Essays on Literature

In the novel, “A Lesson before Dying”, by Ernest Gaines, the protagonist, Grant Wiggins gives a young convict a lesson during his last days alive. Suffering through the horrors of racism in their small community, black Americans seem to appear to have no chance of…

The setting of a short story dramatically affects the characters as evident in “The Things They Carried,” “A Worn Path,” and “A Jury of Her Peers.” The setting of a literary work can have a significant effect on the characters, and can affect they way…

Walt Whitman was born in Long Island in 1819 and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Whitman did not have a formal education, but he read widely. When he was twenty-seven, he became the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, but he was fired because of his…

Everything didn’t go as planned, he just wanted to go home! Lesson Before Dying has a book to world connection. In Lesson Before Dying the experiences of black male characters relate to racism within the south and the ultimate dehumanization/emasculation, negative stereotypes, and criminalization of…

“A Noiseless Patient Spider” Explication “A Noiseless Patient Spider” is a poem written by Walt Whitman emphasizing on those seeking meaning and goals by going out in the world to explore. Throughout this poem, alliteration, figurative language, and imagery are used as literary devices to…

A Man for all Season is a play written by Robert Bolt and has integrity and the refusal to compromise as central themes that chart the course of the entire play. The play itself is based on the actual events of history and chronicles the…

When reflecting on Zinnemann’s adaptation of A Man for All Seasons (1966) compared to Robert Bolt’s original play, many differences are noted between the two. Although the film provides a strict interpretation of the play by using direct dialogue, it incorporates multiple variations, including the…

Dreams Dreams play a central role in the story A Midsummer Nigh t’s Dream by Shakespeare. The title of the play shows that the story is a dream on a midsummer night. This is represented through magic, illusions, and changing realities throughout the story. As…

Misogyny is a prominent element of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This can be defined as the “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women,” (Oxford Dictionary). Set in a patriarchal society, the women in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are obligated to be subservient to…

Franz Kafka’s pieces are wrought with allegorical nonsense upon the first glance. However, when one analyzes the extensive symbolism within the short stories, it is clear that they are oftentimes a response to his own life, as well as the current events of the early…

If there was no such thing as sympathy, empathy, or love in our world, it would be a hard place to live. If there was no hard law or reason in our world, it would be a crazy place to live. Neither of these worlds…

Starved for Attention The problem with a public spectacle is often that its flame of enticement burns out over time. This premise serves as the central focus in, “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka. The author depicts the hunger artist’s eventual downfall through themes of…

Introduction In most works of literature, the characters often present ideas that sometimes conflict with the audience’s view on matters affecting the society. The conflict is often seen in matters related to cultural practices. The characters are at some pint alienated from the society based…

Contemplating A Modest Proposal Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games and Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal both tell the story of a suffering land, and what characters do or could do to try and survive in the world the they are born into. Katniss and Peeta…

A Long Way Gone vs Blood Diamond Persuasive Writing If someone was curious about the diamond wars in Sierra Leone and wanted to learn more, it would be more beneficial for them to read A Long Way Gone than to watch Blood Diamond. This is…

A Pair Of Silk Stockings Kate Chopin again writes another short story with a way of getting the attention of the reader in a short period of time. “A Pair of Silk Stockings” is based in early to mid 1900’s in a average town. Shops,…

Lessons in Mortality Nature is a continuous life cycle. The cycles of life and death usually coincide peacefully. The existence of man has made the natural life cycle out of sync. In the two stories of A Hanging by George Orwell and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,…

The poor has always been on the bitter end of society. They always needed someone to stand up for them and be able to empower them. Jonathan Swift’s purpose in his essay “A Modest Proposal” was to draw attention to the impoverished population of Ireland…

In 1993 the Sierra Leonean civil war has been raging for two years and death is spreading across the nation as the Revolutionary United Front(RUF) wages war against the government of Sierra Leone. In the novel A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier…

Common Cents Money is the root of all evil. Though indulging in lavish new clothing and experiences can bring momentary joy, money often causes more problems than it solves. “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “A Pair of Silk Stockings” by Kate Chopin are…

A Hanging How we define life and our humanity greatly comes from our ability to choose right from wrong. We live in a society where death is the most common consequence of committing a terrible crime. Many societies believe that two wrongs do not make…

A Hanging George Orwell I really liked reading “a hanging” by George Orwell. I thought that he provided us a very accurate view of the world in general. We all wish that life could be full of roses and pure happiness. But it’s just not….

