Ayn Rand's The fountainhead: A book review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
I chose to read The Fountainhead based on a couple of recommendations. Written by Ayn Rand, it is an astounding piece of literary work that follows the life of a young architect, Howard Roark. The Fountainhead takes place in New York beginning in the mid-1920's and continues into the 1930's. In...
Ruth Rendell's The crocodile bird: A review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
I came across this book at random when I needed something for a book check. After reading the first few pages I was hooked. The book seemed mysterious and provocative in its own slightly twisted way. This story takes place in a very small town in England in the nineteen eighties and early...
A review of The confessions
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
For this book club I spent a lot of time looking into all of the books on the list that I had never heard of. I read the summary of each of the books on the list and eventually settled on The Confessions by Saint Augustine. I chose this book because it seemed like the Catholic equivalent to...
Koren Zailckas' Smashed: Review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
I had seen a recommendation for this book along with an interview of the author more than a year ago in a magazine. It had always looked interesting to me as I am interested in a career in addiction medicine, so when I recently saw it in a store I jumped to buy it. This is the memoir of a girl...
A review: On liberty and utilitarianism
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
John Stuart Mill's treatises on the nature of civil liberty and the political philosophy of utilitarianism are some of the most groundbreaking, and perpetually relevant, discourses on the subjects. His works stand as a testament to the ability for progressive, and at a given point in time...
Of mice and men: A review
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
I read this book because my peers read it. Peer pressure, right? I needed an honors book, it was short, and it was the first book my mom offered me when I told her that a classic would fill the requirement. It is a classic book, not sure what genre it falls under, but Wikipedia places it under...
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: A review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
This novel covers the time period of three generations. It is a work of fiction but comes off as an autobiography. The narrator, is of the youngest generation, and grew up in Detroit but tells the story as an adult living in Austria. The narrator's parents also grew up in Detroit. The first...
Norman Mailer: The naked and the dead
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The Naked and the Dead was Norman Mailer's debut novel detailing the lives of a group of American soldiers during World War II. Coming just three years after the conclusion of hostilities, this lengthy tome transported the country back into the horrors of war. The poetry in this first foray...
In cold blood: A review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Truman Capote's In Cold Blood stands as what must be one of the finest works of American storytelling, made all the more gripping by the fact that it is nonfiction. The immense popularity of the tale practically require that some knowledge of the events are ingrained upon an American mind....
Everything is illuminated: Book review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
After watching the movie, Everything is Illuminated; I knew that I had to read the book to prolong the experience that Jonathan Safran Foer wrote about in his novel. There are several different stories inside this single novel. The main story is set in modern day Ukraine and is recorded as the...
Arrowsmith: A review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis, is a sprawling examination of 1920s America. The author employed his hero of sorts as the vehicle through which he conveyed his distaste for the commercialism that had captured and, in his eyes, corrupted the nation. In order to accomplish this feat, Lewis created...
An individual's encounter with conflict
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
At the center of human nature is a fundamental attraction towards the power of individuals over others. It is upon this subject which thousands of writers have based their learning, to attempt to understand the way people interact with the world around them. Two such writers are Jean-Jacques...
1984: George Orwell - publié le 23/02/2010
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
1984 is a modern classic that is based on a society where a government has the ability to control citizens' minds in order to maintain their power. I selected this book after I read Animal Farm. I had greatly enjoyed reading Animal Farm and thought that I would try reading another book from...
The water babies, Victorian literature and the depiction of childhood
Thesis - 13 pages - Literature
The social hierarchy of Victorian England perpetuated the involvement of the working class in poverty driven crime and with regard to the concurrent impact on children; Duckworth comments that “Crime and poverty were inseparably associated and most of the young who suffered gaol sentences...
Loss and suffering in Anglo-Saxon literature
Thesis - 10 pages - Literature
Literary historicism is relatively modern concept of literary theory developed in the 1980s through primary exponent Greenblatt . The underlying basis of literary historicism is the study of literary texts in historical context and an attempt to better understand intellectual history through...
A contrast of depictions of growing up from Alcott's Little Women and Stevenson's Treasure Island
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
The coming of age narratives in Robert Stevenson's “Treasure Island” (1883) and Louise Alcott's “Little Women” (1868) juxtaposed thrilling stories with moral issues that were contextually uncommon in children's literature. Additionally, both novels were written in what has...
