In literature, authors have created characters that have traits that contributes to their survival in society. The qualities of shredders, adaptability, and basic human kindness enables the character Huckleberry Finn, in Mark Twains novel The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn to survive in his environment. The...
Knut Hamsun’s fin de siècle novel Hunger sets the reader up for a journey with its opening sentence when Hamsun writes, “Christiania, singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away traces of his sojourn there.” (Hunger 1). Here, Hamsun puts into place the...
The aim of this paper is to study the concept of the trauma of black Haitian womanhood in Edwidge Danticat’s novel Breath, Eyes, Memory. The novel tells the story of a young Haitian-American woman Sophie Caco, who tries to reconstruct her identity and to find...
Robert Warren once talked about the difficult necessity of self knowledge. What exactly does this mean? What does it mean to know ourselves? And does it really matter if we stay true to ourselves. In the story The Patented Gate and the Mean Hamburger by...
The struggle of The Jack Bank is less one for self-discovery than it is a journey in spite of it. Glen Retief is writing from a world of racial, political, religious, and sexual oppression, a world that inspires discrimination through violence. As a gay man,...
Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying is about 29-year-old poet Isadora Wing, who is bored in a bourgeois marriage. She dreams of a sexual encounter with a stranger, and when she travels with her husband to Vienna and meets the attractive Adrian Goodlove, she indulges in...
Connie and Christabel are two different teenage girls who lived in different eras. In the article “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, Oates illustrated Connie as a young pretty girl, who liked to look at herself, but rebellious. She always argued with her...
Dorothy Allison’s autobiographical narrative Two or Three Things I Know for Sure examines how a lower-class upbringing has affected the identities of the women in her family. Beauty, inadvertently, becomes one of the most valued things among her family members, a perceived lack of which...
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh Linda Colley’s The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh is a detailed narrative of the life Elizabeth Marsh and her historical social influence during the 18th century. Colley captures aspects of the events in Elizabeth Marsh’s time as she continuously travels in...
The Cellist of Sarajevo, a novel written by Steven Galloway is set in the city of Sarajevo, during the Bosnian war in the 1990’s. Galloway chose this setting to recount the stories of eyewitnesses present during the siege of Sarajevo, and to give his reader’s...
What is a hero? I believe a hero is a person who shows very good behaviour and physical qualities. In the book, “The Hobbit” Bilbo is the main character and I believe that he is one of the heroes in the book. For me, Bilbo...
Mrs Bentley, wife of a Protestant minister, she wrote journal entries regularly. The couple moved to another small town, called “Horizon”. Mrs. Bentley, was the loss hope for Philip (her husband), who became far more distant. As she notes her feelings, she is clear, as...
Bom Boy by Yewande Omotoso is written in the genre known as Bildungsroman. However, it is in the form of a dissensual Bildungsroman. Peiker (2015) states that “A key plot difference between the dissensual and the traditional Bildungsroman is that a finished Bildung, the essential...
American Pastoral is narrated by Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman, a friend and admirer of the Levovs, in particular of Seymour “The Swede” Levov. Zuckerman tells the story of The Swede’s tragic fall from youthful perfection due to his daughter’s act of terrorism in protest of...
I. Introduction When delving into the world of Shakespearean tragedies, one cannot help but be captivated by the complex characters and intricate plotlines that unfold before them. One such masterpiece is “Macbeth,” a tale of ambition, power, and the devastating consequences of unchecked desire. In...
In “Guns, Germs, and Steel” Jared Diamond tries to understand why certain countries and civilizations developed wealth and power and evolved throughout history while other civilizations did not. He also tries to figure out how these certain peoples were the ones capable to expand and...
In the book “Alandra’s Lilacs,” author Tressa Bowers describes her life experience as a young mother. Losing two sons and raising a deaf daughter was not easy as I could imagine. Tressa had dropped out of high school and her marriage, well that wasn’t going...
Significant dialogue from Act 2 of Death and the Maiden reveals how Paulina’s torture in the Chile’s past totalitarian regime has affected her life in the democratic present day. The ambiguity in the meaning of justice is a key theme that is significantly developed because...
Coraline Jones, the protagonist of Neil Gaiman’s novel “Coraline,” is a complex and multi-dimensional character who undergoes significant growth and development throughout the story. From her initial Introduction as a curious and adventurous young girl to her courageous and determined actions in the face of...
The year was 1842 in Glendora, Mississippi; there lived a young boy named Jimmy. At the age of 13 Jimmy was sold and separated from his father. He was sold to William C. Ford. Ever since that day Massa Ford hasn’t let him go. Jimmy...
“If you risk nothing you achieve nothing, for fortune favors the bold.” This is a quote that really intrigued me in the book Kalila and Dimna. I can see how relevant this quote is in everyday life, as boldness allows for opportunity. Dimna stated this...
Educating Rita is a play about change and transformation. Susan White, a working class girl, wants to escape the trappings of the class system and become “educated”, thinking that this will allow her to “sing a better song“. By the end of the play, her...
The Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy is an autobiography of a girl who turns her misfortune into an encouraging story that is engaging and engrossing. At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with...
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer is a series of stories that focus on the main character, Dina. Dina is an African American girl who is raised in Baltimore, but who later studies at Yale. Dina doesn’t like most people and has a hard time...
The turn of the eighteenth century is at the cusp of radical shifts in ideology, booming industry and scientific advancement for the Western World. The rapid changes, and growing middle class widens the audience for conduct books. As more people were economically secure and had...
Sheriff Mapes In Ernest Gaines’s novel, A Gathering of Old Men, the character of Sheriff Mapes seems as though he is just like any other stereotypical southern sheriff, and at first, he undoubtedly portrays himself in such a manner. However, as the story goes on...
The book The Lonely Londoner written by Sam Selvon, depict a bittersweet story of a group of West Indian immigrants living in the 1950s London. The book takes an evocative look at the city through the jaded eyes of a black man, Moses Aloetta, a...
In his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance tells of how he advanced from a hillbilly to a relatively wealthy author. From a family and culture of drug abuse and instability, Vance made his way to one of the country’s most elite law schools and...
People work hard and gain positive things all the time. People who don’t work don’t gain positive things. This is what happens in the book The Treasure of Lemon Brown by Walter Dean Myers. In this story a boy named Greg leaves his house and...
Justice is a universal idea that has existed since human civilization began. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, justice is “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” Because...
