Her need for love makes her kill Homer. He was her last chance for love and her only chance to avoid being alone every night for the rest of her life. Dead in her bed was one way she knew she could have him forever. Death keeps Emily's dream alive. Continue Reading...
The skunks are a potent contrast between the gentility symbolized by the millionaire's casually auctioned-off yacht, yet like the auctioned boat, they are also a symbol of waste and decay. The skunks' willingness to eat anything is also a contrast w Continue Reading...
Fiction: Four Stories and their Elements A person reads fiction for many reasons. Often times, as Richard Wright suggests, one chooses to escape one's life, and discover new realities and states of being. Fiction is perhaps the most powerful mediu Continue Reading...
Emily Grierson and Ambrose Bierce In works of fiction, traditionally the sympathetic characters do actions that are heroic and those that are supposed to be unsympathetic perform actions that are decidedly less so. Given that humans are very judgmen Continue Reading...
Gender Relations in Frankenstein In tracing the historical etymology of the word "monster," the Oxford English Dictionary offers a primary definition of something to be stared at or marveled over (from the same root as "demonstrate") but notes the s Continue Reading...
The message stays with us because the music and lyrics are memorable. Precious provides images that we can carry in our minds. Unlike text, where we must use our imagination to create pictures of characters and scenes, film does that for us. Anyone Continue Reading...
Bronte and Rhys An Extended Conversation Most conversations we hold in person, sitting next to another as we travel on a train to an unknown or familiar destination, or as we enjoy a coffee break at work, or wait at a busy corner for the light to t Continue Reading...
She tried to encourage her sister Margot, who was so dear to her. When Anne felt discouraged, she turned to her diary, a place where she could be totally free. Anne Frank's spirit and her gift for writing call to mind a modern hero, a boy named Mat Continue Reading...
While Poe relates these as true stories, as opposed to the works of his own imagination, one can't but read them also as the fantastical longing of husband wanting to deny death's ability to separate him from his beloved wife. After Virginia died, Continue Reading...
Jews in "Ivanhoe" Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe makes Jews central to the plot, but it is not an anti-Semitic book. Despite the inclusion of some traditional stereotypes which -- given the largely "antiquarian" nature of Scott's interests (to re Continue Reading...
Future: Prediction's in Huxley's Brave New World Aldus Huxley's famous dystopian novel, Brave New World, was written over 75 years ago, yet is because it's some of it's predictions about future society are seen to be amazingly prophetic. This is ce Continue Reading...
King's The Man In The Black Suit The modern concept of self, and the human trait of self-awareness, have been a part of humanity since recorded history -- as has the notion of good and evil, although clearly on a sliding scale. However, it was not u Continue Reading...
In Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," the setting is of a very different nature, but also concerns life, death, and the irony that often accompanies the interaction between the two. The main character and first-person narrator, Montresor, leads Fortu Continue Reading...
The prize is not awarded every year, since 1901 there have been 19 years in which it was determined that no candidate fit the criteria. However, in 1986 Wiesel received the prize because of his continual work towards reminding humanity that violence Continue Reading...
The audience has the feeling that O'Brian is presenting them with significant and personal stories from his life. This slowly but surely makes readers feel that they too are connected to the war and to the narrator. It sometimes seems that O'Brian Continue Reading...
I can make myself feel again (O'Brien, p. 180). And, through story truth, what the story is able to do for O'Brien, it becomes able also to do for the reader. In "The Lives of the Dead," O'Brien further elaborates on his need for stories universal Continue Reading...
A sound point to be made is the fact that Dr. Jekyll could not have been purely innocent, because he chose to create a drug that would intentionally pull out his evil side. Furthermore, we may all have a darker side, but we don't all go on killing Continue Reading...
(Sharrett Christopher) Joseph Conrad makes it possible for his readers to see how human nature changes when it is presented with the concept of the other. While the European model of civilization had been related to mercy, compassion, and goodwill Continue Reading...
There is a fantasy-like quality to the beginning of Marlow's journey. What creates it? What is the importance of work to man? What does Marlow mean by a surface reality? Marlowe is on a familiar 'type' of folkloric narrative: the archetypal quest Continue Reading...
