In a writers essay, one can cover a specific piece of literature or the entire creation of a given writer. In such essays, students identify themes, motifs, symbols, key messages, stylistic devices, describe or compare characters, their traits and personal conflicts, reveal personal reactions, their interpretation and attitude towards the ...Read More
In a writers essay, one can cover a specific piece of literature or the entire creation of a given writer. In such essays, students identify themes, motifs, symbols, key messages, stylistic devices, describe or compare characters, their traits and personal conflicts, reveal personal reactions, their interpretation and attitude towards the written piece. When focusing on the entire creation of chosen writers, the typical characteristics of their style are uncovered along with the unique and original elements that set it apart. Additionally, the sources of inspiration, the influences, the evolution in time are analyzed. Review the essay samples below on certain writers and their works – pay attention to the topics, content organization, approaches to writing, etc.
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple holds immense historical and societal relevance among a thirty year spectrum of time periods and movements, including the Harlem Renaissance, the gradual development of both civil and women’s rights, the destruction of rich African civilizations by European companies, and the...
Celie has been a victim of female oppression throughout her life, never believing in herself, and living in fear of men. However, when Shug Avery enters her life, Celie’s quality of life starts to improve on the whole, and her newfound self-belief allows her to...
In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Shug Avery introduces the novel’s protagonist, Celie, to the concept of religious embodiment. Critic Anne-Janine Morey, in her book Religion and Sexuality in American Literature, defines embodiment as “the unreconciled relation of body and spirit” (3). In Western theology,...
During the early 1900s, an emergence of new forms of music such as blues and jazz brought a host of new musicians, many of them female. These female performers, even when wildly successful, were constantly subjected to unfair scrutiny and judgement due to their sex,...
The theme of color is very broad, and reaches strands out to many different emotions and feeling of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple such as sadness, desire and hope. Color also is central to the society that the novel is set in – the color...
The ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres are often held as two separate entities, both representing opposing positions of social freedom or restraint. Whereas the public realm is the more conformed-to and socially hegemonic of the two, the private is associated with an unseen process of identification,...
Sexism is, at its core, a product of gender roles. In the early twentieth century, discrimination against women through the overt use of gender roles was highly prevalent amongst men and women. In a patriarchal society, women are expected to submit to men in all...
Introduction A gambler is nothing but a man who makes his living out of hope.”(Bolitho) In “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” the narrator introduces Simon Wheeler by asking for a man named Leonidas W. Smiley. Instead of indicating the narrator for the information...
Considered to be blueprint for the mechanics of tragedy, Aristotle’s Poetics revolves around the assumption that great works of tragedy must include a generous number of mimetic elements, or elements which readily imitate human life. In addition, well-organized tragic plots combine both reversal of fate...
Leonce Pontellier, the husband of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, becomes very perturbed when his wife, in the period of a few months, suddenly drops all of her responsibilities. After she admits that she has “let things go,” he angrily asks, “on account...
Within the poetry of Hughes and Plath, the theme of human relationships is written of in varying and diverse manners. Plath’s work details relationships, such as the parent-child relationship, using powerful and intricate imagery, while Hughes conveys the theme using comparatively simpler, but more metaphorical...
Antagonistic relationships are as human as harmonious relationships, perhaps even more so. ‘The Rival’, a powerful poem by acclaimed American poet Sylvia Plath, centers around a universal theme of rivalry and conflict, masterfully depicting the complexity of the state of being against someone. Literally, the...
Throughout their poems, authors Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Bronte convey their ideas regarding the despair they have felt throughout their lives, and in particular the concept that ‘thing fall apart’. Through a range of engaging stylistic techniques such as personification, repetition, symbolism, metaphor,...
After the post-humous publication of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, the poet exploded into the scene of second wave feminism, widely regarded as a victim of her mental illness and the men in her life. While the tragedy of Plath’s life is inseparable from her work, more...
Although raised near the ocean and fascinated by the power of nature, Sylvia Plath spent most of her life in the suburbs and the city. In July 1960, however, she and Ted Hughes went camping for a week in Rock Lake, Canada. Not only was...
With the twentieth century now receded, students and scholars will return time and again to contributors of this century’s literary canon. In the realm of poetry, there are several candidates to consider, but one forceful contender for the list of important American poets in this...
The primary concern of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Lady Lazarus” is how the female speaker views her relationship with men; the emotions associated with her views of sex are equated to death, and the desire for her to die. This metaphor of death, used throughout the...
In her poem, “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath uses violent, unnerving, and controversial imagery to illustrate her tumultuous relationship with her father both before and after his death in 1940. Her work, and this poem in particular, is often distinguished due to the juxtaposition of disturbing metaphor...
Introduction Zora Neale Hurston’s short story, “Sweat,” is a profound exploration of the challenges faced by women in a racially divided and patriarchal society. Through the character of Delia, Hurston vividly portrays the intersectionality of race and gender, offering a narrative that uplifts women in...