The Enhancement of Foreshadowing “The sky poured as if weeping for lost loved ones.” Reading this sentence brings death to mind. This sort of sentence is used as foreshadowing, which is a literary device used in a majority of stories. The stories “A Good Man…

A Unique Combination The overall mood of a story influences the feeling of the audience after they have read it. If the story has a positive mood, complemented by a comfortable setting and happy relationships between the characters, the audience will be left feeling good….

Flannery O’Connor’s most esteemed short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, ends conveniently coincidentally as well as gruesomely graphic. The book ends with a painfully lengthy climax, leaving readers with no definite resolution: The illusive and infamous “Misfit” (whose criminal presence has been…

In the play, A Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibesen, the interaction of characters exposes the ideas such as women in society for the audience to think about. For example, from the interaction between Nora and her husband, Torvald, we see that the position of…

Throughout the realm of literature, detail is most prominent in written works such as play script, novels, etc. Often times, much of the intricacy of written language vanishes when converting text into a film. In Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, extreme detail showcases aspects…

Alejandro Contreras English 126 Ephron, Amy.A Cup of Tea. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. A Cup Of Tea by Amy Ephron is a tragic romance.this story takes place in new York City. The Time Period of this story is between 1917 and 1918. this is…

“A Farewell to Arms”, by Ernest Hemingway, is a tragic love story that takes place during World War 1, in Italy. Henry was an American ambulance driver in the Italian army. During his service, Henry faced many horrific events that affected his views on the…

A Farewell to Arms One of the greatest love stories of all time, A Farewell to Arms (1957), a film adaptation of the book by Ernest Hemingway, recounts the romance between an American ambulance driver, Frederick Henry, and a British nurse, Catherine Barkley, amidst the…

Human Instincts As humans, we are biologically conceived with natural human instincts. Human instincts allow us to survive as hunter-gatherers in a pre-civilized or underdeveloped world. The purpose of human instincts is to protect us against threatening people, places, or things. The basic human instincts…

A Farewell to Arms There are many uses of symbolism in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Most of the symbolism is hidden so that the reader must fully comprehend the novel before realizing and understanding the symbolism. Could ‘darkness’ be one of the symbolism…

“Who She Wants to Be” In the end of the “A Doll’s House”, Nora realizes that her father and husband has been controlling her all her life. A quote from a poem that I have read before really reminded me of the situation Nora is…

“No Day in all my Life had ever been as Cruel as this one” Write about the first time Cassie is allowed to go to the market in Strawberry. What makes the day so cruel? From the very outset, Cassies trip was filled with disappointment,…

Carpe Diem Focusing on the wellbeing and happiness of others has always been an important part of my life, and a large part of that focus includes trying to find small ways to make another person’s’ day. Since I was a child, I always cared…

Judging a Book By its Cover When meeting or being introduced to an individual for the first time, first impressions, positive or negative are typically made. Even though it is best to refrain from making those immediate judgments until after properly getting to know the…

In The Christmas Carol, Marley’s plan to save Scrooge from eternal torture as a ghost worked due to the fact that he became a kinder person and did more good deeds. The plan, as Marley said, was that Scrooge would be haunted by three ghosts…

A Christmas carol is set in the Victorian era where there was a large divide between the rich and the poor. Dickens uses the allegorical character of ‘Scrooge’ to display the attitudes of the rich and fortunate towards those suffering through poverty and his exaggeration…

A Christmas Carol I went and saw A Christmas Carol at Hale Center Theater in Orem. I really liked the costumes of the show. They were very fitting of the time-period the show was set in. They were wearing old English styling with big hoop…

