The magic of blood: A review of Glib's book
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
The Magic of Blood is a peculiar juju. Early on through the book, it wasn't grabbing me, so I went to a Taco Bell and tried reading it there. I'm a veggie, so the menu didn't offer “greater cultural understanding”, but something in Dagoberto's stories did kick in. I don't think it...
How does Steinbeck portray gender, in his novel : 'The grapes of wrath'
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
In the novel, Steinbeck skilfully creates a complex communal structure, through which the genders are portrayed. This community has a harsh and realistic nature. Many tragedies and disappointments threaten the family as they move through life, Tom kills a man and goes to prison, Rose of Sharon...
Homosexuality and deceit within "The Children's Hour"
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman is a cautionary play of how small lies can lead people into ruin and self-destruction. The central issue of homosexuality driven by deceit is the cause of turmoil on the lives of the people of Lancet. A whispered lie of a homosexual relationship between two...
But the sun also rises
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
In Ernest Hemingway's book, The Sun Also Rises, both the title and epigraph create commentary on the attitude of the characters. By using both a Gertrude Stein quote and a passage from the book of Ecclesiastes, Hemingway shows how his generation was viewing life and, in contrast, how his...
The path to freedom
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
This book as a whole does not tell a story; that is, the trace of events and the overall course of Irish independence don't go from beginning to end and tell. Rather, each chapter depicts a significant time period in the history of Ireland that Collins, the author, witnessed. Everything is more...
Empire of the Sun by James Graham Ballard
Book review - 20 pages - Literature
Jim, an eleven year old boy, and his parents are living in a wealthy European area in Shanghai during World War II. The novel begins the evening before the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Most of the European families had already been evacuated from China, and there were many scrambling to get...
The Crucible Character Analysis : Abigail Williams "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In any unfavorable situation, we seek a solution and if there is none, then a way out. When one of main characters of Arthur Miller's The Crucible finds herself in a vulnerable position, she not only manages to escape her problems, but also succeeds in placing the repercussions of her actions on...
A critical review of 'A New Birth of Freedom: Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War by Harry V. Jaffa
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
A New Birth of Freedom: Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War by Harry V. Jaffa is the long awaited sequel to the author's 1959 book, Crisis of the House Divided. Although the specific objective of the A New Birth of Freedom is to examine Lincoln's development of the Gettysburg Address, what...
Charles Dickens Essay : Philosophical, Psychological, Sociological Issue
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
A great burden for human beings is to carry ourselves the way we want others to see us. Though each governed by a private set of beliefs, no man is an island for a reason, as we are subject to natural instinct, which compels us to strive for acceptance by others in society. However, though one...
Othello and Ethics of Care
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
While considering the time period and by closely evaluating how events and people play against each other, Shakespeare's Othello can be considered a full bodied and consummate feminist work. In fact, Shakespeare's close and dramatic critique of a system of absolutes in a patriarchal military...
The Violence of Childhood
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Being an adult usually implies that you have a power of perspective, that is, to see things in a larger system and then to understand these things as being symptomatic of this system. Naturally, children lack this ability and their sense of reality is tenuous and fragmented, and many times their...
The Price of the American Dream
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The Great Gatsby relates Nick Carraway's experiences with a disillusioned assortment of wealthy individuals following his move to West Egg, the "less fashionable" counterpart to East egg, the home of antiquated affluence (5). In this harsh region of unlikely opposites, the 1915 Yale graduate...
The Necessary Female Perspective in To Kill A Mockingbird
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
If a producer was to make an adaptation of Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird and wanted to extricate Miss Maudie's role from the film, not only would the dynamic of the characters be irreparably damaged, but the film would also be excluding one of the most powerful humanizing forces in the...
Sal Paradise and the False Dream of America
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
American literature reveals a counter-culture of identity which undermines and even contradicts the popular optimism of national identity. Part of this undermining takes place in the ideologies of American literary characters, or in their “imaginary relationships…to the real conditions...
Melts in your Mouth: A Look at Humbert Humbert's Lolita
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
Humbert, throughout Lolita, creates an inescapable defeat through his interactions with Lolita and his antagonist, Clare Quilty. These interactions contradict his early confidence in possessing Lolita. These characters consciously threat Humbert's exclusive relationship with Lolita. Their...
