In Alex Haley’s novel Roots, he expresses the struggles and challenges of African American men and women. He turns bad situations into a beautiful thing by including the love that everyone in the book had for their families. The challenges faced were of gaining power...
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...
Many of the popular texts found in 19th century American literature represent emotion, the effects of which can be perceived as both beneficial and dangerous to individuals and communities. In Lippard’s The Quaker City, the characters’ intense emotion help position the story as a cautionary...
“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, is a short story about a girl who is learning about the economic inequality that exists through her teacher, Miss Moore, who tries to challenge her cynical perspective on life. This story emphasises the main character, Sylvia’s, intense need...
“The Story of an Hour” or “The Dream on an Hour” is an American literature written by Kate Chopin in 1948. This story is about a woman named Louise, who endures the tragic death of her recent late husband, Brently. Louise’s life turns for the...
Imagine waking up after a long recovery from an illness, hearing nothing, and seeing nothing but black. This is what happened to Helen Keller when she was over a year old. This left her frightened and afraid. After receiving a few years of education, 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...
Realism, as described by William Dean Howells in the late nineteenth century, replaces the high art and style of the literature of the preceding decades by permitting such characters as Howells’ Silas Lapham to have a distinct place in the pantheon of American literary characters....
In the book “October Sky”, there’s a common theme throughout the book, Determination. Sonny and the Rocket Boys would often have an issue with their rockets. They never lost hope, never gave up, and kept going, determined to overcome their issues within rocket building, school,...
Introduction: The article, “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” by David Sedaris revolves around his experiences in early life and adulthood in France. Background: The author discusses his struggles living in a family of baby boomers. With the parents having survived the Great Depression, most of...
One could read Cooper’s novel “The Last of the Mohicans” and find it exceedingly difficult to get through, granted, it is by no means a modern novel, but if the reader is a fan of the modern day 20th century theatrical depiction as well as...
Aye and Gomorrah is a short science-fiction written by Samuel R. Delany that dives into the themes of sexuality and social norms. The story highlights the abnormal relationships between two marginalized communities and the struggles they undergo trying to understand their situations. Although the novel...
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....
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 they have no worries or emotions....
Almost all characters in Catch 22 made decisions on behalf of the society, which in return came back to haunt the society. American society had its values and ethics, but the novel demonstrates how the dehumanization, greed, and evil was brought about by individual interest....
In the late 1800s, well known female author Sarah Orne Jewett wrote her short story, “A White Heron”. The short story showcases the life of a young girl named Sylvia, that moves with her grandmother in the country side of her town, where she will...
As being considered one of the greatest books of all times, “Roots” has become one of the most phenomenal as well as most influential books that was written in the 1970’s. This book was written by Alexander Murray Palmer Haley known as simply Alex Haley;...
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...
In novels The Catcher in the Rye and The Member of the Wedding, Salinger, and McCullers both invite the reader to experience how the adult world can have an impact on the lives of young people. In particular, the novels describe how their protagonists (Holden...
Hands on learning is a form of education in which the children learn something by actually doing it themselves. Instead of the teacher lecturing students about a certain subject or them taking tedious notes, the children engage in the subject and try to figure it...
‘Lust’ by Susan Minot creates and brings out the main character of the story in a unique manner. This short story by Minot has many of the elements throughout the story, for example her sexual escapades with different boys set the plot of the story...
Helen Keller was an important and successful author, political activist, and lecturer in American history. Helen was born a healthy child, but at the age of two, she contracted an illness called “brain fever” which left her deaf and blind. As a result, Helen became...
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...
What if death was painless to bear? What if people never cared whether they lived or died? For protagonist Susie in The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold she struggles with her unexpected and unfortunate murder as she seeks closure and euphoria. King Hamlet in Hamlet...
The poem “For Saundra” by Nikki Giovanni is a poem that really caught my attention because while reading it, it felt as if I can compare it to one of my own piece of writings. The poem “For Saundra” uses the literary thoughts of imagery...
One of the hardest things one has to do in life is make decisions. When one is little, they are simple decisions like what to eat for breakfast. However, as one gets older the decisions become harder to make, and have a larger impact, whether...
In James Fenimore Cooper’s story, “The Last Mohicans”, Hawkeye proves he is an American romantic hero when he plays lacrosse while readers discuss war, protects Cora and Alice rather than attempting to save his own life, and quests to find his love cora while not...
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...
Chapter Twenty-Five is central to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Besides containing the title of the book, this chapter clearly, forcefully, and elegantly drives home Steinbeck’s central message the injustice of life in the Depression-era American west. Without doubt one of Steinbeck’s strongest attributes...
The moon, something we see in the sky every day and every night if the moon could talk it would tell tales older than humanity itself. Since the dawn of man, the moon has always been a mystery to all. The beauty captivates us with...