The 1920’s and 1930’s were a time of great change. Progressive reforms embodied the nation’s growing sense of social responsibility and economic policies led a booming economy to come crashing down. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston portrays this time…

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” US Constitution 2nd Amendment In the United States, guns play a major role in our culture. Guns helped…

The obtaining of power and its leading to corruption is able to be represented in George Orwell’s allegorical novel “Animal Farm” and James McTeigue’s dystopian film “V for Vendetta”. While the obtaining of power may bring corruption, a benevolent leadership does not necessarily mean power…

People in general seem to be drawn to entertainment. Whether it is books, movies, television, or video games, these solutions for boredom seem to consume us. With this in mind, it is not hard to see how someone’s idea of the future might involve a…

Boxer… The Proletariat Communism. What comes to mind when you hear the word, communism? Do you think about malevolent leaders, or do you think about a thriving society? In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx pushed forward his ideas of Communism and discredited the Capitalist system…

He Squeals Propaganda There was a quote by American moral and social philosopher, Eric Hoffer, “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.” In the fiction novella of Animal Farm, George Orwell creates an allegory for the Russian Revolution; The animals…

A Comparison of the Epic Poems “Beowulf” and “Iliad” The epic poems “The Iliad” and “Beowulf” meet certain requirements that make the features that they convey epic. In the impressive poems, the heroic actions that are described determine the fate of different groups of people,…

Converting to Christianity in Beowulf The old English poem Beowulf was written in the late first millennium. During this time period, the majority of Anglo – Saxons were Christians, but they had not been for very long. Prior to the conversion of Christianity, they had…

The Grandeur of Isolation Everyone has friends, some are closer than others. That is the difficulty in life; the human factor of closeness. Some would choose to live their entire lives in isolation rather than become close to others. Why would one partake in this…

How Important Is the Theme of Death in the Novel? Steinbeck explores many different themes in his book but arguably one of the most prominent themes is death. Death is the reason for the numerous tragedies throughout the novel that eventually lead to the death…

Victor Frankenstein and his creature Victor Frankenstein is the main character in the Novel ‘Frankenstein’. This Novel also referred to as ‘The Modern Prometheus’ was written by Mary Shelley and first printed in the year 1818. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein comes out as a…

Emmanuel Goldstein is a fictional person from the “1984” novel made by the Party to control the members of the Party. The idea of Emmanuel Goldstein is similar to the idea of Big brother. As stated in “1984”, Big Brother himself is not real but…

‘’The Yellow Paper’’ and ‘’The Birth Mark’’ The stories ‘’Birth Mark’’ and ‘’Yellow Wallpaper’’ are very similar. In the story ‘’Birth Mark’’ the husband is a scientist who is obsessed with perfection. Most of his science projects have high expectations from him but none of…

A Wilderness As a Classroom Education is usually seen as existing only in a classroom with a teacher or professor and a set lesson plan. However, Into the Wild by Jon Krakaeur showcases how Chris McCandless believed education does not exist solely in a classroom;…

A New Life There have been thousands of inspirational characters who have left their life behind and venture off into the outside world in order to find a purpose or goal in their life. Carl McCunn and John Waterman were examples of a few of…

Traumatic experiences and difficult moments help to define an individual’s resilience and character. These traumatic experiences often occur during one’s adolescence and are part of one’s coming-of-age rite of passage. Whether beneficial or destructive, these significant moments alter lives irreversibly. In particular, most adolescents encounter…

Behind the fire Fahrenheit 451 takes place in future in 24th century where people live in a society where reading is banned and it is illegal to own any type of book. And because the government bans books firmen no longer put out fires they…

Loss of Innocence In a coming of age story, a bildungsroman, a character must go through a loss of innocence which forces them to realize that the world is not the utopia they believe it to be. This previously naive character is changed, positively or…

Another Bad Driver There are no truly functional relationships in The Great Gatsby, partially because none of the pairings provide both parties with what they want but mostly because in every relationship that we see in this book, one or both of the partners is…

