Essays on Literary Genres

3022

The Role of The Sea in Synge’s ‘riders to The Sea’

2 pages / 987 words

W. B. Yeats, whose advice J. M. Synge has followed in exploring the Aran Islands in the remote northwestern corner of Ireland in 1898, mentions that in Riders to the Sea one finds “first to last the presence of the sea”. The impression of the...

Drama Literature Review

3023

The Insanity of Blindness: The Narrators in Browning’s "Porphyria’s Lover" and "Soliloquy of The Spanish Cloister"

2 pages / 1055 words

With “Porphyria’s Lover” and “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” Browning provides two dramatic monologues of madmen in which the narrator’s sheer ignorance of his own insanity is a basic premise integral to the work. Throughout both these poems, the narrator is consistently unaware of the...

Poetry Robert Browning

3024

Pirandello and Picasso: an Analysis of so It is (if You Think So) as a Cubist Piece of Literature

3 pages / 920 words

In exploring the intersection of literature and visual art, the works of Luigi Pirandello and Pablo Picasso emerge as significant reflections of subjective reality and truth. Both artists challenge the concept of a singular, absolute truth through their respective mediums. In Pirandello’s play Right You...

Drama Pablo Picasso

3025

An Unreliable Narrator in Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning

2 pages / 1273 words

In Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue, “Porphyria’s Lover,” the love-stricken frustrations of a nameless speaker end in a passionate, annihilating response to society’s scrutiny towards human sensuality. Cleverly juxtaposing Porphyria’s innocent femininity and her sexual transgression, Browning succeeds in displaying society’s contradictory embrace of morality next...

Poetry Robert Browning

3026

God as The Quiet in "Caliban Upon Setebos"

4 pages / 1958 words

The nature of God has been a controversial subject for writers throughout the centuries. In the poem “Caliban upon Setebos,” Robert Browning explores the relationship between deities and their subjects through the voice of Caliban, a brutish monster-servant adopted from Shakespeare’s Tempest. Though the cruel...

Poetry Robert Browning

3027

The Dangers and Benefits of Emotion in 19th Century American Literature

2 pages / 1166 words

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...

American Literature Literature Review Novel

3028

Superficial Values in Revolutionary Road

4 pages / 1861 words

When colonial settlers arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620, the primary concern of the newly established society was to ensure survival; however, nowadays, Western consumer society has placed a significant emphasis on shallow ideals, particularly the worth of outward appearance. Over the...

Novel

3029

A Continuous Metaphor: Theater in Revolutionary Road

2 pages / 935 words

Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road unveils the emptiness of suburban life by incorporating a play into the opening paragraphs and then continuing a metaphor of theater throughout the rest of the novel. The novel opens with theatrical failure that foreshadows the evident downfall of Frank and...

Novel

3030

Illusion of Divinity in Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson

1 page / 767 words

It is a common notion for people to believe other people tend to have better lives than their own. Regardless of the situation, people will compare the worst part of their own life to the best parts of other peoples’ lives, creating a wider disparity...

Poetry

3031

Literary Analysis of Richard Wilbur's Poem "The Winter"

2 pages / 923 words

Parents are innately protective of their children. They know that their children will meet struggles in their lives, but at one point the parent must let their child be and simply wish him or “her a lucky passage.” In “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur, the...

Poetry

3032

Irony and Interpretation in Wilbur’s "Boy at The Window"

3 pages / 1568 words

Richard Wilbur’s poem “Boy at the Window” describes a young boy looking at the snowman he has built outside his window at twilight. Noting the cold outdoor environment in which his snowman must spend the night, the boy weeps; however, the poem reveals that the...

Poetry

3033

The Role of Foreshadowing in Remembering Babylon

1 page / 785 words

The first chapter of Remembering Babylon contains the introduction young boy, Gemmy, and his first encounter with the white settlers of Australia. The exposition foreshadows characters’ actions and potential conflicts, establishing later events in the novel and Gemmy’s eventual rejection from society. As Gemmy finds,...

Literature Review Novel

3034

Narrative Structure and The Narrative Manipulation in ‘rebecca’

2 pages / 1019 words

A narrative is a spoken or written account of events and the structure is the order that the author organizes events; though these definitions may seem simple, much of the interest in a narrative can arise from the distortion or manipulation of key information. The...

Novel

3035

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

3036

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

3037

The Shaping of Triton’s Life in The Novel "Reef"

2 pages / 1052 words

In the novel Reef, there are a series of events that mark Triton’s (the protagonist’s) coming of age. To understand Gunesekera’s novel, a reader should heed these events and consider how these occurrences have shaped and affected the protagonist’s life. In the novel Triton holds...

Novel

3038

Racial Ambiguity in Toni Morrison's "Recitatif"

7 pages / 3491 words

Post-colonialism is concerned with the effects of colonization on the colonized. In fact, Richard Schur argues “that there can be no simple escape from the effects race, racism, gender, and sexism without some sort of decolonization” (277). One affect involves how language is used to...

Short Story

3039

A Grammatical Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Recitatif

4 pages / 2051 words

Societally, most individuals enjoy believing that they are without bias. Whether it be gender, race, disability, or religion, everyone has preconceived notions about select people groups. While this can be difficult to admit, Toni Morrison constructs her short story, Recitatif, in a manner which forces...

Short Story

3040

The Lingering Effects of War

2 pages / 1355 words

In Redeployment, Phil Klay reveals the vulgar, brutal aspects of warfare behind the victories and heroism that are often shown in media. Through several short stories, Klay shares the difficult course that soldiers undergo with reconciling with their war experiences when they return home. Soldiers...

Short Story