conforming to a small group of people, an authoritative society in general, and to the extreme totalitarian society of OneState. Through the heroic actions of I-330, Zamyatin clearly indicates that it is more admirable … Read more
The same evening, Utterson came home. Instead of reading until sleep at midnight, he poured over the will of his friend Henry Jekyll, a doctor and very educated man. The will stated that Jekyll's possessions and position should be handed over to Mr. Hyde, a friend that Utterson had never heard nor met. Utterson went … Read more
Colson Whitehead has written an inordinately compelling post-apocalyptic science fiction novel centering around the zombie archetype. In Zone One, he deftly uses the zombie model to create a mediocracy—a populace of dependent thinkers who accept, without question, a system of existence that is not favorable to them. In so doing, Whitehead turns the undead into … Read more
This essay is about a novel titled Thirteen Reasons Why book review based on how a teenage girl named Hannah Baker was in high school and suddenly took her own life while go through Psychological disorders like, depression, anxiety based on how she felt about herself when she was searching for help but there was … Read more
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is an anarchic, pessimistic novel that portrays the need for identity in life and Palahniuk explains, through the narrator’s personality disorder, that the desire for meaning is the sole internal motivation of civilization. In the narrator’s speech throughout the novel, Palahniuk describes how a death without identity is the worst possible … Read more
In the novel Salvage The Bones, the author, Jesmyn Ward is trying to convey that a strong family stays together through challenging moments and will always support each other. In chapter 7 of the novel, Manny and Esch were together in the bathroom of the gym where Randall was playing his basketball game. Manny was … Read more
In the novel The Wave by Morton Rhue (the pen name for Todd Strasser), a history teacher conducts an experiment to understand Nazi Germany’s influence on its people. However, students turn against each other and terrorize those who are not part of The Wave. Robert Billings is a vital character who develops significantly throughout the … Read more