"Pride and Prejudice", Commentary of Volume II, Chapter 11, " And this ", cried Darcyend of chapter
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
This excerpt, taken from the second part of Volume II Chapter 11, of Pride and Prejudice, is located in the middle of Jane Austen's novel and deals with Darcy's first proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. The author has carefully structured the novel so that Darcy's proposal comes at the...
The grapes of wrath: analysis of chapter 6
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
This excerpt, taken from Chapter 6 of ?The Grapes of Wrath', deals with Muley Graves's account of the depletion of man, when he is separated from his land. It is the third of many narrative chapters, which move away from the social, economic and historical situations that shape the...
The Earle Perry Charlton Story
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
The Earle Perry Charlton biography, the Charlton Story, is about one of America's greatest entrepreneurs, in the early 1900's. The book chronicles Charlton's life from birth to death, and explains in detail his business relationships and tactics. Overall the main topic of the book was how...
Fate versus Free Will: Dave Boyle
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The explicit mention of fate occurs only once in regard to Dave Boyle in Dennis Lehane's Mystic River, but the battle between fate and free will in his life is evident throughout the novel. Dave Boyle, a tragic character, has little free will to change the pre-determined forces that have shaped...
Breaking Through the Trappings of Stereotyped Femininity
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Edna Pontellier is a victim of the mother/whore duality, unable to escape the conditions of her culture that prevent her from being capable of self-actualization, and so walks into the ocean and never comes out again. This is the conclusion to Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, in which she...
The Liminal Period in the Cinderella Fairy Tale
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
In “The Little Glass Slipper”, Cinderella is undergoing what anthropologist Victor Turner, in his theory regarding rites de passage, would regard as a transitional period between being a girl under the protection of her mother and a woman under the protection of a husband. During this...
Alienation in the Butcher Boy
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
In the Butcher Boy, Patrick McCabe paints a picture of the perfectly dysfunctional family in The Bradys, who are shown in stark contrast to the perfectly normal family, the Nugents. From the start, Francie Brady's family was the epitome of unstable. Francie's father was an alcoholic who abused...
Style vs. Substance in The Sea
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The Sea is no doubt, a difficult novel to read. John Banville's language can be quite strenuous, and at some times, enigmatic. No major events or plot points seem to occur in The Sea, that is, externally. There is not much of a linear plot, if any. Almost everything that happens in the main...
The Time Machine and the Plight of the Chinese Immigrant in 19th Century American West
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
The Time Machine, written in 1895, describes the adventures the Time Traveler as he explores the 800 thousandth century and the unknown eons unto the dying of our sun. The bulk of the story occurs in the year 802,701, where the Time Traveler stops and encounters a strange species called the...
Freedom That is Never More Authentic Than When it is Within the Walls of a Prison Cell
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Whether it is read from an historical, psychological, literary, or any other sort of applicable perspective, the reader must admit that Toni Morrison's novel Sula allows itself be read in many different ways. Perhaps that is one of the beauties of the book: people from many different backgrounds...
Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative
Book review - 8 pages - Literature
Frederick Douglass autobiography has a points of departure of numerous critical studies of Afro-American literature, and origin of black fictional and non-fictional prose. There are scenes where the character learns to read, if often echoed in later black narratives. Tension between his desire to...
Darkness and Light in "Heart of Darkness"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The battle between light and darkness is being waged right now, in every corner of the earth. This war has been fought since time began. In every realm of society, opposites counterbalance each other. The balance of powers in the government allows the American people to have a say in the...
The Open Boat
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In the story of “The Open Boat”, Stephen Crane has taken the time to masterfully portray a story that is so very dear to his life. Back in 1897, Crane went through the horrific experience of crashing his boat and being stranded for nearly 30 hours. This experience became so near and...
Reflections on 'A Clockwork Orange'
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
It's a 1st person narrative through Alex's eyes. The first 3-4 pages are used in describing the ‘Korova Milk Bar' and its inhabitants. It sells milk laced with drugs. It appears that he is the leader in a gang. There is a brief description of the members in his gang. He seems to be the...
The Parent-Child Dynamic: Ernest Hemingway Vs Winesburg
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
Ernest Hemingway's first collection of stories, In Our Time, published in 1925, was heavily influenced by his then friend Sherwood Anderson's 1919 collection Winesburg, Ohio. The most notable difference in the times in which the stories are set is Winesburg, Ohio is set before World War I, and...
