According to Walter Benjamin’s “The Storyteller,” storytellers are a dying breed, and the novel only contributes to the death of storytelling. If that is true, then Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a fan fueling flames on the somber coals of storytelling. Cather uses various instances...
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...
As World War II struck and anti-Semitism rattled Europe, Jewish immigrants migrated into the United States. The Jewish population continued to rise well after World War II, and with a decrease of anti-Semitism throughout the nation, the Jewish population were not discriminated against and were...
American Pastoral is narrated by Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman, a friend and admirer of the Levovs, in particular of Seymour “The Swede” Levov. Zuckerman tells the story of The Swede’s tragic fall from youthful perfection due to his daughter’s act of terrorism in protest of...
In American Pastoral and A View From the Bridge, Philip Roth and Arthur Miller respectively present family life as a tense realm of activity where relationship ties are easily stretched and broken. By setting their novels in Rimrock, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, the authors offer...
Depictions of Asian Americans in mainstream culture tend to reinforce a stereotype of the silent, model minority. Said silence typically results from either a language barrier or the perception that silence equates to respectfulness and abhorrence of conflict. Media representations often give audiences an outside...
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...
During the 1600s, women were stereotyped to behave obediently, remain uneducated, and follow the traditions of their own culture. Although these social norms are clearly oppressive and offensive, to fight against these expectations was a brave act, as Bethia Mayfield demonstrates. In the novel Caleb’s...
Eugene O’Neill’s classic American tragedy Desire Under the Elms tells the story of characters that are driven by a number of common, and therefore competing, desires. Many believe that O’Neill intended the Desire Under the Elms to refer to the desire between Eben and Abbie,...
“Silver Sparrow,” by Tayari Jones, is a story told in the first person by Dana, the narrator, telling a story about her childhood while looking back as an adult. It takes place in Atlanta, Georgia during the 21st century, although specific dates are not known....
It has been said that the true power of beauty is felt most deeply by those who have caught but a glimpse of its potential; those able to see its ethereal quality without demanding more. Perhaps, some have said, the fragility of aesthetic beauty can...
Newland Archer is not only a well-read intellect, but an introspective thinker who deeply considers his own life. One concept that Newland consistently struggles with is his understanding of “reality”, and a major journey exposed through Wharton’s narrative is Newland’s changing relationship with what he...
“It’s worth everything, isn’t it, to keep one’s intellectual liberty, not to enslave one’s powers of appreciation, one’s critical independence?” (164). Questioning the concepts of true freedom and liberty, the overall theme presented throughout Edith Wharton’s masterful novel, The Age of Innocence, is the abstraction...
The past permeates the lives of New York Society as portrayed by Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence. Society appears to be an inherently conservative institution with extreme attention to ritual and tradition, evidenced by our introduction at the beginning of the novel to...
In The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton attempts to recapture the essence of Old New York, a moment in late 19th century American history when social interaction was dictated by rigid standards of propriety and style. As Wharton explores this milieu through her protagonist Newland...
“Ah, don’t say that. If you knew how I hate to be different!” (Wharton 69). Ellen Olenska in Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence is, to Newland Archer, the perfect example of an exciting rebel to the mores of society in the New York aristocracy. He...
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...
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...
One of the main themes that is recurrent throughout Edith Wharton’s work The Age of Innocence is the ongoing struggle between the individual and society. This is an issue that Wharton was quite concerned with in the novel, and it is reflected in the characters...
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 The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton paints an intimate view of New York culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wharton does this by masterfully presenting a slice of New York, focusing on a few intricately developed characters in New York’s aristocracy....
The American by Henry James is a masterly crafted novel that explores the differences between the American and European cultures. Through the main character, Christopher Newman, the author is able to articulate a clear and distinct criticism of American culture in that Americans have no...
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...
Literature often presents itself in different themes and messages for audience members. These themes may be reoccurring or even opposing at times between different texts. The play The Good Person of Szchecwan by Bertolt Brecht and Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson...
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. contends “race” is not itself a natural entity, rather a synthetic construct used to degrade certain peoples. He implores society to move forward free from the shackles of categorization, liberating itself from a false reality. While this commentary holds significant merit...
The Power of Music in Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man In Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, the narrator is able to marry the two halves of his musical identity in a way that he is unable to do with his racial...
W. E. B. Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk, seems to be speaking for a raceless society where the quality of one’s character was the sole basis for being judged. Yet this is not what Du Bois saw in his day and it...
Over the course of several centuries, grotesque imagery has played a vital role in the arts, literature, and cultures all over the world. Attempting to attribute a clear-cut definition to the word grotesque has proven to be a challenge for historians and literary scholars since...
One character in the love triangle described in the novella “The Ballad of the Sad Caf?,” by Carson McCullers, is unworthy of love. Miss Amelia, a businesswoman with manly characteristics and little compassion, gains joy and happiness from Lymon at first and comes to trust...
Both Mrs. Turpin in Flannery O’Conner’s Revelation and the narrator in Raymond Craver’s Cathedral hold prejudiced worldviews. However, Mrs. Turpin is religious and expresses her self-satisfied thoughts openly, while the narrator dismisses others because he does not believe in anything. Both characters need to be...
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