Essays on American Literature

In Depth Reading of Emily Dickinson In Walt Witman’s “Leaves of Grass” section 32, he speaks of turning and living with animals. I find his work very intriguing, like reading a good novel, with loads of hidden meaning. He speaks of the animals, by saying...

The indefatigable spirit of unity emerges as the one unfailing source of strength in John Steinbeck’s migrant worker classic The Grapes of Wrath. As the Joad family’s world steadily crumbles, hope in each other preserves the members, sense of pride, of courage, and of determination....

Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence lends itself as a work of social criticism against the tyrannous ideals of Old New York society through the experiences of Newland Archer and his torn love between two women. Wharton’s plot, set in the late nineteenth century,...

The Silent Retreat: Indian Removals as Represented by Hobomok and The Pioneers The historicity of the Indian removals that took place during the 19th century in the United States is one that has been embellished in literature and dramatized in film. The most poignant of...

In literary history, authors often mirrored the social situation of its time through their works. For this reason, many of the greatest works were seen as representations of some social affairs, wars, political movements and other occurrences of the period of time during which the...

Nourishment as a Symbol in The Grapes Of Wrath In The Grapes of Wrath, families traveling to California suffer starvation and exhaustion because of malnourishment. The Dust Bowl is a physical embodiment of their starvation. Possibly more important than the physical nourishment is the mental...

Although Edith Wharton describes a society that had disappeared in order to make way for the progress of a later age, she both criticizes and lauds the unrecoverable culture that helped to define New York City in the 1870s. Throughout The Age of Innocence, she...

In James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, the narrator presents the story of his life as a black man passing as white, and the different stages he progresses through while doing so. In both his life and the lives of many black...

Love—of one kind or another—is the main motivator of Miller’s characters in this play, and drives the major events of its plot. Catherine’s love for Rodolfo and Eddie’s intense love for Catherine lead to the central problems of the play. But even before this, it...

The poem I chose to explicate is Hope is the Thing With Feathers. It was written by Emily Dickinson in 1861, and it was published in Poems by Emily Dickinson 2nd Series in 1891. The whole poem is a metaphor for hope, using a bird...

John Steinbeck’s novels The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men enable readers to capture a glimpse of the time of the Great Depression in the United States. In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family of Oklahoma, accompanied by thousands of other farming...

Depicting a world where the struggle to survive is elemental, two incisive narratives emerged to describe what life was like during the Dust Bowl. Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time comprises a non-fiction description of life following actual figures and stories of people who had...

“And they lived happily ever after.” This picturesque phrase can hardly be described as a typical ending to a Flannery O’Connor work. In a ‘standard’ O’Connor piece, one can expect to find several allusions to religion, sardonic situations, and demented characters. “The Life You Save...

The Whitening of Souls: A Note on Shame, Internal Monologues, and White Hegemony In James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the unnamed protagonist lives his life walking the line between white and black. He is a man who can choose to be...

Perks of Being a Wall Flower is a well-known movie based off of the 1999 published book by Stephen Chbosky. It follows the story of a character named Charlie, who is entering his freshman year of high school. As if transitioning into high school isn’t...

The year 1819 produced some of the greatest literary works known today, including those written by Lord Byron, John Keats and Percy Shelley. While these literary experts wrote great works of literature or poetry, few have managed to outlast the test of time. Some works,...

In the book The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, the main character, Hazel Grace, is introduced as a teen. However, she’s not your average teen, she is suffering from thyroid (lung) cancer. She’s described as a sixteen-year-old girl with short hair that’s dark...

According to the Collins Dictionary, if someone or somebody inspires you, they give you new ideas and a strong feeling of enthusiasm. Inspire comes from the Latin word that means to inflame. In my opinion, I feel that this word has been weakened and cheapened...

“US culture is riddled with stories of men who yearn to be free – by Updike’s time, all that was left was the mock heroism of suburban tragicomedy”. In 1960, John Updike, at the age of 28 published his novel “Rabbit, Run” which was mockery...