The True Horrors "The Prophetic Voice"
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
When Steven King releases a new novel it is bound to be one of the scariest works of literature around. King's books, filled with images of deformed dolls and haunted houses, strike fear in the hearts of his readers. King's writing appeals to our senses, torturing and manipulating them to create...
Religious Skepticism: "Oedipus Tyrannus"
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The ancient heroes and rulers all had many great qualities that allowed them to rise to such as level, but all were aware that the gods could take it all away in an instant. Therefore, these great men prayed and sacrificed to the divinities and feared their power greatly. However, in Sophocles'...
Gentiles and Gnomes: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Apostle Paul
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The letters of Paul are the first written communication following the crucifixion of Christ. Paul's letters at first appear to be more written commands rather than correspondences. The letters of Paul are usually interpreted as laws given by Paul to different peoples concerning the worship of...
"Guilty Bloom: Hallucination Technique Reveals Leopold Bloom's Unconscious in Ulysses"
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
A hallucination typically connotes a bad meaning for the character who admits to having one; either the person is mentally unstable or he experiences a hallucination from the consumption of illicit drugs. However, in James Joyce's novel Ulysses there is a different meaning to the word all...
Irrational Underground Man
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
“I am a sick man” are the opening words to Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella Notes from Underground. For the narrator, the Underground Man is both figuratively and literally sick - his liver hurts but he will not receive treatment from doctors. Indeed, only a ‘sick man' would choose to...
"Physiognomy in The Jungle, The Rise of Silas Lapham, The Marrow of Tradition and The Portrait of a Lady"
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
A red colored complexion signifies a fiery temperament. A yellow or green hue of the skin may hint at sickness. A square jaw means the epitome of masculinity. Authors such as Upton Sinclair, Henry James, Charles W. Chesnutt and William Dean Howells used physiognomy to relay important qualities...
Hamlet
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet meets his demise with acceptance as he has reached a matured, highly introspective level of self-awareness. His state of satisfaction derives from a rigorous course of transformation. Throughout the play, he explores the design of mankind which he believes...
Manipulating God
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
William Faulkner's novel, As I Lay Dying portrays confused characters who attempt to assuage their instabilities by deferring to a higher force. Typically, people look to religion to reconcile haunting ambiguities and fill the voids in their lives. Establishing a secure belief system provides...
"What's Love Got to Do with It"
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
The Beatles echo popular sentiment with their hit tune from the 60's, “Can't buy me love.” The lyrics profess that love holds more value than money or materialistic cravings. Certainly, a romantic relationship can yield substantial benefits to both participants, including companionship,...
The Cunning Edge
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Each individual develops his own vision of the universe. A naïve person looks up to the sky to see the moon and strains to glimpse a shooting star, or perhaps, a distant planet. Euphoric about what appears in the distance, he becomes oblivious to what lies directly in front of him. Spending all...
Reality Blights
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
No matter how hard a person tries, he cannot escape a world exploding with discrimination, violence, and blind hatred. The smell of death permeates the streets as wars rage and the taste of man's inhumanity lingers in the air. An idealistic individual attempts to shield himself from the evil,...
Keeping the faith
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Organized religion epitomizes man's need to give order and meaning to his life. Philosophy represents his effort to rationalize the principles of his faith and conduct. Acceptance of God or an all-powerful supreme being who governs the universe remains the cornerstone of most major religions, but...
To Kill a Mockingbird
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mocking bird," explains Miss Maudie in Harper Lee's...
Dissecting Romeo and Juliet
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
When studying Romeo and Juliet, most critics focus on four main points: Romeo's and Juliet's death scene, the relationship between the lovers, a feminist look at Juliet's character, and the structure of the play as a whole. However, the death scene is the most criticized aspect of the play,...
Toni Morrison's Struggle to Find an Identity
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination Morrison rejects the theory that American literature reflects white male views. She argues that “Africanism”, a term she uses “for the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify”...
