As I Lay Dying - Faulkner: Anse's and Addie's ambiguous concepts of loyalty
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In As I lay Dying, written in 1930, William Faulkner tells about the Bundren family and their journey to Jefferson. The mother, Addie, has passed away so her family drives her to Jefferson where she wanted to be buried. The respect of Addie's last wishes is actually the whole purpose of the...
Spielgelman, Art, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History and And Here My Troubles Began (1978-1991)
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Let me begin with a short biography of the author. Art Spiegelman was born on February 15th, 1948, in Stockholm. He is the son of Vladek and Anja who are Polish Jews who survived to the Holocaust and the deportation in Auschwitz. His parents' life left its mark on his own life and his work....
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been Vs. Smooth Talk
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The movie Smooth Talk which is based on the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" has many similarities. The majority of the movie uses the same outline on which the short story is written from, as well as uses the same characters that are also used in the novel. Yet, a sober...
The grass is singing - Doris Lessing: conversation between Charlie and Tony
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In this excerpt from The Grass is singing, published in 1950, Doris Lessing relates the relationship between Mary Turner, a racist white woman married to Dick Turner, a poor farmer, living in South Rhodesia, and Moses, a black boy working for them, during the 1940's. The extract is located at...
Comparing male antagonists in Francis Ford Coppola's film Bram Stoker's Dracula and Anonymous' short story The Mysterious Stranger
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Anonymously written and translated from German into English, then published in 1860, "The Mysterious Stranger" is a tale which can irrefutably be compared to Bram Stoker's Dracula, published in 1897. It is unknown if Stoker was inspired by this anonymous author, but readers of vampire tales...
The Tenement Saga: the Lower East Side and early Jewish American writers - Sanford Sternlicht
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
The book "The Tenement Saga: The Lower East Side and Early Jewish American Writers" by Sanford Sternlicht explores the life of Jewish immigrants living in tenements on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the early 20th century. The Jewish immigrants who migrated from Europe to find a better...
Jewish Wisdom for Business Success: Lessons from the Torah and Other Ancient Texts - Levi Brackman and Sam Jaffe
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The book "Jewish Wisdom for Business Success: Lessons from the Torah and Other Ancient Texts", by Levi Brackman and Sam Jaffe, is a business book that incorporates lessons from the Torah and other Jewish texts and applies the concept to success in business. Through a series of stories related to...
The truth about identity in "The Apology" and "The Iliad"
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Greek texts often emphasize the relationship between the community and the individual, and often with tragic results for the individual who chooses to fully express his individuality. The characters who are the centerpieces of ancient Greek literature, then, are those who, alone in that...
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,...
