Raising Cordelia: Hope and Despair of Resurrection in King Lear
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Of Shakespeare's many plays, King Lear is certainly one of the most troubling and provoking. In comparison to the comedies and romances, it has a much darker setting and content; but even compared with other tragedies, it seems King Lear is confounded by its lack of a conclusive moral framework....
Nailed to Desks: Symbolism of the Hammer in Moby-Dick
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Herman Melville's iconic novel Moby-Dick contains in its 135 chapters dozens of symbolic images artfully connected and expanded. The power of the imagery lies in how the symbols reappear throughout, like a juggler's balls constantly in the air. These range from lofty literary and Biblical...
Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora (Colin Palmer)
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
There are two main things that are evident in this work. The first is that the concept of diaspora does not only have meaning in the African context, but in other regions as well. The second is that to study a people or a culture, one needs to trace the diasporic movements. About ten thousand...
Arnold Friend
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. On the surface the narrative is fairly generic. The plot follows a 15 year old girl named Connie who is a typical teen - shallow, and self consumed. She spends her days at the mall, listening...
Daddy Dearest
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Your stereotypical, average father trudges in from a long day of work, plunks himself down at the dinner table, inquires about baseball practices and play rehearsals, and retires to bed for the evening news and a moment of peace. This process involves love, commitment, and the ultimate...
The Greatest Human Conflict
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In The Country Husband, John Cheever introduces us to Francis Weed, a passive country man who leads a lackluster life. The story begins with a plane crash—an event that should be traumatizing and life-altering. However, Frances Weed hardly has a reaction to this frightening setting. He is...
Children: Soldiers or Stew?
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In the novel, Moses, Citzen & Me, Delia Jarrett-Macauley conveys the narrator's struggle to understand an ex-child soldier. In order to do so, the narrator, Julia, must forge a relationship with the physically and emotionally elusive, Citizen. But, why whittle such a large topic like child...
Keeping the Masses in Line: Critical Studies of Media, Propaganda and the Powers of Normalization
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
According to author Toby Clark in Art and Propaganda, Saliger's paintings, as well as those of other German artists who adopted similar themes, represent “qualities of Aryan superiority . . . [and this] supposedly superior physical beauty was held to be the ultimate evidence of natural...
Professional Profile: Travel Magazine Art Director This month's writer and designer interviews Jorge Zegarra, art director for Northwest Airlines' World Traveler magazine.
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Jorge Zegarra has been art director for World Traveler since November of 2005. Prior to that, he worked as a graphic designer and then as art director for La Voz magazine. He also worked for two publications of American City Business Journals, giving him a combined total of over four years of...
Life's Not a Maze, It's an Obstacle Course
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Life is full of obstacles - there is no doubt about it. Deciphering why people have certain obstacles and how they can overcome such obstacles is often just as burdening as the obstacles themselves. It is evident everywhere that people are struggling with their obstacles. From books, to...
A Demon in Shakespeare's Hamlet
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
As David Bevington states in his introduction to Hamlet, “A recurring motif in Hamlet is of a seemingly healthy exterior concealing an interior sickness. Mere pretense of virtue . . . ‘will but skin and film the ulcerous place, / Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, / Infects...
What are Literary Agents?
Tutorials/exercises - 6 pages - Literature
The concept of a literary agent is often a mystery to those not intimate with the field of publishing. Their function is obscured, and many writers even are uncertain of their purpose. However, since their inception in the 19th century, they have come to play an integral part of the book...
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...
How the Author Uses Juxtaposition of Scenes to Develop Particular Characters and Themes
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
The authors Andre Malraux and Duong Thu Huong both use the juxtaposition of scenes that are distinctive, but at the same time linked, to provide commentary on a specific theme and to develop certain characters. In both novels, the characters contemplate their suffering and death. The two scenes...
Storm of Steel
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Storm of Steel is a very accurate and interesting memoir about a German soldier who served in World War I, written by Ernst Jünger who is regarded as one of Germany's greatest modern writers, and also as a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I. Jünger was born...
The Power of Irony
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Johann Goethe and John Milton both imbed verbal irony in their character's soliloquies which presents two different points of view between what the character is saying and how the reader interprets it. In Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, the reader sympathizes with Werther's intellectual...
Tom Sawyer as Everyboy, Not Everyman
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, his seminal 1876 novel, has been both lauded and decried by multitudes of readers who almost universally regard Twain in a favorable light. Negative reviews of this work are found most easily among admitted Twain fans—something that seems to stem...
Successful Admission Essay to a Graduate Creative Writing Program
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
I earned my Bachelor of Arts in May 2004 and since then I've wanted only to return to the classroom. I miss the stimulating discussions with peers who share my interests in literature, writing and critical thought. Temple's MA is exciting because it offers the rare program in which literature and...
Marking the body as a form of appropriation and power in Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee and "In the Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee as well as “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka, the marking of or writing on the body as a form of power or appropriation takes place on many levels. In both works, we have the inhumanly cruel military officials of the colonialist power -...
Wife of Solidarity, Wife of Destruction
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Every reader of the Odyssey shares something with the members of the first audience to hear the great tale. Every one has a mother. Also, most people in both groups will either have a wife, or be someone's wife. It is this overwhelming majority to which Homer speaks through one of the themes of...
Vincent Malloy as Vincent Malloy: A New Critical Reading
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
For this reading, it is assumed that there is substantial merit in the ideals described by Cleanth Brooks in his essay, “The Formalist Critics.” The so-called “articles of faith” outlined therein demand that efforts in literary criticism be targeted precisely at the literary...
Indigo Light
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues examines the ways in which people strive to escape from stifling conditions and find a more peaceful home within themselves. Set in the Harlem ghetto, the story depicts the strained relationship between Sonny, a heroin addict and his brother, a teacher. The narrator...
What I Talk About When I Talk About Carver
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Some might insist that Raymond Carver's short stories prove hopelessly post-modern—and that may be. However, his work remains the first that ever pulled me out of the writing into a deep pondering of the reality he creates in junction with the kind of people that compose the society in...
A Fine Balance of Potential and Kinetic Energy Establishes Relationship
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
In Dream Work, Mary Oliver's poetry delivers a balance of potential and kinetic energy. One poem in particular, “Starfish,” demonstrates that establishing clear relationships within a poem lies in regulating both passive and active language. However, before establishing a relationship,...
Choosing Language that Avoids Sentimentality Elicits Emotional Resonance
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Avoiding sentimentality means writing to fight cliché and elicit emotion through originality of language. In Dig Safe, Stuart Dischell presents poetry that resonates emotionally without breeching melodrama. One poem in particular, “Children of the City,” demonstrates that a careful...
Symbolism in 'The Scarlet Letter'
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is bursting with symbolism. And, while they do not place a high value on subtlety, these symbols are very effective vehicles for the story's most prominent themes. Perhaps the most prominent is the conflict between what Hawthorne clearly believes is a...
A Narratological Analysis of Marabou Stork Nightmares
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Marabou Stork Nightmares gains its narratological interest from its use of a strange ANP and a variety of ENPs. On the basic level, the narrator is intradiegetic and homodiegetic, writing with internal focalization throughout the novel. However, there is plenty of innovation in the use of this...
