Essays on Literary Genres

2813

Mrs Danvers: a Foil for The Narrator of "Rebecca"

1 page / 772 words

In the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the character of Mrs Danvers is presented as a foil to the narrator: a character who provides a contrast to the narrator in order to highlight her attributes. Mrs Danvers is the housekeeper at Mannerly and looked...

Novel

2814

Imagery and Diction in Red Sorghum

2 pages / 993 words

Through war torn villages and billowing sorghum fields, author Mo Yan depicts the subtle joys and harsh realities of the life of a Chinese family during the Second Sino-Japanese War in his novel, Red Sorghum. The intensity of the challenges and hardships that face this...

Novel

2815

Techniques of Characterization in John Updike’s ‘rabbit, Run’

7 pages / 3540 words

When Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom returns to Brewer to seek the help of his old high school basketball coach Marty Tothero in John Updike’s ‘Rabbit Run,’ a third-person narrator establishes the scene “Rabbit glances up hopefully at the third-story windows but no light shows” before we...

Fiction

2816

Disparity in Gender Roles in "Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters"

2 pages / 988 words

The core battle in the modern Feminist movement has been the battle against set gender roles. Women no longer feel that it is mandatory for them to be a mother and a housewife simply because they were born female, or that it is a man’s...

Feminist Literary Criticism Fiction Gender Roles

2817

Shattering Glass Houses: Destroying The Self in J.d. Salinger's Prose

6 pages / 3158 words

Time surges relentlessly, uncontrollably, and all too irrevocably for Buddy Glass in J.D. Salinger’s “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” and “Seymour: An Introduction.” Ever since his older brother Seymour’s death, Buddy has struggled to piece together the fragments of his existence, the diary entries,...

Fiction

2818

Recurring Literary Elements in Horatio Alger's Novels

10 pages / 4593 words

Horatio Alger Jr. was the quintessential class optimist: born to privilege, if not actual wealth, and convinced that poverty could be easily cured with simple hard work, proactivity and good character. The formula didn’t quite work for him personally—he died almost destitute—but during the peak...

Novel

2819

"A Time of Togetherness": How Alexie Sherman and Velma Wallis Use Christmas to Present Contemporary Native American Issues

4 pages / 1840 words

The difficulty for most contemporary Native American authors is how to present their work to a populace who is not entirely familiar with the modern Indian situation and lifestyle. One way that Alexie Sherman and Velma Wallis achieve this in their books The Absolutely True...

Christmas Novel Sherman Alexie

2820

Memory and Recollection in Rebecca: a Close Reading

3 pages / 1500 words

Daphne du Maurier’s gothic romance novel Rebecca touches on a young woman, who remains unnamed throughout the novel, and her self-inflicted life of misery. Being recently married into a high social class, the protagonist, Mrs. De Winter, faces internal and external struggles with her new...

Novel

2821

Lee is in The Trap: a Close Reading of "Prep"

1 page / 898 words

Prep, written by Curtis Sittenfeld in 2005, was a New York Times bestseller. This narrative gives a glimpse of the prestigious boarding school experiences of a poor girl named Lee Fiora who comes from Indiana. The author directly reveals struggles involving social classes and race...

Novel

2822

Religious Fanaticism in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

7 pages / 3486 words

Scottish novelist James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner opens with a narrative by an unknown editor describing the Colwan family and the feud between the Colwan brothers, Robert, later known as Robert Wringhim, and George. The editor’s narrative is followed...

Novel

2823

From Novel to Camera: Gothic Elements in Psycho

2 pages / 1107 words

Setting is extremely important in Gothic literature: after all, setting really is the foundation of the story and can make or break the atmosphere the author tries to create. The same is true of film, and Psycho’s most used setting is arguably the most Gothic...

Novel

2824

Feminist Language in Sapphire’s Push

2 pages / 1052 words

In her novel, Push, Sapphire challenges the conventions of patriarchal literature through use of language, characterization and archetype, as well as deviations in the traditional, patriarchal novel structure. One of the major elements in Sapphire’s revision of the paradigm of the conventional novel is the...

Novel

2825

Murder and Mental Breakdown in "The Tell-tale Heart" and The Picture of Dorian Gray

2 pages / 1303 words

Dr. James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist, says, “The paranoia exists on a spectrum of severity. … Many perpetrators are in the middle, gray zone where psychiatrists will disagree about the relative contributions of moral failure versus mental affliction.” Dr. Knoll mentions that, in murderers, the...

Edgar Allan Poe Short Story The Picture of Dorian Gray

2826

Edgar Allan Poe and The Orangutan Obsession

3 pages / 1536 words

Edgar Allan Poe’s unusually common usage of orangutans in his short stories is no secret. In The Murders of the Rue Morgue, the orangutan turns out to be the murderer who deprived Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter of their lives. Its actions are depicted as...

Edgar Allan Poe Short Story

2827

The Dangers of Unchecked Imagination in "Ligeia"

3 pages / 1533 words

“Ligeia”, published in 1838 by Edgar Allan Poe, describes the tale of a narrator who is deeply enthralled by his own imagination and thoughts and is submersed in the act of escaping reality. This cautionary tale warns readers about the dangers of unchecked imagination and...

Edgar Allan Poe Short Story

2828

Discovering Ligeia: Immortality, Transcendentalism and The Search for The Unknown

5 pages / 2279 words

Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ is one of the most simultaneously celebrated and contested of all his works. In scholarship, there is debate over many facets of the tale, including the sanity and reliability of the narrator, the cause of Rowena’s death, the truth behind Ligeia’s...

Edgar Allan Poe Short Story

2829

Assessment of Yeats Through Three Poems

2 pages / 1350 words

W.B. Yeats is considered one of the greatest Irish writers due to his eloquent, ‘otherworldly’ early poetry and many of his later dramas and works for which he received the Nobel Prize. Often associated with the Irish Literary Revival, Yeats’ early work can be looked...

Poetry William Butler Yeats

2830

The Cask of Amontillado

3 pages / 1698 words

Edgar Allan Poe is known for his thrilling tales of madmen, cunning murderers, and intense, claustrophobic situations. “The Cask of Amontillado” is one such tale. From the very beginning of the story, the narrator’s unreliable nature shines through his over exaggerated descriptions of how honorable...

Edgar Allan Poe Short Story The Cask of Amontillado

2831

Psychoanalysis of "Ms. Found in a Bottle"

3 pages / 1653 words

The opening words of the story “MS. Found in a Bottle” by Edgar Allan Poe are a quote from the French opera Atys, “Qui n’a plus qu’un moment a vivre N’a plus rien a dissimuler” (Poe 1). This translates roughly to the idea that a...

Edgar Allan Poe Short Story