Literature Essays

American Literature’s and undoubtedly playwright Tennessee Williams’ most revered work, A streetcar named desire is a story that depicts pathos and human fixation to do with sex, desire, money, class consciousness, and struggle, deceit and fallacy, relationships, beliefs, and modernism. In New Orleans, lust and casual sex came relief in times of stress.

The author states that both of the epic poems pertain directly to live during the respective centuries in which they were written. Because of this, both use imagery, folklore, and artifacts that were common or revered at the time of writing. While Beowulf brings a great deal of Norse folklore and traditional characters into the story.

One of the widely debated issues about the Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the portrayal of the character of Hamlet who is widely regarded as its tragic hero. However, an analysis shows that in contrast to the prevailing belief that Hamlet is a hero, he is a murderer who killed his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his former lover Ophelia, and Polonius.

The conclusion states that the essay “On arm wrestling with my father” is a well-written tribute to the author’s love for his father, along with all the trials and tribulations that came with it. It is a warm retrospective that enjoins us somehow to all look back our relationships with our fathers, and to appreciate the love and care that was bestowed upon us long ago, unsaid or not.

Raymund Paudes uses the term Chicano to refer to people of Mexican ancestry who have resided permanently in the United States for a prolonged period. Chicanos can be native born citizens or Mexican born immigrants who have adapted to life in the US.

The author states that the setting is a Duke preparing to meet a new crop of young women to take the place of his deceased wife and he is discussing her portrait with what appears to be a marriage broker. In discussing the color in his painted wife’s cheeks, he states “She had A heart---how shall I say?---too soon made glad, Too easily impressed;”.

This discussion talks that by analyzing the similarities and differences present in Wilde’s and Shaw’s mindsets, one can gain a better appreciation of how immensely complex elitism is in general, both in what causes it and how it can be eradicated. Both "Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime" and "Pygmalion" purport the idea those on the higher end of the class hierarchy.

The author states that the daughter of a noble family of Iran, Satrapi lived a comfortable life in Iran. In 1984, in her early teens, she is forced to flee Iran and study in a school in Austria. She feels like an outsider among her classmates at school but struggles to acquire a sense of belonging.

Does it matter that parts of the testimonio of Rigoberta Menchu are not true? This question has to be answered from a certain point of view. From the point of view of an outsider looking into the social injustices and atrocities that occurred during the time being recounted, this author’s position is that it does not matter. 

The paper gives a review on "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Elliot and explores modernism through it. Modernism and the development of a city culture brought with it feelings of losing one's self, and many writers began to question the previous ideas of a society and how to function within it.

Objective actuality does not exist in As I Lay Dying; we have merely the highly subjective interior monologues of 15 different narrators. Darl, who comes into view early as the novel's vital narrator, is expressive but considered strange by his family and neighbors. He finishes up being put into an asylum, with his older brother Cash mulling over the definition of "insane."

But why Nowhere is it intimated that Oroonoko has any European parentage. It is therefore very important to discern the reason why Behn distinguished Oroonoko from his fellow Africans. Without fully grasping why Behn attaches such European characteristics to her hero the careless reader runs the risk of being left with the impression that the whole story is but a racist endeavor to assign to an African man attributes that inevitably raise the specter of assessing superior masculine looks from a Western point of view.

The author states that “The Cold Mountain” is a metaphor for the poet himself. It symbolizes a particular way of life. At one level the cold mountain seems to be a retreat or refuge at certain other times it becomes an unattainable goal. Here the poet is trying to lend an aura of mystery or mysticism to the cold mountain.

The Victorian era is presented in Bram Stoker’s Dracula as consisting mostly of the middle and upper class.  This is the image of the morally upright period presented in literature and film that deals with London of the time, but Stoker’s prose also indicates the existence of the real dark foundation upon which the industrial revolution was built.

Morrison's dramatization of tradition's unperceived barriers to self-discovery reflects her belief in the need for experimenting with life, of breaking rules, not simply out of boredom or curiosity but because there is no other way to explore possibilities. Sula discovers the terror and thrill of the free-fall into life through her own creative capacity for invention.

Looking east it doesn’t seem any change since 1620. The author of the book Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick describes the American history covered in mythology and romantic fantasy and calls it as a restorative myth of national origins. The Mayflower, Plymouth Rock was the first Thanksgiving that tells about the Pilgrim settlement of New England.

