Iago's victory over Othello
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
There is no question that, like any tragically flawed hero, Othello is complicit in his own undoing. However, the nature of his character flaw is somewhat unusual in Shakespearean tragedy in that it is a flaw which the entire audience is tricked into sharing. Shakespeare takes pains to make the...
A comparison between "Wuthering Heights" and "Great Expectations"
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
In the Victorian era, there were many novels written about love and its consequences. Romantic love, particularly in this time period, is often characterized by the works of Emily Brontë and Charles Dickens, especially in the novels Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations. While both...
An analysis of "The Masterpiece" by Emile Zola
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Each artist's life is surrounded by passion. It can be a pleasant association, one filled with success and inspiration, or it can be deadly and obsessive. In the case of Emile Zola's "The Masterpiece", Claude Lantier, a young painter, is consumed with creating his vision, his life's...
An analysis of "As Nature Made Him" by John Colapinto
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
There are many different ways to be uncomfortable in one's own skin. Each individual is never satisfied with their appearance, or some other aspect of their everyday lives, like their jobs. However, there are many cases where people are so unsatisfied in their own skin that they ask for a...
The writing style and influence of Anderson Sherwood
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
Anderson Sherwood was an important and influential figure in American literature. His works have helped to motivate writers by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck. In his works Queer and Sophistication, Anderson allows his readers a glimpse of what life was like for...
John Keats's Cold Eve of St. Agnes
Case study - 2 pages - Literature
"The Eve of St. Agnes" is a poem that begins and ends in the cold. The story that forms the bulk of the text, and its most memorable elements, includes more dramatic and traditional narrative forms: entrance, conflict, and exit. However, Keats does not choose to include these narrative elements...
Greek mythological plays, where the Gods are in charge
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In Greek mythological tragedies, there is a persistent belief among the characters that a variety of gods control the course of events and the actions of men and women. The gods took a variety of forms in these plays, and they would often speak directly with human beings and inform them about...
Personal desire vs. fidelity: Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
There are many ways to understand desire and to define it properly, but in doing so, it is important that we do not fail to mention the elements essential to desire and their corresponding affect on our intentions. Desire is often difficult to attain because it is always pushed back on the list...
Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats - Escaping the realities of time through immortality
Case study - 1 pages - Literature
When we analyze human affairs and relationships, there is a constraint that we understand all too well: time. Regardless of the significance of the action that is taking place, without a doubt, it all eventually comes to an end. In his poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn", John Keats escapes this...
"Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave" - Douglass
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
In "Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave," Douglass tells us about his life during slavery. He demonstrates with explicit details how cruel and morally wrong slavery was, and he also describes, in bitter detail, how the system of slavery made cruel all those who...
"The Demon in the Freezer" by Richard Preston
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
In "The Demon in the Freezer", Richard Preston gives us a very detailed and frightening description of the current state of the smallpox virus. Although it is technically located only in two locations throughout the world, Preston suggests that it still poses a major threat to human civilization....
Understanding the Narrator in "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener", the narrator is confronted with a very difficult and unusual situation. A scrivener hired by the narrator, Bartleby, has stationed himself in the narrators' office and gradually becomes more and more difficult and increasingly stubborn. At first...
The American dream in "Them", by Joyce Carol Oates
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
"Them", written by Joyce Carol Oates in 1969, is a naturalistic novel which depicts the life of the Wendalls, a working class family. Even if it is a fiction, it has been written thanks to Wendall's account of her life. The story starts in 1930's with the Great Depression and ends in 1960's with...
The importance of Siegried Sassoon's letter in 'Regeneration', by Pat Barker - published: 13/07/2016
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
First of all it's important to know that this letter has actually been written by the real Sassoon. He was a poet and even if his first poems were kind of romantic, he is mostly famous for his poems about war. In these war poems, he describes the horror and the barbarism of war with gruesome...
The importance of Siegried Sassoon's letter in 'Regeneration', by Pat Barker
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
First of all it's important to know that this letter has actually been written by the real Sassoon. He was a poet and even if his first poems were kind of romantic, he is mostly famous for his poems about war. In these war poems, he describes the horror and the barbarism of war with gruesome...
"Them": how does the first chapter introduce us to the characters of the novel and how does it reflect Oates's style?