The Not-So-Great Gatz Is greatness defined by achievements, or intentions? Is it an ideal that one can only approach and never reach? As Jay Gatsby’s past is gradually revealed in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, it is unveiled to the reader that he “is…

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible was written to show what happens when people fall to mass hysteria, such as the case with witchcraft throughout the entire story. The play’s plot generally revolves around innocent people who are accused of something that they haven’t done, and…

Gatsby close analysis—chapter three Fitzgerald’s incorporation of the explicit details in the beginning of chapter three has many symbolic interpretations behind it. The significance of the detailed passage depicts the representation of the people, and the loss of human individuality in the society and the…

Oppression is a universal struggle that has spanned centuries and it affects a diverse group of individuals. As literature has demonstrated, these people are not always weak women. Men and women of all ages, races, and backgrounds are attempting to cope with this endless struggle….

In Spike Lee’s 1989 classic “Do the Right Thing,” there are several portrayals of racial interactions throughout the movie, given the basis of the existing circumstances like the rising tensions between residents, demographics of the community, today’s heat wave, and other contributing factors like fatherhood…

When one accomplishes something on their own, they are praised much greater than those whom are merely handed it. Individuals who take it upon themselves to make a significant change to better themselves or others, are greatly praised or looked up to. We can label…

In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold Spirit, Jr. was fortunate to have a number of mentors and positive role models that supported him along his journey to maturity, including some of his friends, family members, and friends of family members. Some…

Tragic Character? Sometimes in life we feel that we are at the peak of our greatness. We feel empowered and that nothing can stand in our way, but because of mistakes and circumstances we crumble and fall. This is an example of what happened to…

Informative Essay: Loch Ness Monster Envision yourself, on the peaceful sea, but then you see an odd creatures’ tail. Many people claim the Loch Ness monster is real, and many have actually claimed to have actually seen it. Although some claim it is a waste…

A Destroyed American Fantasy The American Dream consists of an ideal that individuals make a bargain with life in America; so long as an individual works hard, America will present avenues to economic success and social respect. The American Dream represents an idealistic country where…

Introduction Set in 1950s America, a court jury is faced with sending a young man to face the death penalty for murder accused of killing his father. The film starts in a court room with the judge explaining the processes of what must happen to…

Income Inequality Income inequality is a very real issue that is almost impossible to ignore. The sad truth is that many do ignore it despite such jarring factual information, and many who see it just push blame onto others. Some say it’s because those lower…

One Day Angelou’s “story”, Graduation, appeals to pathos and ethos. Pathos appeals to pity or sadness, basically emotion; while ethos appeals to ethics. As Angelou’s “story” starts she expresses and describes the excitement of her graduation with each detail, such as, “[m]y class was wearing…

The writers Schor, Marx, and Streeck all focus on the consumerism of society yet they all have different aspects to what they feel must be emphasized to fully understand the plaguing concept of consumerism in our society. Streeck makes the argument that consumerism is largely…

Cybercrimes refers to criminal activities that are sophisticated and done through the use computers and the internet (Brenner, 2010). Cybercrimes range from activities such as downloading music illegally from the internet to stealing money from online bank accounts. Cybercrimes are totally different from traditional crimes…

Domestic Violence against Men Can Be a Serious Threat Domestic violence against men is no laughing matter nor is it a recent phenomenon. In fact, many are still blinded by the existence of domestic violence against men or husband. Furthermore, the numbers of cases reported…

Mozart, musical manifesto Mozart’s Sonata for Piano No. 16 in C major, K. 545 ‘Sonata semplice’ I. Allegro, and Abendempfindung are two of his somewhat well-known pieces. In Piano Sonata No. 16, the first movement is written in classic sonata form and is in the…

Modernism in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Modernism is the period spanning the commencement of the 20th century to about 1949 (after WWII). Prime traits of modernism include emphases on the stream of consciousness technique, individualism, alienation, unorthodoxy and pessimism. Modernism marks a break with…