The author states that Don Quixote and Toy Story, both, present accounts of prominent, thrill-seeking gentlemen exposed to two different cultures. Don Quixote, or Alonso Quijano, is a man from La Mancha, Spain who immerses his thoughts on stories of chivalry, knights and their weaponry and ladies.

Although T.S. Eliot is widely known for his literary works as his famous poems Pufrock and Other Observations (1917), The Waste Land (1922) or Four Quartets (1935-1942) and his famous plays such as Murder in the Cathedral (1927) or The Rock (1927); he is also considered one of the finest literary critics of the twentieth century[1].    

Shakespeare's hero became the burning spokesman of those new sights brought by the Renaissance when the advanced minds of mankind aspired to restore not only the loss for the millennium of Middle Ages understanding of ancient world art but also the trust of the person to own forces without hopes on favor and help of heaven.

The earliest dramatic representation in England is believed to have been the performance of a Latin play in honor of St. Katherine in 1110. Drama originated from the rich symbolic ceremonial of the Church. It was the work of priests who used it as a means of conveying the truths of their religion to the illiterate masses.

He felt a gun would give him an opportunity to show them that he was a man, and should be treated and respected like one. Later on after obtaining his prized gun, his frame of mind changes to excitement as he walks to work for his boss, Jim Hawkins and his mule Jenny, he anticipates firing the gun for the first time.

Thoreau’s value of self-sufficiency, oneness with nature, and virtue are not just implied through his writing as the key characteristics inherent in the ideal American male, but they are directly referred throughout the entire body of his work. Thoreau doesn’t just hard-fought characteristics seem appealing, but he makes the tedious struggle of achieving them appealing as well. 

They help the reader to understand that such love cannot be divorced from the physical, which some may consider as mere lust.  Physical and psychological are intertwined in the final consummation of passionate love, or what individuals may perceive such love to be.  Byron and Dacre have, in their different ways, exposed the different facets of this enigmatic emotion, this love, whatever it may be.     

If they could live and see what war is really like, they wouldn't encourage the young men to go. In the first stanza, the author describes the infernal situation of the soldiers. He describes them as "drunk with fatigue", they "marched asleep". They were deaf from the noise of the shells passing though the air.

The author states that imaginative is that it makes the reader think that there is more to this than an ordinary narration of stages. This sense of imagination is further emphasized in that the language used is in the past tense. It is being recounted from the past. Is the persona narrating her own funeral?

The author states that the poem, in the first stanza, talks about the beauty of Romance. Here, the poet portrays Romance as a bird, ‘paroquet’. The poet depicts this bird as one that is in complete harmony with nature. The varied manifestations of nature provide refuge to this bird and the bird, in turn, lives in the midst of Nature.

The author states that Virgil had been a Roman poet famous for his creation a legendary initiation of the Roman Empire through ‘The Aeneid’, his well-known epic. Dante takes him as his hero to support the value of ‘Justice’ and ‘Reason’ without any strict religious application and this is the main role of Virgil in the comedy.

The rhythmic flow of this poem mimics the human penchant for denial, stemming from intellectualizing a threat to one's personal equanimity, until the very last strand of control gives way to truth. Overall, form and content merge naturally in this poem - embodying three elements which make for good poetry: structure, rhythm and voice/speaker.

Pip’s journey is thus a highly ‘individual’ journey and is a tale of alienation. It is a journey where Pip goes through a diverse range of experiences that continually challenge his understanding of class, family, and individuals at large to finally come to a better understanding of himself. Being a bildungsroman, this journey towards self-realization is quite expected and in fact, commonplace.

The author states that the book is read by the individuals of this era may not be understood by them if they do not get the concept of the mid 19th century. Ellison was an individual of a black ethnicity who lived in America and had to pass different phases of life. He had to go through different instances in life in the states.

The author states that the tormentor is depicted as using all his or her whiles to cut the persona down to size as in using the eyes to stare and send hurtful messages. The persona appears to have a shameful as well as painful distant past as in “Out of the huts of history's shame I rise,” and “Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise.”

The trial focuses attention on the identity motif and enlarges it to expound on the uniqueness of the individual. Palmistry is one device that Twain uses to expose a person’s identity (83-84). Fingerprints are used in a similar way but delve deeper into the identity issue by representing one’s uniqueness.

The author states that Shakespeare conveys the message that the comedy is not on the comical character of Bottom but the jokes are on the category of people that Bottom represents. Nick Bottom has a name that is a pun. However, he is a serious comical character. One definition of a ‘bottom’ is the core which is used to wind the weaver’s skein of thread.

