Essays on American Literature

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson divulges aspects of passing by a “mulatto” man that no other novel had confronted before. Though most novels during the time were treated by the author in a straightforward manner, Johnson undoubtedly strays away from...

The Dawn of Life and the Dusk of Death Every living thing on this planet are guaranteed two things: life and death. The duration of one is dependent on their fate and the date of their conclusion is undisclosed; the gift of one will eventually...

Character List Mick Kelly: A young girl who is always in her own world, constantly thinking about music and wanting to go to a different country. She lives in the same house as Singer, and many other characters. She is tall and thin with blonde...

Introducing Saul Bellow was a Canadian-American writer of Jewish origin who wrote about the disorienting nature of modern civilization, and the countervailing ability of humans to overcome their frailty and achieve greatness. Bellow interspersed autobiographical elements into his fiction, and many of his principal characters...

Richard Wright is one of the most prolific African American literary minds of the 20th century. Wright’s literature uniquely blends aspects of naturalism and idealism to convey important messages concerning the era’s social climate. Wright, who grew up in the south during the early 20th...

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is regarded as one of the seminal works in environmental science literature. First published in 1962, the book was highly influential in launching the nascent environmental movement in the United States and throughout the world. In Silent Spring, Carson examines the...

Colorism is defined as a form of prejudice typically from members of the same race in which people are treated based on their social economic status from cultural implications related to skin color. Within the idea of “race”, various groups of people compete with one...

In a society, there are often multiple unspoken rules that members must adhere to in order to fit in. When an individual begins to deviate from these rules, it may be difficult to understand why. In the novel The Age of Innocence, the aristocratic Newland...

The term “coming of age” is identified with many concepts of growing up: loss of innocence, solidification of an identity that adulthood is based upon, and conforming to society to one degree or another. These concepts are tied to various “rites of passage”, including a...

The following report consists of a baseline analysis regarding the well-known short story ‘The Swimmer’, written by John Cheever in 1964. The story is based on middle-aged Neddy Merrill who is filled with youth, and is a husband and father, and in this case plays...

Karl Zender explains there is an obvious realism in Faulkner’s story but the modernist twist throughout is the symbolism of the irony which causes the reader to depart from realism to some deeper meaning. Thus, leaving the reader to decide what deeper meaning to connect...

A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L’Engle is not an ordinary novel as it blends science-fiction and fantasy splendidly. This is a plot-based novel with obstacles always being present when trying to accomplish a task. The conflict that occurs in this novel is person vs...

Introduction “In the twenty-first century, we use a nineteenth-century school model with twentieth-century values. There is clearly something wrong with this picture.” Like Zander Sherman, the author of this quote, Jonathan Kozol focuses on the disparities that exist within the education system, highlighting many of...

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...

Celebrated American author Herman Melville wrote ‘Moby-Dick’ and several other sea-adventure novels, before turning to poetry later in his literary career. Synopsis Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. He worked as a crew member on several vessels beginning in 1839, his...

The meta-fiction novel ‘Spies’ was set in the 1940’s and written in 2002 by the author Michael Frayn. It revolves around the events and behaviours in relation to World War II. Frayn’s family’s financial situation turned for the worse after his mother’s death; he has...

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...

In this poem “I Hear America Singing” the people are given the freedom no matter the job to be able to sing the songs they want and still have a say. This poem describes people that make up America today such as carpenters, wife, mothers,...

In Raymond Carver’s short story “Beginners,” the use of alcohol is the most apparent and important image and helps show the characters’ true feelings about their love life. Through the characters’ consumption of alcohol, we are able to see their eventual confusion and simplification of...

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....

Papa’s Bridge is a famous poem written by Richard Blanco. According to the poet, people often ask him certain questions about how does he manage such different works, engineer and poet. He answers to the people in a way that he is an engineer by...

When people hear the words war, death, mental health, and pain, the last thing you would probably think about is satire. However in the book Catch 22, author Joseph Heller uses satire to bring light to all of these subjects, point out flaws in characters,...

Introduction Throughout history our country has always given someone a fair trial by jury where 12 random U.S. citizens are chosen to serve on the jury. The play Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose examines the dynamics at play in a United States jury room...

Despite The Last of the Mohicans being a narrative from 1757, a significant amount of its ideology continues to exist. A two hundred and sixty two year gap from now, and so far things are still yet to change for better or worse. However the...

Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence [1] and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple [2] both paint a portrait American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This culture appears to be male, with no room for the female as any manifestation other than...

Man’s search for spiritual fulfillment in their lifelong escape from emotional isolation has been a common theme in literature of all cultures. In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, a feminist American writer, this spiritual search is reflected in the lives of...

Inigo and Fezzik the two of the main characters in the novel called the Princess Bride, by William Goldman. They come from the same background of losing their parents. Fezzik’s parents were gone from him from being used and Inigo’s parents were slayed. My claim...

According to William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” mimics this quote by providing a glimpse into the events of a blood line that is so seemingly doomed by its history that its present and future generations are...

Black like me is a nonfiction book which was written by Howard Griffin, who was a junourist from Mansfield, Texas. Griffin uses the book to explain his journey towards Deep South of United States when most of the African American was subjected to racial segregation...