Essays on Literary Genres

3421

Baldwin’s Fiction: Liminal Organization and The State of Obscurity

4 pages / 1842 words

James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk and “The Man Child” are both texts that demonstrate how the isolation of characters can yield overtly violent outcomes. Though the perspective from which Baldwin challenges dominant forces differs between the two texts, the race of the protagonists...

Fiction Novel

3422

Close Examination of Going after Cacciato

2 pages / 796 words

The reality of war unfortunately creates an oppressive system that causes soldiers to struggle with internal conflict and individual thought. In the book Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Paul Berlin’s thoughts and emotions are presented fluidly in the observation post as he accepts ideas...

Book Review Novel Tim O’Brien

3423

Post-structuralism in 'Going after Cacciato' by Tim O'brien

2 pages / 824 words

In Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, one abundantly clear theme is disjunction. Much of the text is fragmented, split up and moving between locations, characters, and time periods. Coupled with what often seems like magical realism, this paints a rather indistinct picture of many...

Fiction Novel

3424

Good Omens as a Reactionary Gothic Novel

4 pages / 1975 words

“Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett challenges the stereotypical conventions of Gothic literature and provides a more modern approach to the genre. Conventionally, the Gothic is associated with terrifying creatures such as Frankenstein or Dracula, and remote, dark settings such as abandoned castles...

Fantasy Novel

3425

The Role of Father and Son Relationship in Shaping One’s Masculinity

2 pages / 936 words

Throughout Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin makes a series of references to David’s sense of fabricated manhood or masculinity impressed upon him by his father. In the first chapters, David alludes to the hollow jocularity between father and son. This hyperbolized masculinity from his father leads to...

Giovanni’s Room Novel

3426

Question of National Belonging in Giovanni’s Room

4 pages / 1703 words

James Baldwin’s work is often defined by an intersection of nationality and sexuality. In Giovanni’s Room, the motif of culture and country of origin is prominent, but difficult to interpret. A particularly dense passage occurs part two of this story, on page 292 beginning with...

Giovanni’s Room Novel

3427

Mighty Religion in Go Tell It on The Mountain

3 pages / 1472 words

In Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin discusses the power that can be found in secularity and in religion. The novel starts with John Grimes waking up to his fourteenth birthday in Harlem, 1935. The entire novel spans a few days, but as...

Novel

3428

Go Tell It on The Mountain: Question of Who is More Moral a Saint Or a ‘sodomite'

5 pages / 2350 words

In James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, religion functions not only as form of worship but also as a covert site of sexual expression. In the novel’s opening chapters, Baldwin often characterizes religious worship in language that borders on the erotic. This undermines...

Novel Spirituality

3429

Giovanni’s Room: The Possibility of Same-sex Love

4 pages / 1904 words

In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, David is a heterosexual man with homosexual desires. This desire to be with men leads him desensitized to how he actually feels when he is with all four of his lovers – male and female. Each and every relationship he...

Giovanni’s Room Novel

3430

Trying to Find Your True Self: Metaphor in Coming Out Stories

4 pages / 1756 words

Every coming out story must deal with the characters’ struggles of being in the closet. The stage of not yet being able to be open about one’s identity can be the most difficult and turbulent point in dealing with their queer identity. It is a...

Giovanni’s Room Novel

3431

Mrs. Alving’s Monologue on Ghosts in Henrik Ibsen’s Play "Ghosts"

2 pages / 940 words

Mrs. Alving: “But I’m inclined to think we’re all ghosts, Pastor Manders; it’s not only the things that we’ve inherited from our fathers and mothers that live on in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and old dead beliefs, and things of that...

Ghost Literature Review

3432

The Poetry of G. M. Hopkins: The Symbolism of Nature

2 pages / 975 words

During the Victorian Era, most poets did not focus on nature and the divine world, but instead on cultural and societal issues occurring in England during that time. But Gerard Manley Hopkins chose to not pursue the path of his fellow poets, and took more...

Poetry

3433

Testing One’s Faith in The Poetry of Hopkins

4 pages / 2001 words

The central role of religion in Hopkins’ life gives it a similar significance in his poetry. The later poems by Hopkins, collectively generalised as the ‘Terrible Sonnets’, emphasise how religious doubt and faith, affected largely by personal circumstance, formed the foundation of Hopkins’ late work....

Poetry

3434

"Binsey Poplars": Elegy and Echo

3 pages / 1559 words

Elegy is a poetic form to which Hopkins continually returns. In one of his most famous poems about death, “Spring and Fall,” Hopkins’s speaker uses the occasion of “Goldengrove unleaving” to teach a child about her own mortality (2). In an earlier poem, “Binsey Poplars,”...

Poetry

3435

Gilead: Analysis of Narrative and Key Topics

4 pages / 1802 words

The narrative of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is expressed in the form of a long, heartfelt from a dying father to his young son. Intended to be read after his imminent passing, John Ames III writes to capture his moral sentiments and life advice through a...

Novel

3436

Childbirth in The Poetry of Gillian Clarke and Tishani Doshi

2 pages / 1098 words

Doshi’s ‘The Deliverer’ is set in Kerala in a centre designed to help the children that have been rejected by society due to their gender, deformities and skin. The immorality of the scene depicted by the description of ‘naked in the streets’ and ‘stuffed’ into...

Poetry

3437

Analysis of Racial Politics in Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

3 pages / 1409 words

Marilynne Robinson’s epistolary novel Gilead takes place during the Civil Rights Movement when racial issues are at their apex. After realizing that he is dying of a heart condition, the main character John Ames writes an account of his life for his seven-year-old son, but...

Novel

3438

Existential Ideas in in Giovanni’s Room

4 pages / 1883 words

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are — that is the fact. – Jean-Paul Sartre Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online...

Giovanni’s Room Novel

3439

Shattering Self-identification in Giovanni’s Room

2 pages / 773 words

In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the protagonist David grapples with his homosexuality, a part of him that he continually denies, and subsequently fails to repress. As David deals with his identity, he looks for and finds himself, his literal image, in mirrors, windows, and other...

Giovanni’s Room Novel