Essays on Literary Genres

2908

Doctor O'connor in His Labyrinth: Unreliable Narrators in Nightwood

5 pages / 2167 words

In response to the horrors of World War I, the modernism movement rose and rejected previous movements like romanticism. Alienation, fragmentation, and shell shock influenced modernist writers to create complex characters, stream of consciousness, and satirical plots. This later influenced surrealism and the exploration of...

Fiction

2909

Away with The Gods, The Magic Suffices: an Analysis of Die Nibelungen and The Nibelungenlied

2 pages / 925 words

Introduction The purpose of a myth is to promote an ideology and to set standards for society. In this way, according to Bidney, the myth is the source of morality and religion (Bidney, 1955, p. 22). This would explain the various connections between Christianity and...

Poetry

2910

Contrasting Beliefs of Irene and Clare in "Passing"

4 pages / 1632 words

Desmond Tutu once said, “A person is a person through other persons…. I am because other people are.” In essence, what Tutu is saying is that without other people to influence and affect an individual, a person is not really anyone. It is the things...

Character Novel

2911

Heroes in Ancient Germanic Literature

5 pages / 2063 words

In the ancient Germanic world, heroes are strong men who exude defining personality characteristics that pose them as a threat to others. These traits are what make them formidable, but they are also what drive these heroes to their death. For example, in The Nibelungenlied,...

Heroes Poetry

2912

The Issue of Black Female Sexuality in Quicksand by Nella Larsen

7 pages / 3245 words

The entertainment of a Harlem cabaret hypnotizes Helga Crane, the protagonist of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. She loses herself in the “sudden streaming rhythm” and delights in the sexually suggestive moves of the dancers. Helga is “blown out, ripped out, beaten out by the joyous, wild,...

Novel Sex, Gender and Sexuality

2913

The Theme of Success Through Recognition in Passing by Nella Larsen

4 pages / 1785 words

Nella Larsen began writing during a time when women, especially black women, did not have a place in society. Her novels consisted of stories re-iterating the lives of the oppressed during the Harlem Renaissance. In her story Passing, Larsen depicts the lives of two women...

Novel

2914

Manipulation of The Spy Novel in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker

3 pages / 1218 words

Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker describes the difficult and oftentimes discouraging assimilation of a young Korean American, Henry Park. Throughout the novel, Henry struggles to find his true self in either Korean or American culture. His effort to mold an identity in a foreign country leaves...

Literature Review Novel

2915

Themes of Family and Womanhood in Nella Larsen's Passing

3 pages / 1487 words

Throughout much of Nella Larsen’s Passing, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry are portrayed as polar opposites. Though they both occupy the role of a young African-American mother living during the prosperous 1920s, they define that role in intensely different ways. Clare is a vivacious, wild...

Novel

2916

The Price of Dignity in Nectar in a Sieve

2 pages / 1024 words

Many people look down upon the poor. For these disdainful individuals, being poor means that you have to perform acts that would be reprimanded by others, therefore ruining your social image. It is possible, however, to disagree with anyone who thinks that. Hunger is a...

Fiction Hunger

2917

Identity, and Its Fragmentation, in ‘nada’

5 pages / 2085 words

In Carmen Laforet’s Nada, the orphan Andrea arrives in Barcelona full of optimism about her new life in the city. Many critics claim that the novel is a ‘bildungsroman’, a coming-of-age story where the protagonist, an adolescent, matures into adulthood and finds her identity. However,...

Novel

2918

Fear and Loathing in Lyn Hejinian’s 13th Entry

2 pages / 867 words

The number thirteen carries with it symbolic connotations unique to no other digits. Widely recognized as unlucky, to the point of constructing whole buildings that omit the number altogether, it stands as a superstitious unit of fear. Thirteen likewise represents the coming of age, as...

Poetry

2919

The Remembrance of History in Natasha Trethewey's "Pilgrimage"

3 pages / 1402 words

Natasha Trethewey often writes about the relationship we have with the past, a shared history that many wish to remember and forget at the same time. This internal conflict of memory presents itself throughout “Pilgrimage” in unexpected contrasts, lugubrious imagery, and glaring reminders of the...

Poetry

2920

The Role of Characterisation Throughout The Short Stories of "Mayadevi’s London Yatra" and "Bishtpur Landing"

2 pages / 782 words

“My Sainted Aunts”, written by Bulbul Sharma, is an Indian book built upon several stories with unique characters, each one of them presented with great diction and characterization. Furthermore, the author decides to use and portray Indian lifestyle for women before modern times, where these...

Fiction

2921

Analyzing Asher's Gift in My Name is Asher Lev

2 pages / 972 words

In Chaim Potok’s novel My Name is Asher Lev, Asher struggles with self-identity and going against tradition, which ultimately leads him to question whether his gift of art comes from the Ribbono Shel Olom or the sitra achra. Asher’s gift comes from the Ribbono Shel...

Novel

2922

Gratitude to Nature in Ross Gay's Poems

1 page / 585 words

The Ross Gay’s book Catalogue of unabashed gratitude consists of several poems with rich content. The report analysis herein will cover three poems from the book such as “Burial,” “Weeping,” and “Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.” The poems coverage insists on the real world we live,...

Gratitude Poetry

2923

The Metaphor of Surgery in H.g.wells' The Island and Dr. Moreau's Under The Knife

1 page / 1523 words

H.G. Wells believed intensely in the productive aspects of science and the potential of the human race. At the same time, he was also acutely aware that scientific knowledge placed in the wrong hands could result in evil caused by the darker aspects of humanity....

Science Fiction Utopia

2924

Wells’ Caustic Attack on Vivisection in The Island of Dr. Moreau

1 page / 2946 words

Vivisection, an issue explored by many different scholars, including religious, scientific, and literary, has engendered a fierce debate since its inception. Philosophers early as Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas began addressing issues concerning mankind’s relation to animal, which had great implications in shaping societal views...

Science Fiction

2925

Pre-colonial and Post-colonial Challenges of Motherhood as Illustrated in Joys of Motherhood

1 page / 1888 words

The idea that childbirth can test a woman and perhaps lead to self-awareness serves as a major theme for Buchi Emecheta’s Nigerian novel The Joys of Motherhood, in which a young Ibo woman marries twice, the first marriage highlighting her infertility. In her second marriage,...

Nigeria Novel

2926

Nigeria Vs Western Capitalist Society as Potrayed in Things Fall Apart and The Joys of Motherhood

1 page / 1298 words

The novels Things Fall Apart and The Joys of Motherhood both present Nigeria as a competitive, consumption-crazed country. Each novel, therefore, also creates a parallel between Nigeria and capitalist, Western societies–yet each one shows that the differences are not in degree, but in the details....

Nigeria Novel Things Fall Apart