A write up on Romeo and Juliet
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is the story of two young teenagers infatuated with each other, but their love is forbidden by their respected families. Romeo, a Montague, and Juliet, a Capulet, must hide their relationship from everyone, for word of their being together would cause havoc...
Lord of the Flies: Leadership and its consequences
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
While there is vast disagreement over what exactly defines leadership, most agree that it is a response to societal needs. Ultimately, leaders provide consistent assurance and protection from external as well as internal threats. In view of that, the concept purely results from the...
Filicide in Euripides' Bacchae and Toni Morrison's Beloved
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
The murder of a child, under any circumstance, is an overwhelming and catastrophic incident for any parent. However, when the parent becomes the murderer, it is only normal to question the underlying motives. Simply labeling a parent “crazy” creates no defense against future iniquity...
Structure of the parable
Thesis - 1 pages - Literature
What is the structure of the parable? Someone who is familiar with the bible would be able to tell you that they are allegorical stories in which each part of the parable signifies something. This is not always true. The parable is not an illustration of Jesus' message. The parable is the...
Book review: "The Death of Adam" by Marilynne Robinson
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
Marilynne Robinson's The Death of Adam is an essay collection by the author of the acclaimed novel Giliad. The essays in the book fall into two main categories, as Robinson describes in the preface. Some of them are dedicated to pointing out foolishness and ugliness where modern thought...
Emily Dickinson
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
The poetess is the most fantastic of implausibilities. She is a bizarre stray onto the wrong pedestal. Emily Dickinson, in the lonely ranks of poetry, has this particular distinction. Only Sappho, Emily Bronte and Elizabeth Browning keep her company in the otherwise fraternal pantheon. One can,...
John Donne and the Baroque
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
The monstrous beauty of the 17th century, all its aspiring whorls and lopsided rhetoric, its weird configurations and ghastly echoes, and the vast empty spaces evoked by its obsessive detail—all this is apotheosized in the Anglican priest, John Donne. In poetry and person, he embodies the...
Dealin' some justice: Wargrave style
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Every good mystery has suspense, deception, and plot twists. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is no different. Published in 1939, the book has sold well even today. The book features high suspense with cold-blooded murders and a mystery killer. All the characters and even the reader...
Gesundheit: On Chiasmus
Thesis - 1 pages - Literature
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” It just so happens that one of the most immortal phrases of one of the most immortal political speeches in history is a chiasmus. Coincidence? Indeed not. Jack knew what he was doing. Chiasmus, which...
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Set in the idyllic landscape of far-off Illyria, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night presents a tale of mischief and merriment, marriage and masquerade. It's the stuff great plays are made of: someone dressing in drag, someone donning yellow stockings, blatant homoerotic tendencies flying every which...
Suffraging Shakespeare
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Set in the idyllic landscape of far-off Illyria, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night presents a tale of mischief and merriment, marriage and masquerade. It's the stuff great plays are made of: someone dressing in drag, someone donning yellow stockings, blatant homoerotic tendencies flying every which...
A convenient truth
Thesis - 1 pages - Literature
McFate is the term coined ironically by Humbert to address the role of coincidence in his life. McFate; an interesting classification when one considers that Lolita was written before the era of fast food commercialization, and yet the nickname still has the same dilutive effect and connotations...
Struggle for freedom and sanity in one flew over the cuckoo's nest
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
The struggle for freedom and sanity in society is a constant one. Societal leaders relentlessly place standards and requirements on people, and this produces a detrimental effect in many cases. The unavoidable contradiction between the interest of the whole and the cause of the individual...
Revolt against blandness: Language, sexuality and idealism in The Catcher in the Rye
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published in the early 1950's, a time of refinement and standardized ways of living. Salinger experienced firsthand the terrors of World War II, as well as life in America during an uncertain time. Salinger's early influences at school and in...
Water vs. fire
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Life is a constant struggle with those around us. In Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, this struggle is the constant desire to overcome the opponent. Despite similarities, two characters in Moby-Dick showcase this constant desire to defeat one another. The wily Captain Ahab and mysterious white...
