Literature Essays

The novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, attempts to show the power of the wealthy elite and the misery of the poor working class. It uses elements of setting, characterization, and mood to reveal capitalist domination at its worst. Fitzgerald set the book in two very distinct locations. …

William Blake’sThe Little Black Boy revolves around the theme of slavery and the ideal slave’s mentality. Blake wrote about a black African-American and his experience with slavery. Blake probably expressed his own feelings towards the whites’ racism and suppression acts towards African-Americans through the black boy, which is the speaker …

In “Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby,” Donald Barthelme tries to show how inhumane man can be by telling an absurd story of a man named Colby who, “had gone too far.” (Barthelme, 1973, pg. 19) In the story, Colby’s so-called friends decided that they must hang …

1.Home’s the place we head for in our sleep. 2. Boxcars stumbling north in dreams 3. don’t wait for us. We catch them on the run. 4. The rails, old lacerations that we love, 5. shoot parallel across the face and break 6. just under Turtle Mountains. Riding scars 7. …

Shakespeare makes it quite clear to his audience at the beginning of the play that Iago plays the character of the common criminal, from his opening speech with Roderigo on Iago owing money to Roderigo. When Iago caries out his soliloquy we find out his philosophies on life and as …

Disillusionment is the act of disenchanting, especially to disappoint or embitter by leaving without illusion. Disillusionment, or the death of a dream, is a prominent them in Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams,” and Wolfe’s “The Far and the Near.” In both short stories the main character clearly embodies the theme of disillusionment. …

“The Scarlet Letter” is a beautifully written novel that includes many different literary elements to tie the events together and to draw the reader in. Mainly, the novel is a combination of realism, symbolism, and allegory. The realistic story takes place in colonial America, involving many possible events, in a …

This poem appears to be a dramatic monologue, spoken by the character at a moment when he/she was approaching death. Using key terms within the last stanza, we can infer the speaker is approaching death. Therefore, the tone of the poem should be that of sadness or despair, but as …

Since the two books are from two different genres, it is no surprise that the styles in which they are written differ – Susanna Kaysen’s “Girl, Interrupted” is a collection of memoirs whereas Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” is a novel, though autobiographical to a degree. From a literary point …

Light and dark, kindness and cruelty, realism and fantasy, all of them dichotomies used by Tennessee Williams in A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams uses many dichotomies, clear cut divisions, to illustrate main points. The most prominent dichotomy is the sweet and fragile Blanche opposed to the cruel and savage …