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.
For centuries, countries have fought with one another over power. Whether squabbling over who has control of their nation or who really owns a territory, struggles over domination have been commonplace throughout history, featuring not only countries as a whole, but their individual settlers. Power can be defined as the amount of control one has … Read more
A delightful novel diverts and amuses the reader wanting them read more and more till they know each and every detail in the book. A Lesson Before Dying is a tale set in the town of Bayonne Louisiana in the late 1940s. A Lesson Before Dying is a heartwarming tale of injustice acceptance and salvation. … Read more
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a story of a young shepherd, Santiago, who dreams of travel and to leave the spanish countryside. He abandons everything and goes in search of a treasure he saw in his dreams. During his journey he learns to listen to his heart, follow the language of omens and meets … Read more
In the novel Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys, we eventually see the character of young Anna Morgan shift from a naive chorus girl to a hardened woman who endures an unending cycle of pain and suffering. At first glance it seems that Anna is exploited by all the men she encounters in England, … Read more
In The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a young girl discovers the importance of the relationship between humans and the natural world. At the start of the novel the orphaned and contrary Mary Lennox is brought from her home in India to her mysterious Uncle Archibald’s manor in England. It is there on the … Read more
The novel, set in Barcelona in the period following the Spanish Civil War, concerns a young boy, Daniel Sempere. Just after the war, Daniel’s father takes him to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles lovingly preserved by a select few initiates. According to tradition, everyone initiated to this … Read more
For a novel rife with references often complicated for non-native readers to understand, the narrative discord created within Tracks between Pauline and Nanapush only complicates the reading further. The variations in distance between the narrators and the characters, the narrators and the reader, and the narrators themselves work to create a dynamic that encourages the … Read more
For many immigrants, coming to America was an opportunity to leave their home country in hopes of finding a better life in a new land. In this vein, Anna Yezierska writes about the struggles of an immigrant Jewish family living in New York’s Lower East Side during the 1920’s in her novel Bread Givers. The … Read more
In the novel Watership Down, Hazel, leader of the Sandleford Warren escaped rabbits, demonstrates many ways in which he is similar to the bunny-famous mythological hero “El-ahrairah”. To rabbit-kind, El-ahrairah is a rolemodel, a leader and an inspiration. To the Watership Down rabbits, Hazel is whom they look to when decisions need to be made … Read more
Annotations/Journal – Setting and Background Information: The novel is set in Berne, Switzerland in the spring of 1905. Einstein is twenty-six years old, working on his theory of relativity in his extra time. The novels portrays Einstein’s dreams on physics, time and relativity. The year 1905 has been referred to as Einstein’s “miracle year”, for … Read more
What is heaven? It seems there are numberless ideas today of what “heaven” is like. The fact of the matter is that no one of us can say for certain. Some believe that heaven is where we look back at our lives here on Earth as a way of learning from our mistakes. Author Mitch … Read more
The Gilded Age of the late 19th century saw the rise of extravagant hats, hairstyles, and high society. Subsequently, the Gilded Age was also host to an increasingly treacherous gap between the rich and the poor and stifling social restrictions against women as suffocating as their hourglass corsets. Lily Bart of Edith Wharton’s The House … Read more
In his novel The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers takes the reader into the mind of a soldier. This work evokes not only the physical duress of fatigue and fighting, but also the emotional stress and the long-lasting trauma that remains with a soldier even after he’s come home from the war. Powers teaches the reader … Read more
V.S. Naipaul’s first published novel, The Mystic Masseur, can correctly be described as satirical given the extensive manner in which it employs language in the form of irony, hyperbole, caricature and other techniques to tell the picaresque story of Ganesh Ramsumair, which the frame narrator tells us is the story of Trinidad of that time. … Read more
The Day the Cowboys Quit is a novel that was based on the events that took place at the old Tascosa in the Texas Panhandle in 1883. The Day the Cowboys Quit is a novel written by Elmer Kelton, in 1971. Kelton was born April 29th, 1926 in West Texas. Throughout the early years of … Read more
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, written in 1897 during the Victorian era depicts and delves through the historical context of what society was like in the past. His extraordinary piece places a strong emphasis on sexuality by contrasting it with the conventional and stereotypical views towards sexuality that was once embellished during his life time. By … Read more
The novel “Chasing Lincoln’s Killer”, by James Swanson, is about the plotting and killing of President Lincoln; the twelve-day manhunt of John Wilkes Booth. Booth is the murderer of The United States 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. It was just the tail end of The Civil War and Lincoln and the North did not see what … Read more
