The Underrated Backstory: Backstory as it 'Effects Our Nig' and 'Washington Square'
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The information provided in a backstory is often integral to the development of characters and plot within a narrative. In both 'Our Nig' and 'Washington Square', an account of the events prior to those of the central plot provide necessary context for a clear and cohesive tale....
Women in Ancient Societies
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
The roles and treatment of women in ancient societies varied greatly. Depending on which society is observed, one would have witnessed many different rules for the female population. Some societies were cruel and others were much more lenient and fair. Women in ancient societies sometimes had...
A Close Reading of "Trifles"
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
When reading any work of literature, one can miss many of the work's underlying aspects simply by not reading it carefully enough. A thorough and close reading of a work should yield much more satisfying results—the reader should understand themes and ideas that were important to the...
Parent/Child relations in American Literature
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout American Literature, one can notice many writings focus on either mother/daughter relationships or father/son relationships. These relationships are described in various ways, but one very common way involves parental love towards sometimes unappreciative children. This parental love...
Mission: Character analysis of Raskolnikov
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Should the character of Raskolnikov be considered a madman or a mentally disturbed person? Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov displays many symptoms that can be considered crazy. On the other hand, there are several mental defects that fit with Raskolnikov's behavior. Analyzing Raskolnikov...
The Gardens of Oxbridge and Fernham in the first chapter of 'A Room of One's Own'
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
This paper analyzes the first chapter of 'A Room of One's Own', and specifically the gardens of Oxbridge and Fernham. Virginia Woolf uses these two gardens to support her comparison between the status of men 'and women. In effect, they symbolize order versus chaos, rigidity versus...
Willful Monsters: Differences in attraction to Short Story Writing
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
As storytellers, Kelly Link and Aimee Bender each bring a distinctive sense of punch and personality to their writing. Both tackling short stories, they are able to create unique worlds within a few pages that draw in their readers and deliver fresh perspectives through the strangest of stories....
The Destruction of Responsibility: Cromwell vs. Charles II
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
With England left as a leaderless country following the trial and beheading of King Charles I, the country was eagerly searching for a resolution to its problems. Oliver Cromwell emerged as England's leader from the Revolution and strove to have a close, relatable relationship with the English...
Oscar Wilde & the Unwritten Melodrama
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Victorian melodrama not only served as a literary genre, but it was used to define and reflect on the values of society. Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan takes the expectation of contemporary melodrama, as defined by Peter Brooks. Though the play is based on melodrama and, at times, overly...
'Night' at the Core of Elie Wiesel
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Elie Wiesel is an internationally renowned writer and Holocaust survivor. His expansive collection of work is all derived from his first book, which is called 'Night'. It is the foundation for all of Wiesel's works and shared ideas. His ideas, which centralize around a bluntly honest look...
Night: An open minded perception
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
Elie Wiesel is a Jewish American author and Holocaust survivor. Wiesel's first book, 'Night', is an account of his experience in the concentration camp Auschwitz. This personal and vivid account launches a stream of consciousness, enlightening the reader to a new perception of various...
Dickinson's 'Meditation on the Future'
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
The belief in any sort of prophecy is contingent on the idea that the human psyche holds the potential to, at any degree, know the future. 'This World is not Conclusion', a poem by Emily Dickinson, promotes the impermanence of our state of being. Rather than predicting a specific future,...
'The Cult of True Womanhood Disassembled' by Kate Chopin and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: A review
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Through the oppressive times when women were meant to be no more than homemakers and pawns to their bread-winning men, the 'Cult of True Womanhood' symbolized everything that the females of America were supposed to be. It stated that they must be pure in mind, body, heart, and soul; for a...
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Book review
Essay - 8 pages - Literature
In the book 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra', Nietzsche provides the reader with a fictional account of a Persian prophet named Zarathustra. He takes this historical figure and turns him into a libratory prophet for the modern world. Nietzsche argues that Zarathustra is the first individual to...
Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy'
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
In Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy', he addresses a specific problem: how to establish a German nation-state in the modern social and political environment. Nietzsche begins with the question of how to model a state in the modern period that is not liberal, but, at the same time, is not...
