Literature often reflects history; many authors incorporate common historical conflicts to create the main struggle in their work of fiction. The same is true for Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. According to James Martin Harding, Beckett’s play identifies the historical ‘dialectic’, which in this case means a conflict between two opposing ideas, of “lordship and ...
Few works have been as influential and important in American literature as the book of poems titled “Leaves of Grass,” written by Walt Whitman. This book was the only one that Whitman ever published, and in it contains a great many poems spanning most of Whitman’s adult life. The poems string together and can be ...
The usage of symbolism in literary works has been a constant for thousands of years. Many scholars have devoted their lives to researching and delineating what a certain novelist or poet was trying to portray through their literature. Analyzing the symbolism of a literary work, however, can give the reader a slight background on the ...
“Wuthering Heights” is a gothic novel that is structured around the two parallel love stories of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff and the young Catherine Linton and Hareston Earnshaw. Catherine and Heathcliff share a love so deep that the two souls seem to have intertwined into one. Even after Catherine Earnshaw’s death, she still possesses ...
James Russell Lowell’s “Stanzas on Freedom”(1843) is an address to Men rendering the issue of slavery a universal one. Lowell was an abolitionist throughout his life. He makes a request to the collective consciousness of the people. They boast of being born to fathers brave and free. The poet poses a rhetorical question, where the ...
Water signifies life and renewal. It is water, particularly rain water, which ties the beginning of “Clytie” with the end. It trickles throughout the text, beginning with a small downpour and ending with an engulfment. It is water that claims Clytie’s life; but is water representative of Clytie’s re-birth, or as her sister Octavia feels, ...
The relationship between Big Daddy and his sons is very similar to the biblical parable of “The Prodigal Son.” One son does everything that he believes the father wishes him to do, and the other son lives a life of extravagant waste. Gooper believes that he has exemplified Big Daddy’s idea of the perfect son, ...
When people go out to see a play performance, while most times they are going for the sake of being entertained, in my opinion the most effective dramas are the ones that they can take a piece of with them when they leave. To do this, the drama needs to not only have a hook ...
Shakespeare incorporated a profound understanding of human character and psychology into his most well know play, Hamlet. A great tragedy befalls onto Hamlet and he reacts, as most who have been dealt tragedy, with responsive emotion. These emotions reveal Hamlet’s very distinct human characteristics. As the play progresses these intense emotions manifest themselves within Hamlet ...
As a personal fan of short stories, I started reading “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce with a positive attitude. What kept me captivated was Bierce’s writing style. Throughout the entire story, I couldn’t help but notice the short story is great enough with the plot, but worth reading alone to experience ...
