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...
Ego Trips and Empathy Falls
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
Although both drastically different in philosophy, Surrealism and Russian Futurism failed to endure, but in similar ways. Surrealism, as defined by Andre Breton, is grounded in past philosophies while Mayakovsky's Russian futurism floats somewhere in an intangible future. Breton often channels...
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...
My Apologies
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
At first it seems daunting, attempting to fill four to six pages with insight pertaining to just one topic: apologies. However, as I reflect, I realize the true difficult task proves summing up the entire universe a single apology unlocks into a paper. Thomas Scheff begins his section about...
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...
God: Creator or Created?
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
Ever since the Renaissance movement, when the question was finally free of its taboo status, there has been widespread and public debate among philosophers, theologians, and scientists as to the existence of God. With the exception of theologians, the debate has been internal as well as external,...
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...
Reactions to a Life and Death
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The account of Jack Turner's life, as shown in William Warren Rogers Sr. and Robert David Ward's August Reckoning, demonstrates the drama that occurred in Choctaw County, Alabama in the late 1800s. Jack Turner, a well-known Republican leader and freed slave, was lynched after being accused of...
More Than a Title
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Webster defines “mother” as “a female parent.” While in some cases that may be all there is to a mother, more commonly, a mother has many more qualities than simply being “a female parent.” One mother in particular who has an array of qualities is Amanda Wingfield....
The Search
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Through the evolution of the vampire novel, the search for knowledge and information remains a unifying theme that characterizes the genre. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stephen King's Salem's Lot, and Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, this quest for understanding about vampires and their...
The Uncovering of Granny's Disappointments
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” Katherine Anne Porter makes Granny sound like she has not done poorly for herself. In reading the first couple of paragraphs of the short story, Porter makes it known that Granny doesn't have it easy. Life is hard on her. On the surface,...
Book Report: Wise Blood
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The Flannery O'Connor novel, Wise Blood, is a tragic story set in the declining south. The characters of the novel, the main character, Hazel Motes, in particular, struggle with their religious identity and suffering throughout the course of the plot. What follows here is a report on the book's...
Sample College Entrance Essay That Was Successful
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
I've always had an odd love for language and literature. I am intrigued by words: the way they look on paper, the sounds they make when spoken, their countless meanings and connotations, the feelings they evoke. I'm fascinated by unusual syntax, which I like to experiment with in my poetry. It...