I chose the Green Knight as being the best and truest knight. In the epic poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the author uses the character, Sir Gawain, to illustrate the heroic ideals of chivalry, loyalty, courteousness and honesty in fourteenth century England. In the poem, Gawain is the epitome of virtue and all that is good.

The American Dream is a mere pretention. Miller exemplifies this in the persona of Willy Loman, a salesman. Miller grew in the environment of trade and marketing. He knew the life of a salesman for his father used to own a clothing company and dealt with a few salesmen.

Oscar Wilde was a man of many talents; he was a very prominent playwright and in addition to this he was also a very popular poet, author, and short story writer. He was Irish and he was born in Dublin which also happens to be the capital of Ireland. His name is conspicuous when the Victorian Era is talked about; he was a cynosure and hogged all the limelight in the Victorian Era.

The author states that in the world of the supernatural, frogs can turn into princes at the touch of the beautiful princess, and princesses can be awakened by the kiss of a heroic prince. The domain of the supernatural, then, is the realm of the fairy tale, of fantasy literature in which the author's creative imagination knows no ground rules.

The author states that the poem continues in this description in a regular rhythm. The description in this poem, on the syntactic level, ends in a sudden, sparsely described the tragedy of Richard Cory’s suicide, but in the same rhyme form. The rhythm of the stanzas is not at all foretelling of what is to come in the last stanza.

Apart from being a legend in his own lifetime, William Shakespeare remains one of the most influential writers for centuries to come. Even though he might have been writing four hundred years ago, there is still a lot of breakthroughs that Shakespeare made in terms of literary competence, which are a benchmark for modern writers as well.

The author states that at the beginning of the narration the readers are misguided to believe that Mrs. Mallard “was afflicted with a heart trouble”. Within the context “heart trouble” has a double meaning. We may take the literal meaning which is that indeed Mrs. Mallard is suffering from heart disease.

The author states that while Jim is running away from the shackles of a cruel political ideology that alienates him from any human rights and makes him a slave who can be bought and sold on the will of his owner. Huck has his daily freedoms denied to him by the well-meaning but suffocating Mrs. Watson.

The author states that throughout the novel, the one question that Hawthorne consistently raised was that of sin. Who is a sinner? Who has the right to judge him? On what basis, if any, can a person be branded by his fellow human beings? This essay endeavors to decide who the greatest sinner in the novel is.

10.- The cultural constitution of man is the one factor that can be changed, not the biological, and it greatly determines the relationship between the individual and society, so human beings are not condemned to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of fate.

Many fictional characters have had an influence on my life, but there has been one in particular that stands out. It would be difficult if not ridiculous to say that I have patterned my way of life on this character; in fact, I think it would be disturbing to find that anyone had patterned their way of life on this character.

When the mass media shows images of American heritage and ancestry, the African-American images are predictable:Martin Luther King,Jr. will make an appearance;possibly Booker T. Washington,and W.E.B. DuBois as well.However, many of the iconic images - the Pilgrim, the Minuteman, and Uncle Sam -- are emphatically white.

Besides, the king of Scotland, Duncan, the most noble and benevolent ruler whom Macbeth murders, and the three witches, who appear in the very first act of the play with supernatural powers coupled with mischief and malice, and whose predictions sow seeds of ambition and self-doubt in Macbeth that propel him towards committing the heinous crime.

The author states that the external conflict exists at various levels as to the conflict between the aspirations of the teachers and the Principal’s shrewdness, the conflict between the teachers enhanced by their desire to seek favors from the officials, the conflict between the perceptions of Mr. Sawit and Miss Noel as to teaching and education.

People dream of having a perfect world, an ideal society, different from the present world that we have right now. Because of the many conflicts and issues that the existing world is experiencing, people dream of a perfect society with no sadness, disappointment, and evil. With this thinking, Voltaire and More presented their own perception of an ideal society through their works.

The fact that the majority is invariably wrong on any point distinguished by the slightest element of doubt or controversy should not really surprise the discerning. Anyone who takes for granted the premise that on such points the majority is always right must realize that he has entered the garden path of destruction.

This essay examines the poems “A Tree Within,” “Before the Beginning,” and “ A Song Out of Tune” that show a progression from the perception of an individual and its desire of a companion to a contemplation and appreciation of the other’s existence to the transient nature of time, memory, and relationships.