He then goes to the guillotine in Darnay's placed, disguised as his friend, and acting with the assurance that it is a "far better" thing that he is doing than anything he has ever done before. 2. Political Themes: The Loss of Personal inside the P Continue Reading...
Korolenko tells his tale of a mob massacre of Jews in 1903 with a view of relaying the horror and injustice of the events in question. He writes from the perspective of a journalist recounting the events after having arrived in town some two months Continue Reading...
The meter has a very similar effect, and could very easily make the poem feel like a nursery rhyme if careful attention isn't paid to it during a reading. Many of the poems lines are written in two groups of trochaic tetrameter -- two sets of four Continue Reading...
Kyin is aware of the boundaries that exist but he is determined to overcome them. His ambition to become a member of the European Club corrupts him. His immediate boundary is Flory's friendship with Dr. Veraswami. Veraswami comes across as one of th Continue Reading...
Judith Oster notes that the poem is of such a nature that it represents the real trauma that occurs after a tragic loss. She writes, "Home is only suffocating when the marriage is unhappy" (Oster 300) and that its subject matter is too dramatic and Continue Reading...
Alice was talking as rapidly as ever, but what caught my attention was that, for the first time, Jasper was not in the room. I looked at the clock -- it was five-thirty in the morning. (p. 258) In the passage above, the narration is focalized from Continue Reading...
A deep and horrifying malaise hangs over the images described here. To be sure, it seems that there is something more than just the changing of the seasons which affects the speaker and which afflicts his perspective so dramatically. He tells that " Continue Reading...
What is interesting is that Wind appears to believe that he is acting in an ethical manner by informing Pnin of their plot, rather than surprising him with it when they reach America. Wind also seems to think that he is being generous and ethical by Continue Reading...
Both men suffer, and both men have to continue living with that suffering, while losing the people they care about the most. That tragedy is even more apparent in Dove's work, with the misunderstanding about Augustus and what he managed to do in the Continue Reading...
According to Dougherty, it is generally accepted that death is the "indefinite object" (Dougherty) of "The Fall of the House of Usher" but if we take a moment to read the poem that rests in the text, we might discover "evidence of a more culturally Continue Reading...
" For Pound, the Image should be central to the poem; this is the "thing" that needs to be dealt with solely and directly, without any extraneous words, in musical meter. Pounds definition of an image is "that which presents an intellectual and emot Continue Reading...
As a girl, she had money and some of the good things it brings; such as education and breeding." There is a hint of jealousy and even more palpable contempt written between the lines of this passage, especially with the author's inclusion of the wor Continue Reading...
What makes the Man Who Went to Chicago an especially effective culminating story for Eight Men is the way in which it transforms these motifs to generate new and strikingly affirmative meanings" (155). This transformation relates to the manner in wh Continue Reading...
You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was" (92). This statement is significant because it reveals Montresor's sense of revenge as well as another motive for his actions - his health. It would seem that Montresor blames Continue Reading...
The creature wants to connect with people and form relationships but the people he wants to connect with are the very ones that drive him away. He becomes endeared to the De Lacey family even before he knows who they are. He looks at them with wonde Continue Reading...
Here the man understands his fate and realizes that he will have a difficult time trying to convince others not to follow in his path. Not all is lost, however. Victor does influence someone in a positive way before he leaves this earth and that pe Continue Reading...
War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead" (O'Brien 86-87). It is interesting that Briony includes a large section of World War II in her novel, tying these two works together in many ways. Briony is writing to assua Continue Reading...
This suggests that Polo feels an obligation to tell his readers, with whom he shares a common sympathy and culture, about the strangeness and wonders of the Orient, prioritizing the strange above the ordinary. Also it implies that these tales seem s Continue Reading...
The narrator of "Amontillado" uses wine to lure Fortunato into the recesses of the city, where the latter meets his slow and agonizing end. As such, both narrators clearly state their tormentor's favorite things, which would be used towards their de Continue Reading...
He makes the reader aware of these great changes by showing the wild backcountry, how the natives live, and how they are reacting to the Belgians in their midst. The backcountry Marlow travels through is sinister, and the natives become more siniste Continue Reading...
She dislikes the way that members of the church use the name God to enforce their own temporal values and thoughts of sin. Although Dickinson believed: "This World is not Conclusion," she added the caution that "Philosophy" and "Sagacity, must go" t Continue Reading...
