Study Like a Boss
Anna Quindlen, Bill Bryson, Tertullian, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harper Lee, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou, Eudora Welty, Kurt Vonnegut, Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, Sylvia Plath, Shirley Jackson, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, Iago, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Homer, Emily Dickinson, William Golding, George Orwell, The Tempest, Jane Austen, Leonardo Da Vinci, Mary Shelley, Alice Walker, Richard Wright, Tolkien, David Foster Wallace, Barbara Kingsolver, Elizabeth Bishop, J. K. Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Nikki Giovanni, Peter Skrzynecki, Alexander Pope, Richard Rodriguez, Robert Lynd, Roger Rosenblatt, Sherman Alexie, William Hazlitt.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek written by Annie Dillard is a very mysterious novel. She goes through life examining many different things one would not typically pay attention to. She wants for us to go through life the way she does, by observing everything, whether it be big or small, and realize what is happening in … Read more
Nihilism is “the destruction of everything without pity” (Palmieri, 3). A completely different movement that is sometimes lumped together with Nihilism is Existentialism, which is a belief that “the world is without meaning or purpose.” It also states “existence itself – all action, suffering, and feeling – is ultimately senseless and empty” (Pratt, 11). Franz … Read more
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales contain his trademark challenges to and reimaginings of the popular literary genres of his time. With each tale, Chaucer takes a common genre and follows its general conventions in order to tell a perfectly genre-appropriate tale — until he makes an alteration that stands out against the otherwise well-constructed style. … Read more
The Bible is an infinitely plastic text. The Wife of Bath illustrates this plasticity by, in effect, reworking Scripture and molding it to fit her specific argument. In an exploration of both the Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale and the Tale itself, and through detailed references to the text as well as to … Read more
Literature Review Postmodernism is dominant philosophical approach that questions and rejects the fundamental totality of human thought and homogeneous way of perceiving the outer reality of the world. , which is the main focus of present study with reference and application to Kurt Vonnegut’s The Slaughterhouse Five. Like literature itself, postmodernism is difficult to be … Read more
The Sound Of The Shell Awareness Drawn in the Group Lord of the Flies opens with Ralph encountering Piggy. Their conversation provides the background of the situation they are in: A group of boys was being evacuated to an unnamed destination during a nuclear war. Their plane had crashed and dragged out to sea, leaving … Read more
For Emerson and Whitman, nature is more than just the trees that line the street, or even the flowers that rest beautifully within the vase. Both men find such a deeper harmony and value within nature, in a way that is very relevant to the transcendental theories each of them express. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, … Read more
Music is a prevalent motif in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, appearing during times of loss and confusion as a reminder of the past. The vignettes all share a common thread, in that music reveals how one must acknowledge the past and learn from it in order to mature and gain wisdom. Music is … Read more
Chaucer is a diplomat and also a royal gardener. In short, he is the master of the day job. Poet Geoffrey Chaucer was born around 1340 in London, England. In 1357 he became a civil servant for Countess Elizabeth of Ulster and continued his capacity with the British courts throughout his lifetime. The Canterbury Tales … Read more
“The Miller’s Tale”, a ribald and bawdy fabliaux about the generation gap, youthful lust, aged foolishness, and the selfishness and cruelty of people towards each other, contains a wealth of color terms which add to and expand the meaning of this rustic tale. The teller, too, the Miller, is described in detail in Chaucer’s “Prologue” … Read more
The animals’ inability to read greatly affected their daily lives and how power was wielded amongst them. The ability to read and write makes the pigs considered to be more clever than others, and, therefore, more privileged. Soon enough, a hierarchy is established where the pigs rule the farm and the rest of the animals … Read more
Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights–Wild Nights!” is as enigmatic as it is condensed. Most critics agree that it is an essentially erotic poem, but interpretations vary widely within that shared recognition of its eroticism. There is disagreement as to what motivated Dickinson’s eros, toward whom or what she directed that motivation, and even as to what … Read more
Tolkien’s colourful world of Middle Earth has been a place of escapist adventure in the minds of many since its humble beginnings in the mid-1950s. Ever since his novel The Fellowship of the Ring debuted, it has inspired minds with its epic tales of unheard bravery, touched hearts with its scenes of sacrificial love and … Read more
The Canterbury Tales is an estates satire, that not only points out the shortcomings and inequalities, but also the inauthenticity, that exist under feudalism’s code of social stratification. Examples of these characterizations of the estates are found widely throughout the general prologue and the pilgrims’ tales. The first example of inequality in The Canterbury Tales … Read more
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice continues to be a well-loved classic in any readers’ bookcase. The anxieties of marriage, distinctions in social status, significances of reputation, unreasonable expectations of women and inconveniences of too much pride and prejudice are some of the themes presented in the novel. Among the various characters introduced, Elizabeth Bennet is … Read more