Wuthering Heights is the story of Catherine and Heathcliff. It’s a complicated story of love and passion, with moments of revenge and the supernatural. It begins with a man named Lockwood whois search of renting a home in Thrushcross Grange. He takes a visit to see his landlord, who’s home is a perfect representation of … Read more
Tom Jones is a comedic novel by Henry Fielding that relays moral messages in an entertaining format, often demonstrating the downfalls of making assumptions, and of not questioning someone else’s motives in certain situations. Tom himself repeatedly is lied to and lied about, and at the novel’s beginning, and in Tom’s most youthful state, he … Read more
It was that much interested novel so that a dystopian science fiction movie was created on that novel. This novel is the first attempt of James Dashner and his writing over comes the national market. It was a top 10 NewYork Times National best seller forever. He captured the market and won many awards of … Read more
In Robert Bly’s book about exploring what it means to be male, Iron John, he wrote that modern men are “not interested in harming the earth or starting wars. There’s a gentle attitude toward life in their whole being and style of living. But many of these men are not happy. . . They are … Read more
Daphne du Maurier’s gothic romance novel Rebecca touches on a young woman, who remains unnamed throughout the novel, and her self-inflicted life of misery. Being recently married into a high social class, the protagonist, Mrs. De Winter, faces internal and external struggles with her new surroundings. She must deal with her husband, Maxim, continually showing … 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
Hiding truths and replacing them with lies are often very devastating to family members and even more so when a son’s whole life has been built upon these lies. Mark Haddon, in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, explores the effects of discovering a world of lies. The father builds … Read more
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel in which the theme of savagery versus civilisation is explored. Some British boys are stranded on an isolated island at the time of an imaginary nuclear war. On the island we see conflict between two main characters, Jack and Ralph, who respectively represent civilisation … Read more
In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton uses weather in a variety of ways that provide symbolic significance along with a vivid setting. Wharton uses weather, climate, and the change of seasons to foreshadow events in the immediate future and to reflect Lily’s emotional state or perceptions. When Lily’s view of events is impractical, unrealistic, … Read more
The Dew Breaker, a novel by Edwidge Danticat that tells of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s inherited dictatorship in Haiti, appears to be a novel about two things. On the one hand, it documents the life and trials of a Tonton Macoute, a government sanctioned torturer; on the other hand, it also tells of the cowardice of weak … Read more
In the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the character of Mrs Danvers is presented as a foil to the narrator: a character who provides a contrast to the narrator in order to highlight her attributes. Mrs Danvers is the housekeeper at Mannerly and looked after the title character, Rebecca, from Rebecca’s youth; she then … Read more
Throughout Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, themes of marriage, love, and intimacy are carefully woven into the lives of the Ganguli family; namely Gogol and his parents. The novel begins with Ashima and Ashoke, Gogol’s parents, and the beginnings of their arranged marriage, and follows for a brief few chapters the development of their intimacy and … Read more
In the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the main character, Gogol, is forced to adjust to many different environments as he ages; including Calcutta, the different apartments he occupied throughout college, and his ex-girlfriend Maxine’s house. Gogol’s parents, Ashima and Ashoke, were born in India; however Gogol was born in America. Because of this … Read more
The characters in the novel When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka find themselves in a rather comforting place they call “home.” The father has a job outside the home, the mother works inside the home, and the children go to school and make friends with whites. They seem to be the exact definition … Read more
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Incredible and Sad Tale of Erendira” is a frustrating story. It is full of beautiful images, fascinating characters, and puzzling events. The frustration lies in trying to figure out why the characters behave they way that they do. Why does Erendira’s grandmother prostitute her granddaughter instead of forgiving her debt? Why … Read more
World War II had a profound impact on American culture. Essentially every person in the country was affected in some way, but the war’s impact of African Americans was unique. Although African Americans were indeed Americans they were often treated like the enemy on the home front. Racism ran rampant in American society, even troops … Read more
The Thief and The Dogs, an intriguing narrative by Naguib Mahfouz, is the story of a man named Said Mahran who had just got out of prison. He was convicted as a thief and feels betrayed by all whom he was close to. One of his ex-colleagues, Ilish Sidra, ratted on him and then married … Read more
