Essays on The Open Boat

Survival Against Nature Many works of American literature contain similar themes and elements. This is because some ideas are common to human nature and many authors strive to express them in different ways. An example of this is Jack London’s story “To Build a Fire”...

To Build a Connection We’ve all experienced those days where it seems the universe is out to kill, or at least psychologically maim, us. A series of mundane irritants accumulates into a seemingly unmanageable, insurmountable mountain, completely derailing any attempt at productivity…and in the midst...

Reading Journal Summative Reflection Over the course of the semester, it was interesting to discover the various ways American writers have depicted themes of nature. And luckily enough, the perspectives on nature have not been constant—rather, there has been a wide range of ways in...

Novelist Ray Bradbury once said, “I used to take my short stories to girls’ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?” (“Ray Bradbury Quotes”). While speaking from a comical perspective,...

Realism, as William Dean Howells declared, involves “the young writer who attempts to report the phrase and carriage of everyday life” (641-642). This mode of expression essentially boils down to individual writers’ perspectives on life, and includes elements such as regional realism as well as...