This book completely and utterly broke my heart, in the best way possible! I had never heard of Courtney Summer or about her books before. I stumbled upon this one quite accidentally when I saw one of my favourite reviewers giving it a 5 star rating on goodreads. I was curious and when I found … Read more
“Mother Tongue” an article by an author named Amy Tan is about the many different forms of the English language that she has used and continues to use throughout her life. Amy goes on to describe the different English’s she uses, the one when she is having a conversation with her mother and then the … Read more
William Shakespeare’s highly acclaimed drama Romeo and Juliet is the story of two lovers against fate who by their death end the quarrels between their families, The Montagues and the Capulet. After meeting each other at a masquerade, Romeo and Juliet fall in one. The powerful concept of fate and destiny has interested many writers, … Read more
Sherman Alexie uses embedded analeptic narratives throughout the chapter “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” in Tonto and The Lone Ranger Fistfight in Heaven to emphasise the importance of both the characters memories and pasts on their lives. Embedded in the main chronological storyline, non-linear flashbacks follow Victor and Thomas’s pasts, showing … Read more
Anne Bradstreet is one of the most prominent literary figures of the colonial era of American history, and she is often cited as one of the primary sources of Puritan literature. Some of her work carried undertones of pre-First-Wave feminism because she subtly alluded to certain gender inequities, at least for those who can read … Read more
Survival is a theme in Lord of the Files because of the way that it changes the humanity in the boys and because survival is the most important factor of survival. In the begining the boys were worried about surviving, finding out where they were. Signal fire was started, and the boys tried their best … Read more
In literature, the presence of alcohol can play a fundamental role in guiding the themes and perspectives within a given narrative. The characters in the story “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, for instance, were heavily intoxicated throughout the work. Because of this, the characters’ decisions and reactions to one another are not true … Read more
Sonnet 130 By William Shakespeare is a rejection of the Petrarchan blazon rhetoric, made popular by Italian poet Petrarch in his Canzoniere, in which Petrarch idealizes the beauty of his love subject Laura through an anatomical analysis of her body. By comparing the lady’s body parts to the finest imagery of nature, Petrarch idealizes her … Read more
Life, on the basis of modernist fiction, is meaningless. In a sea full of people, a single person is just a speck. A small, insignificant part of a larger heterogeneous group in which our life has no value. Using his short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” as the means with the literary elements of characterization … Read more
The prose utilized to write Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is uniquely stylized and molded to suit its African setting. The author is largely successful in developing a blend between the English language and the culture of the Ibo people. Using this European language to define various unfamiliar words, explain customs, fabricate ways of … Read more
Throughout ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue’, Chaucer uses imagery to enhance our understanding of the Wife’s character and principles. Chaucer makes use of simple yet powerful metaphors such as fire and nature to augment our understanding of the Wife’s personality. However, some of the more fundamental images throughout the poem – animals and trade, for … Read more
Although Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf belong to the same literary period, Modernism, their styles are quite different. Modernism is a literary period characterised by variety of ideas, styles, techniques, theories, and tendencies that result from the epoch’s social and cultural reality. Thus, we can find many schools or artistic movements in the same period, … Read more
War is a devastating and dramatic experience for soldiers. Their conditions, both physical and psychological, were nothing short of horrendous. In Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, he depicts life from the point of view of a soldier during the Vietnam War. Through his use of imagery, tone, and syntax, O’Brien portrays the ambiguity … Read more
The Drummer Boy of Shiloh, written in 1960 by Ray Bradbury depicts the true story of a young drummer boy who fought in the Battle of Shiloh. This short narrative displays the hardships of war through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy. The violence and grief often portrayed in stories of war is replaced with … Read more
From the very title of this historical fiction novel, Things Fall Apart, composed by Chinua Achebe, it foreshadows the tragedy which is triggered by the tragic hero. Defined by Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, a tragic hero is a character who is of noble stature and greatness who posses a hamartia, a tragic flaw that … Read more
Introduction William Shakespeare is one of the greatest names in the world of English literature and same is the case with Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar who is one of the renowned writers in the domain of Marathi literature. Both writers have their own genius and greatness and there could be no comparison between their writing. Both … Read more
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Blithedale Romance is an extremely enigmatic text. Due to its highly complicated and confusing plot, as well as its somewhat unreliable narrative, it is difficult–and some theorists would say impossible–to determine its final, definitive meaning. In order to create a definitive reading of the text, some theorists, such as Sacvan Bercovitch … Read more
