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...
Gwendolyn Brooks
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the most influential poets known in the African American community. She challenged minds to expand, by writing truth and real-life situations based on her own experiences. Brooks in a sense helped cope with face to face struggles during the time when racism was high....
Evil and ugliness in Frankenstein
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
“Only bad witches are ugly.” That is the famous phrase uttered by Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, after Dorothy reveals that she has “never seen a beautiful witch before.” Stereotypical roles of the beautiful heroine and ugly villain are so common in drama and writing,...
A view of a view
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Elizabeth Bishop's poem “View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress” possesses profound imagery and, when it is read, the reader immediately gets transported into the speaker's serene vision. Bishop takes the reader on a journey with her words, and through this journey a speaker...
Marvell's "Horatian Ode": Conflicts and ambiguities
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Analyzing the poem “An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland” by Andrew Marvell was difficult, because the poem is constantly undermining its own constructions. Also, reading the poem in the Broadview Anthology, one cannot help but glance at the footnotes, to gain further...
An American as a melting pot
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
A definition such as this is rare, especially among early American literature. To clearly state an exact concept so simply is difficult, however defining what is an American is near impossible. J. Hector St John de Crevecoeur was one of the exceptions. In his book, Letters From an American...
The imagination's art
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Art is life and life is art. There is no difference, at least not when literature is at hand. Three key elements exist in the realization of a written work of art. There is the author who gives the unintentional start to the creation of literature as an art form. Also there is the reader who...
The nature and the role of women in Shakespeare's Macbeth
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
William Shakespeare's Macbeth is among the few of Shakespeare's plays where a female character plays a catalytic role. The female characters in this play are Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, the Three Witches, and Hecate. Lady Macbeth and her husband, Macbeth are the chief protagonists of the play....
On Chrétien de Troyes' The knight of the cart
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
In The Knight of the Cart, after Lancelot disposes of an opposing knight and saves a fair damsel, she offers a place of refuge so long as Lancelot sleeps with her. However reluctant, Lancelot agrees and to kill the time between dinner and sleep, he roams around outside the house. When he returns,...
Rationale behind silence and Queen Eufeme's Chaste Kissing
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
What a scandalous scene in Silence when Queen Eufeme and the protagonist, whom the story is named after, come close, very close to sleeping together. It is such an emotionally charged scene: a predator chasing its unwilling prey. Will Silence succumb to the Queen's advances to keep up...
Doing gender: Reasserting masculinity
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Gender is a socially constructed status. Based on how others perceive us we are labeled as men or women, the only two genders recognized in Western society. Walking to class I notice everyone is ‘doing gender,' or they display evidences of masculinity or femininity. I see a heterosexual...
Tess of d'Urbervilles: The dark shadow of death
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of d'Urbervilles tells the story of a young girl named Tess Durbeyfield who is seduced by, Alec d'Ubervilles, her distant relative. The loss of her virginity, and the birth of a child, haunts her and makes it impossible for her to succeed in marriage with the man she...
Postmodern American literature: Transformation and commodification within The Crying of Lot 49
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
A prominent theme among the writings of many postmodern analysts in characterizing postmodernism is the notion that the age of post-modernity is essentially the age of commercialism and commoditization. In his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean- François Lyotard contends...
Freedom and the self
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In Michel Foucault's book Discipline and Punish, “The Body of the Condemned” is a section dedicated to the concept of power and its relationship to modern punishment, which focuses primarily on the soul of the criminal, a sharp contrast to the punishments aimed to inflict pain on the...
Renaissance Literature is indebted more to emblematic and allegorical modes, than to modern forms of realism
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
The aftermath of reformation, mid 16th.Century, left the art and literary world in upheaval. The former art of Catholicism which had been figurative and vivid, depicting the saints in all their glory, was redundant and even despised. Many reformers believed that to idolize the saints and to...
How is the notion of woman represented by 18th century writing?
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout the 18th century, we see gender as a site of much anxiety. At this time, women were emerging as key contributors to both political and popular writing, through works such as Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn, and A Vindication of the Rights of Man, by Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin. This feminine...
Willy Loman and the death of an American dreamer
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a portrait of a man who wrestles with his own delusions of success and happiness within the business world. One of the main themes of the story is how the main character has attached his success and failures in other areas of life to his self-image as a...
The Secret Life of Bees: Sue Kidd
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
I selected this book because I know a lot of people who have read it before. I was expecting this book to be about animals, well more like bees. It turns out to be more about the story of a young white girl living in a time without black rights. This book is fiction; it takes place in a time...
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Charles Dickens highlights that facts aren't everything. You can't always rely on them, because they can burn out being untrue and serving you wrong. When Louisa was talking to her father, Mr. Gradgrind about how facts ruined her life and how she didn't know how to rebate and handle her feelings,...
Fyodor Dostoevsky: Coping with flaws and surviving in society
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the narrator writes from an underground location reflecting on the flaws in man and the society he once lived in. Through examining his days prior to retreating underground the narrator comes to hate the bonds of society and human nature more and...
Integrated essay on the empire in the West, France and England as powerful states, the medieval period and Black Death in Europe
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Charlemagne's coronation as emperor at St. Peter's Basilica heralded a new era for the West and for the Byzantine Empire. Charlemagne became the strong leader at the helm and his missi dominici kept a watchful eye on territories that were far away. The governments of France and England could not...
T.s. eliot's the hollow men: exploring self-realization - published: 30/03/2010
Thesis - 5 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...
The history of poetry: A magazine of verse
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Harriet Monroe became famous for her magazine, but even more so, her open-door policy. There were many poets that just wouldn't get published, authors listed above, because their works were not accepted in society. T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was considered...
Iago and Lady Macbeth: The nature of their evil
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
The conflict between good and evil is one of the oldest and most consistently fascinating sources of literary drama. It is a primary motor of countless movies and books, just as it has always been one of the most important issues for philosophers and religious scholars. Shakespeare explored the...
Creative rebels without a cause
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Rimbaud once said that creativity is the greatest form of rebellion, a sentiment that I mostly agree with, and can completely understand after having read some of his poetry. There is a strong vitality to his work, an intensity and dissatisfaction that draws the reader in and communicates...
Ironic patriotism
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Someone once said that history is written by the winners, and, as in the case of Shakespeare's history play The Life of King Henry the Fifth, sometimes it is even dramatized by them. Total objectivity is very difficult to achieve when drawing solely from historical documents of either the victor...
Shakespeare's dark humor
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Pinpointing just what exactly makes “good comedy” is one of the most elusive and difficult tasks to undertake. Who can really say why one joke is funny and another one isn't, what subtleties must a stand-up comedian consider to get his audience laughing? Shakespeare could be considered...
Shylock: A Shakespearian scarface
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
There's no doubt about it, bad guys are more interesting than good guys. In dramas catering to mass audiences every hero is set within a strict moral rubric. We know what to expect from him. The villains are the wild cards. In the typical Hollywood blockbuster they have meatier lines, they get to...
Donne's Angel and Marvell's Mistress
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Donne's song “Air and Angels” and Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress” are both love poems. However, they are poles apart in their definitions of love. Donne sees his beloved as a mysterious presence whose body merely gives shape to the love he has felt before. Marvell sees the...
Meatball and Callisto: Two responses to entropy
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Pynchon's “Entropy” begins at a party that has lasted 40 hours. Everyone knows parties don't last that long - or at least, they shouldn't. Meatball's party has continued far too long and is about to disintegrate. This deterioration is linked explicitly to the law of entropy, which is...