Irrelevant cynicism
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
In John Gardner's Grendel, the Dragon's most important character trait is his complete and limitless knowledge of the past, present, and future, producing his biting and relentless sarcasm and his ability to understand the complete and utter irrelevance of the daily exploits of Grendel and...
The warmth in life: (Despite the frost)
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
It is from the ancient Greeks and the Miltonic era that romantic poets have learned to so casually reject their profound place in society. They claim often to be some small part of an awesome whole; the vastness of earth, its circularity (life cycle), the infinitudes of time all decreasing the...
Homeless Mothers: Book review and topic discussion
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Homeless Mothers: Face to Face with Women and Poverty by Deborah R. Connolly (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2000) is an ethnography based on participant observation and extensive interviews and written for the general public. Its main subjects are homeless mothers and their...
Physical deterioration of Beckett Characters
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
As a playwright, Samuel Beckett wrote unconventional plays that tested the boundaries of theater. His stories are often perplexing upon first glance, and many employ devices not often seen by audiences, including disembodied voices, the lack of a full physical body throughout the play, and...
The appeal of Toru
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
The main character of Norwegian Wood is Toru Watanabe. As the central figure in the novel, he meets and interacts with many other characters in the book. He finds himself in a position where, at least in his own opinion, there are a lot of characters that are drawn to him for one reason or...
Baudrillard on image: Illusion
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Our modern society is obsessed with the image in many different ways. The more our technology has progressed, the more we have found ways in which to create images in ways that are indiscernible from reality. Special effects in movies are defining the way that we view cinema, and televisions...
The ancient history and literature of England
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
The Romans, following their usual policy, had destroyed all jealousies among the British tribes, but, at the same time, had destroyed their power of self-defense. When the last Roman garrison was withdrawn in 410, Britain was like a derelict ship. The “Picts” and the “Scots”...
Famous women poets: Emily Dickinson
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
As a byproduct of the sheer amount of Emily Dickinson poetry that has been recovered, readers have been given a unique slant into the progression of her innermost, clandestine perspectives. Over time topics have been revisited, and perspectives rewritten by her lush poems, brimmed with new...
The changing English language
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Over the past 700 years or so, English sentences have shrunk from around 70 words per sentence in circa 1380 to around 20 words in a typical general-internet book today. An analysis of a work each from the respective periods indicates that such change in the linguistic features of the language...
White noise
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Traditional nature writers often describe the benefit man can derive from interacting with nature. For example, in Nature , Ralph Waldo Emerson describes “in the presence of nature a wild delight runs through man, in spite of real sorrows” (Emerson 38). Furthermore, he purports that...
Colonialism in Things fall apart
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Colonialism is the enforcement of political, cultural, economic, and military troops over the weak nations in order to exploit them; it is the method employed to spread capitalism and its values. When Britain embraced Capitalism, it started to colonize nations so as to secure its material...
Character analysis: Okonkwo
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Okonkwo is the main character of the book “Things Fall Apart,” by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. This character is a hero to his village, a clansman, warrior, farmer and family man. However, no one is ever perfect. As Aristotle said, a tragic hero is defined by a noble or heroic person...
An Upheaval by Anton Chekhov
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
“An Upheaval” by Anton Chekhov is a story about a young girl, Mashenka Pavletsky, who works as a governess for an upper-class household. Mashenka, who once felt herself superior to the lady of the house, has had her room searched because her boss, Fedosya Vassilyevna Kushkin, had lost a...
Children's stories: Basic propaganda
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
“No; it is never worth while to do wrong. Little boys who read this story, consider which you would have rather been- the honest boy, or the thief?” So read the very last lines of The Orange-Man; or The Honest Boy and the Thief. This tale clearly espouses a moral message, as the story...
The magician's nephew: Perception shaped by the imagination
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
C. S. Lewis wrote seven stories that made up The Chronicles of Narnia. All of the seven stories have characteristics that pertain to “perception shaped by the imagination”, a subheading of Colin Duriez's A Field Guide to Narnia. Of the seven stories I am going to focus on The Magician's...