Political philosophies of Edmund Burke and Jean Jacques Rousseau
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Jean Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke were great political thinkers with different views on human nature, civil society, government, religion, and the extent of human rights. Rousseau believes that men have inalienable rights and possess the ability to destroy and rebuild the government in...
Self-Love as it connects to the theme of "recognition"
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
There is no concept of more importance to an individual's sense of recognition than the idea of self-love. Self-love helps one to better theorize recognition because it provides necessary contexts, reasoning and often difficulty to measure individuality in the topic of recognition. Self-love...
Differences and Similarities between two Creation Myths
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
As its title suggests, a creation myth is the lavish story that lays the groundwork for the life of an epic figure, as manifest through history. The creation myth commonly establishes a trend that becomes commonplace for the subject throughout his or her life, a trend that is based upon and...
The Aesthetics of Comics - 'Transfiguration of the Commonplace'
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
In his work 'Transfiguration of the Commonplace', Danto asserts that philosophy, as a system of thought, is a unique subject-matter in which not everything is appropriate to its nature of inquiry (Danto, Section 3, p. 54). Art, however, he contends, has proven, throughout the ages, to be...
Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber': A revision of social fictions
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' comprises a collection of short stories, all of which, in some sense or another, exemplify a variation or reworking of popularized fairy tales. Her writing style, rather than taking the form of any one genre, crosses the boundaries of all of them;...
'The Stranger' by Camus - A review
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
In 'The Stranger', Camus expresses his philosophy of the absurd. 'The Stranger' was Camus's first novel, depicting the story of an emotionally detached, unaffected, and seemingly amoral man, Meursault. When first reading the novel, Meursault may seem like an amoral character,...
The neo-Romanticist underpinnings of Roberts's 'Tantramar Revisited' and Lampman's 'Heat'
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Canadian poets Roberts and Lampman, both affiliated with the school of Confederation poetry, found themselves writing amidst a “new world” full of beauty and prosperity and were thus eager to capture this essence of the Canadian landscape. Hence, their turn towards the Romantic poets of...
'Rebecca' as a Gothic Romance: Far from the classic Cinderella story
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Daphne Du Maurier's novel 'Rebecca' can be interpreted in various lights; for instance, for many, it is commonly held to follow the form of a fairy tale. While there is, no doubt, adequate ground for this interpretation, the novel's characteristics seem to embody more the elements of the...
Hejinian's 'My Life': A Poetic Autobiography of Multiplicity
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Lyn Hejinian's poetic autobiography 'My Life' crosses over the boundaries of genre and into an indefinable realm of its own. It contains elements of poetry, autobiography, personal narrative, and women's fiction, while simultaneously entering into a continuous dialogue with the nature of...
'Siddhartha', by Herman Hesse, and the 'Metamorphosis', by Franz Kafka: A review
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
'Siddhartha' by Herman Hesse, and the 'Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka, are both novels which portray the protagonists, Siddhartha and Gregor, as obedient members of society who undergo momentous, life altering transformations. Both transformations considerably affect the...
Madness Redefined: Plath's Demystification of Insanity in 'The Bell Jar'
Thesis - 8 pages - Literature
Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar' depicts the mental-breakdown of a privileged and educated young woman in 1950s American society. To this day, the literary merit of the novel remains a topic of intense debate. The majority of critics seem to take the stance that its overall worth lies in the...
Analysis of 'The Birth of Tragedy'
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In his work 'The Birth of Tragedy', Nietzsche argues that, “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that the existence of the world is eternally justified (Sect. 5, p. 52)”. Simply put, Nietzsche maintains that, without the guidance and creation of art, the terrible truths of the...
Aristotle & the Hellenists
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
In book I (The Object of Life) of 'Nicomachean Ethics', Aristotle sets out to determine what the concept of good represents for man and, more specifically, what the supreme good for man is. Aristotle asserts that, although there are many different relative goods that humans strive for,...
Identity Construction in Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler' and Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest'
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Both Henrik Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler' and Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest' depict the constant conflict between the individual and the society in which they live; and, more specifically, the struggle of the individual to construct his or her own identity in light of...
Speech acts
Essay - 10 pages - Linguistics & languages
In the present research, the researcher will examine 13 main points, each of which will be followed by other subtitles. Throughout these headlines and subtitles, speech acts are going to be investigated in terms of three main stages. The first stage is about Austin's first dichotomy which...
