Essays on Literary Genres

3516

What Does Society Mean to an Individual

4 pages / 1722 words

Society serves as a window into the beliefs and attitudes of American life, revealing the true values of particular communities and humanity at large. At the high school level, sports can be used as a vehicle to teach children the value of hard work, dedication,...

Novel

3517

The Idea of Exile in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy

5 pages / 2459 words

In Funny Boy, we find characters who do not conform, and at the same time have to live their lives with a sense of the impending danger of them transgressing the societal norms. Therefore a brief period of liberation followed by an acute sense of...

Novel

3518

Pigs Can’t Fly Or is It Worth Conforming to The Society?

3 pages / 1415 words

The choice between conforming to societal standards and pursuing a personal desire is a conflict many youth must face. Arjie, in Shyam Selvadurai’s “Pigs Can’t Fly,” initially experiences the joys of living a carefree childhood life through his imagination and playing bride-bride. The story traces...

Novel

3519

Characterization in from Sleep Unbound

3 pages / 1427 words

Oppression is a common theme in literature; this is not surprising in light of humanity’s history of vying for power. In literature as in society, are many factors behind oppression – differences in skin color, sex, religion, and family history among them. The one motivation...

Fiction

3520

The Castle as The Central Symbol Used by Walpole and Stoker

10 pages / 4498 words

Gothic architecture thrived during the high and late medieval period. The upper echelons of the feudal system were so impressed by the looming cathedrals that they had their castles built in the same Gothic style. These castles are striking yet, at the same time, sinister:...

Gothic Literature

3521

The Horrors of War and Their Impact on Human Spirit: The Cellist of Sarajevo

2 pages / 910 words

War has always been one of the most shocking and destructive staples of human history. In his novel The Cellist of Sarajevo, Canadian author Steven Galloway seeks to encapsulate the effects that war has on individuals. Galloway emphasizes that although war has a significant impact...

Literature Review Novel War and Peace

3522

Freudian Mental Investigation of Jack in The Cement Garden

4 pages / 1778 words

The Cement Garden depicts an isolated family, and the narrator is the oldest son in the family, named Jack. As a fifteen-year-old adolescent, it is time for Jack to build sex and gender consciousness. However, after the death of his father and mother, he and...

Drama Novel

3523

The Centaur: The Idea of Accepting Yourself in John Updike's Novel

4 pages / 1617 words

Throughout the novel, The Centaur (1963) by John Updike, the theme of self-acceptance is prevalent. The protagonist, George Caldwell, who also symbolizes Chiron of Greek mythology, struggles to come to terms with his life as it is and always looks for what he cannot have....

Novel

3524

National Identity and 'American Dream' in The Chaneysville Incident

2 pages / 924 words

The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley follows the narrator John Washington in a deeply introspective exploration of his family history in order to truly find himself and the origin of his existence. Washington reaches a pinnacle of achievement in his life; he’s a respected scholar...

American Dream Novel

3525

Chekhov’s Innovation in The Cherry Orchard

8 pages / 3720 words

Introduction Anton Chekhov embarked on the creation of his theatrical masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard, in December of 1902. Initially conceived as a four-act farce, Chekhov labored on this project while grappling with the debilitating challenges of emphysema. It was nearly a year before he eventually...

Comedy Tragedy

3526

How Chekhov United Two Opposing Genres of Comedy and Tragedy in The Cherry Orchard

4 pages / 1716 words

Anton Chekhov fought with the famed Stanislavsky over staging his play The Cherry Orchard as a tragedy. According to Chekhov, the play about a well-to-do family forced to surrender its home and orchard to a man who began life as a mere serf on their...

Comedy Literature Review Tragedy

3527

Static in Motion: Examining The Complexities and Contradictions of Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard

3 pages / 1266 words

A notoriously psychological composer of satire and comedy, Anton Chekhov employs The Cherry Orchard as a case study of an ensemble of ludicrous characters united in their inability to transform their behaviors or identities. Each character appears suspended in his/her separate concerns, each so self-absorbed...

Comedy

3528

Characteristic Features of Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto

2 pages / 769 words

Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto was the first gothic novel, and thus was the originator of many of the distinctive features that have pertained throughout the history of the genre. Early gothic was characterized by the rejection of enlightenment thinking in favor of the intense...

Gothic Literature

3529

Analysis of Judge Dee as Good Magistrate

2 pages / 1129 words

The “Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee,” revolved around a very prominent district magistrate named Judge Dee Goong An, a man famous for his ability to solve mysterious cases. Judge Dee digs deep to solve each case and was successful because he combined the three philosophies...

Chinese Culture Novel

3530

Social Critique in Gothic Literature

7 pages / 2958 words

When Horace Walpole wrote the first ever Gothic novel in 1764, the world had never seen anything quite like it before. In an age we now call the enlightenment, where knowledge, science and philosophy had made huge leaps forward, this book dared to be openly...

Gothic Literature

3531

Building and Destroying of Alienation in Migrant Literature

5 pages / 2069 words

One similarity that exists across Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, Meera Syal’s Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee and Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia is the ambivalence that their characters feel outside of their motherland. More obviously in Syal’s and Kureishi’s...

Novel

3532

Colonialism and Metropolitanism in The Buddha of Suburbia

4 pages / 1845 words

Societies are formed by a mixture of several cultures and people from different countries, as well as cultural backgrounds. But in some cases, the unity of society gives way to culturally hybrid societies that causes identity problem and creates ambivalence and in-betweenness in the inner...

Novel

3533

The Crucial Nature of "Therigathas" in The History of Women’s Writing

2 pages / 771 words

The Therigathas are essentially “Verses of The Elder Nuns”, a seminal part of Buddhist scripture composed by the first nuns who joined the Buddhist sanga or formal religious community. This is a collection of short poems composed and eloquently recited by the earliest members of...

Poetry

3534

Will Justice Be Served: Dostoevsky’s Depiction of Justice in The Brothers Karamazov

6 pages / 2615 words

One of the major themes of Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov is the concept of justice, both earthly and divine. Dostoevsky investigates the differences between the two forms and examines several aspects of justice. The novel introduces several different philosophies on justice and shows what...

Justice Novel The Brothers Karamazov