The Red Badge of Courage, written by Stephen Crane and published in 1895, is a novel that takes readers on a harrowing journey through the experiences of a young soldier named Henry Fleming during the American Civil War. The novel explores the themes of fear,...
“Across a Hundred Mountains” by Reyna Grande is a poignant and evocative novel that explores the harrowing journey of immigration, the profound sense of loss experienced by those who leave their homeland, and the enduring hope that sustains them. Set against the backdrop of Mexico...
“Nothing but the Truth” is a thought-provoking novel by Avi that explores the themes of truth, free speech, and the consequences of one’s actions. In this essay, we will delve into the story, characters, and the broader implications of the novel, considering the relevance of...
Ian McEwan portrays a theme of architectural detail throughout his novel Atonement. Through the use of these descriptions, McEwan constructs the theme of guilt, and the quest of finding atonement, that follows through his main character, Briony Tallis. Briony, who is a writer, writes these...
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott composed soon after the Civil War in light of a publisher’s interest for a novel, which was initially distributed in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, as two books. Little Women transcends many of...
Familial bonds add arresting dimensions to even the most torturously mundane of novels. The literary options are truly myriad; family ties can represent both complexity and simplicity, and provide characters with both adversity and appeasement. The intricate interaction between mother and son has particularly saturated...
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is an unprecedented novel which is particularly concerned with the problem of forging secure identities in the face of modern challenges: consumerism, capitalism, emasculating white-collar work, an absence of fathers, and an absence of historical distinctiveness. The text’s protagonist is a...
“Historical fiction tells the stories of ordinary people living in extraordinary times,” as quoted by Ellen Klages and it is through these stories of ordinary people that we are able to deepen our understanding of the human experience. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need...
In the start of the novel, Little Women, the four March sisters struggle to understand that having very little could mean so much more. For instance, when Meg talks about how dreadful it is to be poor. It seems as if she has no positive...
Fear is in all human beings that always pulls us back into the darkness. It is also something that will protect us by signaling danger and preparing us to deal with it. But behind that fear is your Personal Legend. A Personal Legend is your...
Ancestral trauma can be inherited in Black and communities of color. In Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, Sophie Caco is a Haitian woman who immigrated to the United States to be with her mother (Martine) after living majority of her childhood in Haiti without...
Nobody follows their dreams; in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist it is stressed that everyone has a designated personal legend. In the reading it demonstrates “people’s inability to choose their own personal legends” inflicted by the world’s greatest lie, “our lives become controlled by fate”. Coelho’s...
While on the surface a straightforward story about the four March girls’ journeys from childhood to adulthood, Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig, centers on the conflict between two phases in a young woman’s life — that which she places on herself, which she places...
After the end of World War II, Americans lived under the fear of nuclear war. The government built up huge arsenals of nuclear bombs, and used propaganda to assuage the American people’s fear. The best known example of that is the Duck and Cover propaganda...
Cormac McCarthy’s ‘All the Pretty Horses’ exposes the futility of clinging to “phantom” dreams which are ultimately “falling away” as a result of the inevitable progression of society. McCarthy emphasises that protagonist John Grady Cole is unable to achieve the idealistic life of an American...
George Meredith once reasoned, “The true test of comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.” The importance of encouraging thoughtful laughter in comedy lies in its ability to humorously provoke reflection of some greater idea or theme. In the dark comedy Catch-22, Joseph Heller...
At times, a novel can communicate the most with the stories it chooses not to tell, rather than the ones it does. In Sandor Marai’s moody, claustrophobic drama, Embers, such is the case of the Henrik’s wife Krisztina, a woman who is already long dead...
Representations of authors’ experiences of particular landscapes hold great significance for their audiences, as they portray the multifaceted relationships between people and landscapes, such as how interactions with landscape shape awareness of identity. This is potently represented in Alain De Botton’s postmodern collection of essays...
Government is the basis of all modern civilization. If living under oppressive governmental rule was our only given option, would we be better off living in daily fear and distress, or would it be more beneficial to have no government at all? In James A....
Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s book Guanta?namo Diary is a work that deals heavily in complex themes. Questions of morality, accusations of terrorism, and descriptions of torture abound in his story, but it is the subtle undercurrent of death throughout the book that I find most intriguing....
The traditional structure and approach to literature is challenged in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. For this idiosyncratic narrative, the main character is referred to as the reader, and the novel is told in the second person. Every other chapter...
According to Nina Baym, the heroine of woman’s fiction “brings into being a new kind of family life, organized around love rather than money. Money subsides into its adjunct function of ensuring domestic comfort” (39-40). Little Women is the epitome of this idea, and the...
In many novels that depict the story of relationship, a woman meets a man throughout the plot in social institutions such as school, at a party, at the mall, or even online. Soon this couple falls in love, and eventually decides to tie the knot;...
Theodore Roosevelt once stated that “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” Often, illusions of comfort blockade the mind and sway an individual’s ability to clearly see the moral...
Willa Cather’s 1913 novel O Pioneers! is very much a work of its time, providing social commentary regarding a number of significant issues of the nineteenth into early twentieth century. This commentary presents a variety of frameworks for critical analysis: from the perspective of reform...
In the classic allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan explains the journey of a newly-saved believer. Bunyan’s story unraveled in a dream of a man named Christian. After reading a section in the bible, Christian tells his wife and children that he must find a...
Reflecting back on Shane, life in the West was fairly isolated compared to the way that we live now when many people will pass by our houses throughout the day. during the late 1800s many people were moving west, but there were not highly populated...
Stevens believes that to be a great butler, one must maintain their professional facade at all times in order to remain dignified (or at least, the ability to maintain a professional facade regardless of one’s circumstances is Stevens’ definition of dignity). This results in him...
In The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe, the protagonist Niki Jumpei leaves his work and family behind in search of a new species of beetle. On his search, Niki finds himself trapped in a hole amongst the sand dunes, and he initially tries...
In Dionne Brand’s novel What We All Long For, each of the central characters attempts to define and redefine what it means to belong through their own experiences and interactions. For Tuyen, belonging is not defined by identifying with specific communities, but by fluidity and...