The film Friday Night Lights by director Peter Berg depicts high school football players from Odessa, Texas on their journey to the state championship. Patriarchy is a major theme in this movie and there are several father-son relationships that are depicted in different ways. The “fathers” are not always present, but at times another character … Read more
In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahari explores the themes of identity, clash of culture, isolation, importance of names and family. Both of the Ganguli parents, especially Ashima, struggle with assimilating to this new culture that they are not accustomed to. Lahiri looks closely at the contrasting experiences of first generation and second generation immigrants, Lahiri looks … Read more
Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine suspends time for both the protagonist and the reader, with the escalator serving as a symbol of the productive and consumptive postmodern society. Because of the escalator, the story’s narrator and other contemporary office workers have more time to devote to their work and are thus more productive. And while some … Read more
One of the main themes developed in the passage from the novella “The Moonstone,” by Wilkie Collins, is the indelibility of memories and by consequence, of the past. The past comes back to haunt the present constantly throughout the passage, building tension as well as gripping the reader’s attention. The author uses setting, style of … Read more
“Who is to say who is the villain and who is the hero? Probably the dictionary.” – Joss Whedon Although the line between what makes a hero can become blurred, the basic traits of a hero remain the same for the most part, as proposed by Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. This theory has proven to be … Read more
Nihilism plays a dominant role in both Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea. Both novels target a particular character to be made an example, but the circumstances of this undertaking are notably different. In A Hero of Our Time, Pechorin “[experiences] all that life … Read more
A symbol in the story is like a souvenir from a travel destination. It holds meaning beyond what is actually being seen. Every author has their own deft way to instill thematic meaning into a seemingly inanimate object, which then grows to become a powerful symbol. In horrific stories about reality such as The Lottery, … Read more
“The Beautiful Ambiguity of Blankets: Comics Representation and Religious Art”, written by the University of Florida’s Benjamin Stevens, provides a great deal of insight into Craig Thompson’s 2003 autobiographical graphic novel Blankets. Stevens’ analysis focuses on characteristics of the novel such as style, the search for identity, the impact of Christianity, and the details within … Read more
The ‘Crime and Punishment’ is a novel written in the mid-1860s by a well known author named Fyodor Dostoevskys in Siberia. This novel has six parts with an epilogue, it has a serious, dramatic tone and Dostoevskys made use of a dual character-personality. This book presents a student with the shallow-type of beliefs on philosophy … Read more
With the imminent threat of global war looming over Europe, fear and hostility came to cast a shadow over the continent. A war that would almost decimate a generation of young men, became the reality for writers, poets, scholars, and artists who left an impression that would never be forgotten. World War I proved to … Read more
‘The Curious Incident of The Dog In the Night-Time’, a novel written by Mark Haddon about a fifteen-year-old named Christopher John Francis Boone, struggling with Asperger’s syndrome. After the discovery of his neighbor’s dead dog on the grass, Christopher wants to solve this murder and find the killer without any help from his surroundings. This … Read more
Scarlet and Black also titled as The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir) is a 19th Century French novel by Marie Henri Beyle popularly known as Stendhal, which explores the life of a young man whose ambitious and passionate nature leads to his tragic downfall. In this piece of fiction set during … Read more
The novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair narrates the life story of Jurgis and the tortures that he suffers since his arrival in Chicago with his family. Throughout the story, Sinclair describes the hardships that Jurgis and his family face in this capitalist country. Sinclair, in depth, shows the drawbacks of capitalism through Jurgis’s and … Read more
In Yukio Mishima’s classic twentieth century novel, The Sound of Waves, one might initially hold some misconceptions towards the message of the story. It’s simple enough easily spot certain seemingly-sexist elements and immediately make the judgement that Mishima was a misogynist and plotted to display this in his writing. With the constant objectification of women, … Read more
Franco Moretti posits in The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture that “Even those novels that clearly are not Bildungsroman or novels of formation are perceived by us against this conceptual horizon; so we speak of a ‘failed initiation’ or of a ‘problematic formation’” (Moretti 561). While not a bildungsroman in the … Read more
In JD Salinger’s’ Catcher in the Rye, a teenager named Holden Caulfield has a hard time understanding that everyone has to grow up. Holden did not want children to grow up because he feels that adults are corrupt. This is known when Holden tries to take away bad words from the walls of an elementary … Read more