Open Me Carefully
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout her life, Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems, many of which are known and cherished throughout the world. Like many other great writers, Dickinson not only showed talent in her poetry but in her other forms of writing as well. Nearly as famous as her poems, many of Dickinson's...
The Rise and Fall of Satan
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
In Book 1 of John Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan's character is borderline glorified as a military hero, despite his juxtaposition to the lord and creator, his nemesis, God. Regardless of this, Satan's essence is evil, sly, and dishonest. Banished from heaven as a result his army's defeat from...
Beneath the Surface: An In-Depth Investigation of the concept of drowning in Stevie Smith's poetry
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In poetry, the fact that something is brought up or referred to is irrelevant. Nothing is definitive or solid in poetry unless the poet absolutely intends for it to be. In Stevie Smith's works, it is difficult to try and understand how she intends for the reader to think. Her short poems and...
Analyzing Life and Death through Ivan and Gerasim
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych tells the story of a man's untimely illness that ultimately leads to his demise. It is a story views one man's analysis and questioning of the way he has lived up until the point where he realizes he will die. “Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and...
T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men: Exploring Self-Realization
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
When reading “The Hollow Men”, by T.S. Eliot, one's immediate response might be to consider it against to context of which it was written. Such context may be purely historical or may revolve around the author's social life. All of these accounts may prove significant in assessing the...
Valedictorian Speech
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
Welcome President Liebergott, the Board of Trustees, honorary degree recipients, faculty, staff, family, friends and the Class of the 2007. It's funny. I tried for days to write this speech. Contrary to popular belief, I don't like to hear myself talk. And what could I say that people would...
Personal statement for Ph.D. candidacy
Sample letter - 2 pages - Literature
Sometimes the dreams of first-grade naivety are the only dreams ever realized. In all probability, I will never read every book ever written. To think of the amount of novels, manuals and reference materials in the Emerson College library is staggering, not to mention the Boston Public Library,...
Rhodes scholarship application essay
Sample letter - 1 pages - Literature
When I was a child, I told myself I would read every book ever written. In the two-floored, two-roomed library of my small New Hampshire town, I thought nothing could stop me from reading the world. Innocent naivety yes, but so much the foundation of who I am and why I find myself writing this...
Cover letter and Resume for a Student Job
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
From the MSPCA website, I learned of various full-time job opportunities in the Boston area. I am interested in a few of these, and I believe I can contribute as much to the organization as the organization will contribute to me. I am particularly interested in the Law Enforcement Department...
Marketing Plan for A Book
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
This is a compilation of prose poetry, which we think will appeal to readers, writers, and students of poetry. Though we did not publish it, the author's first book of poetry, a chapbook, did rather well. It sold over 400 copies through university bookstores, 300 through specialty poetry stores,...
Materialism in Renaissance England as Seen in Utopia and King Lear
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The sixteenth century, which set the stage for the Early Modern Period, was characterized by an influx of humanist ideals to England. The literature from this period takes new stances on issues that were not subjected to such intense scrutiny before. Thomas More's Utopia envisions a world...
Eve in Milton and Lanyer
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Aemilia Lanyer wrote Eve's Apologie in Defense of Women in 1611 as a feminist tract within a larger work, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Although spoken from an unusual view point, that of Pontius Pilate's wife, the piece is principally about Eve of the Biblical creation story. About sixty years...
One Thousand Years of the English Epic
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The epic is arguably the ultimate achievement in literature. Its grand scope and its demands on knowledge and language mastery set it singularly apart from other genres. Authors throughout the history of the written tradition have attempted to master the imposing scale and complexities of an epic...
A Queer Reading of Ginsberg's America
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Famed Beat poet Alan Ginsberg was openly gay, a lifestyle decision largely frowned upon in the society in which the Beat generation grew up. However, such constraining standards were typical of the forces that artists like Ginsberg and his compatriots struggled against. The Beat generation was...
Class in Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Shakespeare may be a poet for the ages, but he was also a man of his times. In this modern era, judging an artist often seems to require asking: how much does he push against the standards of society? But this is a time long removed from Elizabethan England, an era when Puritans ran London and...
