Breaking Through the Trappings of Stereotyped Femininity
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Edna Pontellier is a victim of the mother/whore duality, unable to escape the conditions of her culture that prevent her from being capable of self-actualization, and so walks into the ocean and never comes out again. This is the conclusion to Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, in which she...
The Liminal Period in the Cinderella Fairy Tale
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
In “The Little Glass Slipper”, Cinderella is undergoing what anthropologist Victor Turner, in his theory regarding rites de passage, would regard as a transitional period between being a girl under the protection of her mother and a woman under the protection of a husband. During this...
Alienation in the Butcher Boy
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
In the Butcher Boy, Patrick McCabe paints a picture of the perfectly dysfunctional family in The Bradys, who are shown in stark contrast to the perfectly normal family, the Nugents. From the start, Francie Brady's family was the epitome of unstable. Francie's father was an alcoholic who abused...
Style vs. Substance in The Sea
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The Sea is no doubt, a difficult novel to read. John Banville's language can be quite strenuous, and at some times, enigmatic. No major events or plot points seem to occur in The Sea, that is, externally. There is not much of a linear plot, if any. Almost everything that happens in the main...
The Time Machine and the Plight of the Chinese Immigrant in 19th Century American West
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
The Time Machine, written in 1895, describes the adventures the Time Traveler as he explores the 800 thousandth century and the unknown eons unto the dying of our sun. The bulk of the story occurs in the year 802,701, where the Time Traveler stops and encounters a strange species called the...
Freedom That is Never More Authentic Than When it is Within the Walls of a Prison Cell
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Whether it is read from an historical, psychological, literary, or any other sort of applicable perspective, the reader must admit that Toni Morrison's novel Sula allows itself be read in many different ways. Perhaps that is one of the beauties of the book: people from many different backgrounds...
Darkness and Light in "Heart of Darkness"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The battle between light and darkness is being waged right now, in every corner of the earth. This war has been fought since time began. In every realm of society, opposites counterbalance each other. The balance of powers in the government allows the American people to have a say in the...
The Open Boat
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In the story of “The Open Boat”, Stephen Crane has taken the time to masterfully portray a story that is so very dear to his life. Back in 1897, Crane went through the horrific experience of crashing his boat and being stranded for nearly 30 hours. This experience became so near and...
Reflections on 'A Clockwork Orange'
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
It's a 1st person narrative through Alex's eyes. The first 3-4 pages are used in describing the ‘Korova Milk Bar' and its inhabitants. It sells milk laced with drugs. It appears that he is the leader in a gang. There is a brief description of the members in his gang. He seems to be the...
The Parent-Child Dynamic: Ernest Hemingway Vs Winesburg
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
Ernest Hemingway's first collection of stories, In Our Time, published in 1925, was heavily influenced by his then friend Sherwood Anderson's 1919 collection Winesburg, Ohio. The most notable difference in the times in which the stories are set is Winesburg, Ohio is set before World War I, and...
History, Memory, and Relationships with the Past in James Joyce's Ulysses
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
The past can be a daunting thing. From personal memory to history at large, the past has the power to bury those unable to establish a healthy relationship with it. One can easily become trapped - paralyzed - in the past through guilt, regret, or nostalgia, emotions generated based upon...
Patriarchal Sexuality of the Internalized Document in Corregidora
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The adage “history repeats itself,” like many adages, sometimes seem disingenuous; they are neatly packaged concepts that lack any definitive details that would give one a context to consider them properly. In Corregidora, there is an expansion of this idea of history and repetition....
'Otherness' and the Fact and Fancy Dichotomy in Charles Dickens' Hard Times
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
“Otherness” describes a person engaging in the reflexive act of defining their identity in reference to another person. In this way, Otherness is a definitive means of exploring the relationships between social castes and gender relationships. In Hard Times, these two types of Otherness...
A Byzantine Novel Drosilla And Charikles
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The theme I select to examine in A Byzantine Novel Drosilla And Charikles, is the power of love. Love in the time of Drosilla and Charikles was an entirely different concept. Especially from what we are accustomed to today. Loving someone fifty years ago, isn't even close to how we love a...
