Essays on Literary Genres

3592

The Role of Violence in O'connor’s Works

5 pages / 2414 words

At first glance, Flannery O’Connor’s work seems to begin and end with despair. In many of her works, she paradoxically uses styles that are grotesque and brutal to illustrate themes of grace and self-actualization. The use of violence returns her character to reality and prepares...

Short Story

3593

Ostriches and Elephants: a Perspective on Family Values

3 pages / 1487 words

In Fiela’s Child, the two families, the van Rooyens and the Komoeties, have a strong connection with animals, albeit not always a positive connection. The van Rooyens have a problem with elephants in the forest. The Komoeties’ ostriches give the family all kinds of trouble....

Novel South Africa

3594

Fifteen Dogs: a Critical Analysis

5 pages / 2284 words

Once given human consciousness, Prince’s journey works to answer many philosophical questions regarding what it means to be human as well as what a ‘good life’ really means through Andr? Alexis’ novel, Fifteen Dogs. Prince’s relationship with language forms almost immediately, showing the innate relationship...

Novel

3595

Fight Club: Trying to Find Your Real Self

4 pages / 1611 words

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is an anarchic, pessimistic novel that portrays the need for identity in life and Palahniuk explains, through the narrator’s personality disorder, that the desire for meaning is the sole internal motivation of civilization. In the narrator’s speech throughout the novel, Palahniuk...

Fight Club Novel

3596

The Question of Author’s Identity in Fight Club

3 pages / 1315 words

Throughout the novel, Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, the search for identity and meaning in life is explored through different aspects of the novel, specifically the characterization and development of the narrator. When the readers first meet the narrator, he has no sense of purpose...

Novel

3597

Can Tyler Durden Be Described as an Ideal Man

3 pages / 1350 words

In Robert Bly’s book about exploring what it means to be male, Iron John, he wrote that modern men are “not interested in harming the earth or starting wars. There’s a gentle attitude toward life in their whole being and style of living. But many...

Character Novel

3598

The Meaning of Nothing in Fight Club

2 pages / 1027 words

Throughout Fight Club, the concept of the separation of soul from body appears in various forms. Whether forced upon others by Tyler or originating organically, the gap created between the essence of a man and the reality of his life reveals a region of the...

Fight Club Novel

3599

Breaking Down The Stylistic Features of The Fight Club

3 pages / 1455 words

Fight Club is an example of postmodernism that radically breaks conventions and questions the meta-narrative that society by large plays into. In the modern world, there’s this ideology that we’re all expected to conform to: get an expensive college education, a job that makes us...

Fight Club Novel

3600

Fight Club as a Way of Creating a Feminized Society

5 pages / 2349 words

Introduction The novel Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, tells the story of a nameless protagonist enveloped in a consumer-driven society. A stereotypical American driven by consumption and possessions, he finds himself living day-to-day as a cog in the machine of a corporate society. Plagued by...

Fight Club Novel

3601

Fathers and Sons: a Close Look at The Most Crucial Passages

5 pages / 2303 words

Much of the tension in Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons arises from the conflict between the two main characters, Bazarov and Arkady. Bazarov is a nihilist and the catalyst for much of the action of the novel. He does not share the romantic views held...

Literature Review Novel

3602

Raising Bazarov: The Sources of Bazarov’s Radicalism in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons

9 pages / 3922 words

The genesis of the Russian radical movement is portrayed in Ivan Turgenev’s classic novel Fathers and Sons as a shock which resonated throughout the Russian public sphere, effecting change within both families and society. Indeed, historian Daniel Brower argues in {em Training the Nihilists: Education...

Book Review Literary Criticism Novel

3603

Fatum and Its Impact on Pechorin and Bazarov

6 pages / 713 words

The characters of Pechorin and Bazarov, the central figures in Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, embody the theme of fatalism and its profound impact on their lives. Both men appear to be doomed in different but equally tragic ways:...

Book Review Novel

3604

Material Girl by Ezra Pound

3 pages / 1257 words

In “Portrait d’une Femme,” Ezra Pound examines the fragmented nature of the modern woman; cluttered with culture and accumulated intellect, her character exhibits mere parts of a whole that is both inscrutable and alluringly fascinating. Contrasting one feminine archetype, the radiant goddess, the mystifying siren,...

Poetry

3605

Pound, Ginsberg, and Olson: Modern and Postmodern Poetry

5 pages / 2497 words

With the advent of both modernism and post-modernism, the twentieth century was a time in which poetic expression was extremely diverse. Especially in the aftermath of World War Two, poets sought to widen the scope of their craft; they experimented with minimalism, for example, and...

Poetry

3606

Ezra Pound’s View of The 'World of Men' in The Sargasso Sea

4 pages / 1916 words

In “Portrait D’une Femme”, Ezra Pound contrasts the female inclination towards fragmentation, inertia and subservience with the corresponding male characteristics of spontaneity, wholeness, and dominance in an effort to underscore the threat posed by women who seek to drag the “man’s world” down into the...

Poetry

3607

Lamenting Or Complaining: Female Authority in The Wife’s Lament

5 pages / 2218 words

In Book II of Troilus and Criseyde, the character Pandarus states: “Wommen are born to thraldom and penance, /and to been under mannes governance.”(Chaucer, line 286-7) Extracted from an exchange between the maiden Criseyde and her uncle, Pandarus, the passage speaks volumes on contemporary views...

Poetry

3608

The Wanderer: Analyzing The Weather as a Symbol

2 pages / 793 words

The weather in “The Wanderer” is reflective of the author’s view of the world following his exile. Throughout the poem, weather is utilized in an effort to paint a picture as wretched and sorrowful as the persona’s view of life. As I read through the...

Poetry The Wanderer

3609

"Ulysses" and "The Seafarer": Erasing The Edge Between Life and Fiction

4 pages / 1650 words

Both Lord Alfred Tennyson’s dramatic monologue, “Ulysses,” and Ezra Pound’s 1912 translation of the Old English dramatic monologue “The Seafarer” depict a man’s musings about seaward journeys. Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” in the wake of his best friend Arthur Henry Hallam’s death. “The Seafarer” has traditionally...

Poetry The Seafarer Ulysses

3610

Final Analysis of The Wanderer

6 pages / 2560 words

The Wanderer is a poem that laments both the temporality of human life and the material world, posing existential questions that only appear to be answered in the comparatively short conclusion though appeal to the Christian God. In part because of this structural oddity, critical...

Poetry The Wanderer