The saga of Seabiscuit
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
During the 1930's, America was recovering from a period where nearly every citizen was completely down and out. The Great Depression had caused the nation to crumble and had left people hopeless and downtrodden. They were looking for a hero, someone to represent their struggle and provide them...
The tale of Evangeline and the rebuilding of an Acadian identity after the "Grand Derangement"
Book review - 9 pages - Literature
In 1847, Henry Longfellow, a well-known American writer published a poem entitled 'Evangéline, a Tale of Acadie', in which he tells a tragic love story of two young Acadians forced to exile during the time of the Deportation. This epic poem of 1400 verses is based on oral tradition and...
Women: Inferior to men, inferior to women, through The Rover and The Way of the World
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Seventeenth century British women held no personal value. Throughout Apra Behn's, “The Rover” and William Congreve's, “The Way of the World,” women are commoditized, used as pawns by men and powerful elders. Their value is not a human value, because women are seen as objects...
Postmodernism in literature
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Linda Hutcheon considers the term postmodernism as one of the 'most over and under-defined' in her poetics of postmodernism. Some consider the so-called postmodern movement as too heterogeneous to be even called a coherent system of thought, others define anything that is contemporary as...
Paul Auster, "Brooklyn Follies" - "Double-cross" (chapter 20), de That was when Harry...." a " cradled in the arms of the B.P.M.
Text commentary - 4 pages - Literature
This extract is the 20th chapter, 'Double Cross' of the novel. This is the story of Harry's murder, which constitutes the most tragic moment of the book. Nathan is here the narrator. He and Tom leave the Chowder Inn in order to go back to New York for Harry's funeral. Later will...
Paul Auster, "Brooklyn Follies" - "Dream days at the Hotel Existence" (chapter 19), de "first perusal of the grounds?" a "say nothing to Tom"
Text commentary - 3 pages - Literature
This passage is an extract from the nineteenth chapter of 'Purgatory' from the Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. The characters arrive at a place to end up finding somewhere to sleep as their car broke down. It constitutes the longest chapter of the novel which is so in a way the linchpin...
Paul Auster, "Brooklyn Follies" - "Purgatory" (chapitre 3), de " No one grows up? " a " would have remained in this purgatory "
Text commentary - 3 pages - Literature
This passage is an extract from the third chapter of 'Purgatory' from the Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. It's after the first appointment between Nathan and Tom. In this chapter, the story is focused on Tom's recent past, since his arrival in Brooklyn, and that's why we...
The Odyssey of Homer and the Aithiopika of Heliodorus
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Though the Odyssey and the Aithiopika, or Ethiopian Romance, were composed by two different men writing from different worlds and separated by a gap of many centuries, they share many of the same thematic, structural, and literary features. The Odyssey is a Homeric epic poem which is thought to...
Competing giants: The subversive counter-performance of the Soviet writer
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
The early twentieth century poet Osip Mandelstam postulated that, “Poetry is respected only in [Russia] - people are killed for it. There's no place where more people are killed for it.” Mandelstam, who himself fell victim to the Stalinist regime for his subversive prose, was...
A multiple representation of the Shebeen Queen
Text commentary - 16 pages - Literature
"More than a shebeen queen, she is the incarnation of motherhood?: a theme that Peter Abrahams develops in Mine Boy. Xuma, the protagonist, is surrounded by support and advice. Surprisingly, Leah is not the only mother figure in Mine Boy; a white woman called Di also plays this role. In addition...
The maze-like South African township
Essay - 13 pages - Literature
At a time when black South Africans did not have enough time and money to enjoy leisure pursuits, music and dancing appeared to be their only glimmer of hope. In the townships and slum yards, music developed and became synonymous with life and entertainment. A very good example is the presence of...
The origins of the South Africa Shebeen Queen
Text commentary - 18 pages - Literature
What is a shebeen and what is the origin of this term? This is the first question we will try to answer in detail. "The exact origins of the word shebeen are unknown, but it most likely came into popular use in Ireland from the Irish-Gaelic language before spreading to the English-speaking...
The Aunt's Story, Patrick White
Text commentary - 7 pages - Literature
Australian literature includes many different literary genres, from poetry to autobiography, and its history is, like that of Australia, quite recent. Among Australian writers, Patrick White stands out, mainly because contrary to many Australian writers, his works are not solely based on the...
Patrick White's The Aunt's Story
Text commentary - 3 pages - Literature
An epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature.' This sentence uttered in 1973 when Patrick White won the Nobel Prize for literature. Indeed, not only did he bring on the international scene Australia as a country which produced a great writer but...