The Victorian Period of British Literature involved many changes in British culture; one of the defining qualities of Queen Victoria’s reign was a loss of faith in the Church. A number of social changes caused an increasing number of people to question their faith and leave organized religion, resulting in the “crises of faith” that … Read more
Although Mona Lisa Smile sets in 1950s in America, the musings that it discusses still exist in many social requests. Mona Lisa Smile is a not too bad movie to see how a school can reflect functionalist considerations through its system. In this paper, I hope to dismember Mona Lisa Smile similar to some sociological … Read more
In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero exerts wrathful influence over the island and his servants Caliban and Ariel cannot help but cower in humble obedience. Ariel is indebted to Prospero for freeing him from the dreadful darkness of the “cloven pine” (I.ii.277) to which he was banished by the witch Sycorax. For Caliban, servitude is natural, … Read more
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway criticizes societal conventions as it portrays the internal thoughts of its protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, and the various characters that surround her in post-World War I London. Woolf illustrates the mental repercussions of the war and the past in general through the perspectives’ of individuals from a variety of different backgrounds and … Read more
The poems “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley and “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning are very different. However, they do have something in common – both poems are representations of their power. “Ozymandias” represents power as poem shows that human life is insignificant compared to the passing of time, even for egotistical kings such as Ozymandias, … Read more
One of the main ideas that pulses throughout “Winter Dreams” is the liberation of women, which, throughout history, has often been associated with the Roaring Twenties. Although the concept and title of The New Woman was first coined in the late nineteenth century, it truly began to spread nationwide and to all classes, in the … Read more
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) and her poetry have become a staple for female poets in the Victorian period. Modern critic, Antony Harrison has remarked that her work has a feminist agenda to some degree and by doing so has challenged nineteenth-century critics, who have primarily focused on examinations of Rossetti on the poet’s reticence and her … Read more
Julius Caesar was a popular leader of the Rome Republic. When he was born it was a new chapter in Roman history. When he turned 31, he was going into several wars and got involved in Roman politics. After several alliances he became the dictator of Roman Empire, he made a rule that only lasted … Read more
The Canterbury Tales presents the Wife of Bath as an honest woman in conflict with her society. “Honest” here takes on two meanings. It either implies that the Wife of Bath is a moral and Christian member of society or, more literally, that she in fact speaks the truth. If the latter is true, then … Read more
“Like William Faulkner and Willa Cather, John Steinbeck wrote his best fiction about the region in which he grew up and the people he knew from boyhood…” Paul McCarthy Steinbeck’s novels of the common people and the troubles that beset them have earned him the reputation as one of America’s greatest writers. He has employed … Read more
It is often noted that The Tempest is an odd play in Shakespeare’s canon; unlike any of his other works, with the exception of The Comedy of Errors, it observes classical unities of time and setting. Of all of Shakespeare’s opening scenes, the one in The Tempest is probably the most dramatic, including as it … Read more
“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open, … Read more
I am going to talk about two different kinds of love: mature love and religious love. I will compare Love (III) by George Hilbert (religious) and Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy (mature) and show the contrasts and trends in both. These two poems have distinct meanings, as one of them relates to religion and Jesus’ … Read more
Thomas Hardy wrote “The Shadow on the Stone” after his wife’s death, and the ghost he mentions is his wife’s. The poem focuses on the realities of time and death. The poet’s feelings are complex, which is reflected in the complex rhyme scheme of the poem. The title shows us how Emma has always been … Read more
Donne: Holy Sonnet V (essay follows poem reproduced below) I am a little world made cunningly Of elements and an angelic sprite, But black sin hath betray’d to endless night My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die. You which beyond that heaven which was most high Have found new spheres, and of … Read more
Wilfred Owen utilises poetic techniques to create vivid imagery, expressing the trepidation and squander of war. This is most prominent in the poems ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ as well as ‘Insensibility’. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ disruption of the ode form and violent imagery reveal the inhumane waste and horror of war. ’ Insensibility’ free verse … Read more
Values are defined as things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. However, values of those in the middle ages differ from values today. Values such as religion, loyalty, forgiveness, and humility were present during this time period. Literature such as The Pardoner’s Tale, The Wife of Bath’s Tale and … Read more
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Babylon Revisited” and other works gave him a famous name in American literature. Fitzgerald was a prominent figure during the “Roaring Twenties” because of both his published works and his marriage to an Alabama woman by the name of Zelda Sayre. His writing brought the couple fortune and fame, and … Read more