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The following is an extract from J.C Oates's novel "Them". It was published in 1969 and won the "National Book award fiction" in 1970. Even though Oates states in the foreword to the book that the story is based on a real family the novel is fictional. Most of it takes place in Detroit and...
What makes George Bernard Shaw's play 'Joan of Arc' great?
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Saint Joan is a play written by George Bernard Shaw and published in 1923. In this work, Shaw delivered us an interpretation of her life. It's a kind of hommage which respects the true historical events and written after Shaw studied the documents recorded during Joan's trial. It is one of the...
Prometheus unbound - Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1920 - Act I
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In Act I of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound", the story begins with the introduction of the mentally and physically tortured Prometheus bound to a rock. The reason for his confinement is revealed to be punishment for teaching the secret of fire to humanity, and defying...
Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath Tale - Geoffrey Chaucer, 14th century - The hypocrisy of men in society
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, "The Wife of Bath" is powerful and beautifully expressed work. In the tale, the Wife of Bath describes her five marriages while criticizing the hypocrisy and irrationality of men. She forces us to realize that men subdue their women and leave them little room to...
Canterbury Tales, The Miller's Tale - Geoffrey Chaucer, 14th century
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
People who are gullible are often taken advantage of by the people whom they respect. When a person admires somebody, it is very likely that he or she can be easily misled into doing something that they would otherwise never do. In Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale", we are introduced to an...
Theory of evolution and the beak of the finch - Jonathan Weiner, 1995
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
When we imagine the process of evolution, we tend to picture it as an extremely slow, gradual process. It takes millions of years for some frog to change colors and camouflage to its surroundings, and it takes just as long for a fish to improve its structure and achieve the maneuverability...
A Temporary Matter - Jhumpa Lahiri, 1998
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
In the story "A Temporary Matter", by Jhumpa Lahiri, we are introduced to a married couple in the process of grieving over their still-born baby. As the couple tries to recover from this disappointment, their behaviors and attitudes change significantly. They stop associating with their friends,...
On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 1957
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
"On the Road", by Jack Kerouac, is a powerful novel about a group of friends who travel throughout the United States and go through various adventures. They represent a group of people who are always on the move, never willing to commit to anything, and live life with passion and recklessness. In...
Macbeth, William Shakespeare, 1623 - A patriotic greed
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
Patriotism is the unrivaled love for one's country. In Macbeth (hereinafter referred to as "the Play"), personal influence is always stronger than patriotism. Although Macbeth and Banquo was loyal in fighting off the rebellion, patriotism no longer exists. Without the unity of war, there is...
Macbeth, William Shakespeare, 1623 - Freewill, in Macbeth: the destiny to choose
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Every piece of life seems to be interconnected. They can be the pieces to a puzzle, or they can be a perception of a whole. In both cases, life is a culmination of one's actions. In Macbeth (hereinafter referred to as "the Play"), a predetermined path seems to be set for Macbeth. From the...
Cane by Jean Toomer
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Double consciousness is defined as a concept that describes an individual as having an identity divided into several parts. This makes it difficult for an individual to have a sole unified identity. As such, a person with double consciousness may be considered to have two thoughts, two souls or...
The importance of being earnest a trivial comedy for serious people - Oscar Wilde
Worksheets - 3 pages - Literature
Painters like Gustave Doré, Luke Fildes or Mary Osborne represented the Victorian society in their realistic paintings in order to criticize it : full of injustice, this society was hypocritical and forced people to follow the rules to be decent ; the poor, the women and the children being the...
Figures of speech
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
Lapham begins by telling us that the Notebook Magazine had become so much focused with the new print method of letting their readers know about the current ways of the world which was intended to acquaint them with presupposition of its editor. “Notebook was deeply rooted in the soils of...
US survey: A timeline of American literary history
Time lines - 2 pages - Literature
Native American literature: - Based on chants, songs and oral history - Legends and myths - Characterized by cultural and linguistic diversity - Resists classification - Mother nature: central spiritual force
The Kite Runner - Kahled Hosseini
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The Kite Runner is a historical fiction and drama which was written by the Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini and was published in 2003. The story is fictional but is based on true events as the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the soviet invasion in 1979, the exodus of one third of...