Technology in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The technology in our world has been both a beneficial force and a destructive one. On one hand, technology has made our world a much simpler place to live in, and it is hard to imagine the world we live in today without it. Just about everything we do, from shopping for groceries to paying your...
Book Review: The Women of Renaissance Florence by Richard Trexler
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The Women of Renaissance Florence, Power and Dependence in Renaissance Florence is a collection of three essays by Richard Trexler that give the reader insight into the experience of women in Florentine society by examining three major groups of women; nuns, prostitutes, and widows. Trexler is a...
Paralytic People: Paralysis in James Joyce's "A Little Cloud"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Tourists visiting New York City have one major complaint: the rudeness of everyone in the city. The tourists are not entirely to blame, though. The skyscrapers, steam rising from the streets, and the immense amount of concrete would make any non-New Yorker uncomfortable. Observers of New Yorkers...
Book review: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
All throughout time, since man was first given the ability to write, countless novels have been written on almost every subject conceivable. When it comes to literature on history, an infinite number of subtopics become available. Some examples include, war, peace, types of governments,...
Book review: He She It, by Marge Piercy
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In her novel, He She It, Marge Piercy questions ideas of gender and gender roles in a futuristic society. Piercy sets the stage of her story in a temporarily safe haven called Tikva, a Jewish slum where matriarchy holds a subtle but evident power. The story's central character is Shira...
Short Story Review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Readers love the story of the predator and the prey, regardless of where or with whom the sympathy falls. A tale of survival or near-survival keeps us craving more, and if the creator or messenger of that story can secretly divulge wisdom along the way, then both reader and author benefit....
Book Review: Women in the Viking Age
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Women in the Viking Age by Judith Jesch is a detailed and informative publication that discusses women during the Viking Age through the close examination of a vast amount of resources. Judith Jesch is currently teaching at the University of Nottingham, and has extensive experience in a variety...
Know Your Neurosis: An Analysis of Frank Bruno's It's OK to Be Neurotic
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
I picked It's OK to Be Neurotic: Using Your Neuroses to Your Advantage by Frank Bruno from the bottom row on the third book case in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble because the title on the spine was so obnoxiously bold and it was shelved at the wrong end of the alphabet. They say not to...
Father, Forgive Them: A Review of Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
There is a basic purpose to the literature of Holocaust survivors: to bare witness. Many believe they survived to perform such a duty, to fulfill such a debt to those who did not. As witnesses, they record living history, for they record the history of their own lives. But what happens when a...
Alumni Magazines: Content Contention
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Alumni magazines have long been a source of debate among both their producers and receivers. What information should they include, and what is their real purpose? For the institutions that produce them, they are usually considered a way to interest potential donors, and raise awareness of events...
SELF: A Magazine at its Best
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
SELF is a monthly women's fitness and lifestyle magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. Founded in 1979, its mission statement declares that it is “the first-ever magazine of total-well-being, incorporating beauty and health, fitness and nutrition, and happiness and personal style...
Book Affair
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading is a humorous memoir about reading. Sara Nelson, editor, mother, wife, and friend decides to spend a year reading a different novel every week. She admits, in a favorite quote of mine, that she was not always a reader: I wasn't, in...
Review of Sarah B. Pomeroy's Book: Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The study of social history is not a new phenomenon, but some of today's leading historians are shedding some new light on the history of the family. Such is the case with the social history of classical and Hellenistic Greece. Many historians have devoted their time to the issues surrounding the...
Book Report: Wise Blood
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The Flannery O'Connor novel, Wise Blood, is a tragic story set in the declining south. The characters of the novel, the main character, Hazel Motes, in particular, struggle with their religious identity and suffering throughout the course of the plot. What follows here is a report on the book's...
Homoerotic Desire in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
“What if someone wrote a novel about homosexuality and no body [sic] came?” Ed Cohen writes of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (75). Actually, at the time the book was written, the term “homosexuality” was nonexistent. Wilde, himself, became one of the leaders of...
Mother Jones Magazine
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting founder Jeff Cohen once said, “If it's in the New York Times today, it was probably in Mother Jones six months ago” (4). Contrary to what one might believe, the staff at Mother Jones thoroughly enjoy their status as the magazine the media giants get...
