Essays on Literary Genres

3060

Tearing Down and Building Up: The Dismantlement and Reconstruction of Identity in John Okada’s No-no Boy

3 pages / 1557 words

Frank Chin’s gripping afterword to the novel No-No Boy emphasizes the crucial influence of John Okada’s literary pursuits in his own life as an Asian-American writer. In a world where words had formerly danced across the pages of books to the sole tune of white...

Novel

3061

Shifting Identities: Racial Conflict in No-no Boy

4 pages / 1752 words

John Okada’s No-No Boy illustrates the racial conflicts between the Japanese-American community and American popular culture as well as differing views on assimilation among Japanese-Americans themselves. Kenji, who suffers from a fatal wound sustained fighting for the U.S. in World War II, represents a sort...

Novel

3062

She once Had Me: The Significance of The Women in Norwegian Wood

5 pages / 2495 words

The people in one’s life are often more important in shaping one’s future than the choices of that individual themselves. In Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, the protagonist, Toru Watanabe, encounters various women who influence him and alter his outlook on life as he progresses through...

Literature Review Novel Woman

3063

The Strange and The Unusual: The Complexities of a Bildungsroman in 1960’s Tokyo

4 pages / 1636 words

Thrusting into the world of Tokyo in the 1960’s, Norwegian Wood is a novel by Haruki Murakami, which was published in 1987. At first seeming very foreign and obscure, Norwegian Wood proves that even over a span of nearly five decades, not much changes socially....

Literature Review Novel Protagonist

3064

"Whores of Mirth": Examining Sex Work in Angela Carter’s Nights at The Circus

4 pages / 1840 words

It takes a writer like Angela Carter to make connections between circus clowns and prostitutes. Her novel, Nights at the Circus, depicts both, and they are shown to be more similar than one might first imagine. In Nights at the Circus, Carter uses circuses and...

Fiction

3065

The Tragedy of Permanence in "Nightwood"

2 pages / 943 words

In the chapter “Go Down, Matthew” of Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, Dr. Matthew O’Connor, speaking to an ex-priest at the Cafe de la Mairie du Vie after an extensive and exhausting session of consoling a lamenting Nora Flood, relates himself and the ex-priest to ducks...

Fiction

3066

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

3067

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

3068

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

3069

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

3070

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

3071

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

3072

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

3073

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

3074

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

3075

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

3076

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

3077

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

3078

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