The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The afterlife, in accordance to the underworld, includes manifold mythological characters and symbols in the form of the river Styx, Cerberus, Charon, and Hades itself. The journey into the underworld begins with a person's death and journey for...

Divine Comedy-I: Inferno

Humanism had a profound impact on European society during the Renaissance. This movement transformed the thinking processes of many Europeans, altering the way these people viewed themselves, their lives, and their place in the world. Literature...

The Sun Also Rises

In the words of Herbert Hoover, "Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath." War disfigures and tears away precious lives....

Sons and Lovers

Write a concise analytical description of 'Postmodernism' in no more than 200 words.

Postmodernism was a movement which took place in the Arts from the 1930's to 1980's, which sought not just to act as a continuation of modernism, but to attempt...

The Scarlet Letter

Threads are rather insignificant by themselves. It is when a weaver connects them together that they form a beautiful tapestry. Each thread now contributes to the quality of the tapestry and are bound together by the common picture that form. In a...

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart explores the struggle between old traditions within the Igbo community as well as Christianity and "the second coming" it brings forth. While on the surface, it appears the novel narrows its focus to a single...

The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli advocates many cutthroat policies in The Prince in his effort to model the perfect leader, one who would place the utmost importance on preserving his power and his state rather than dealing with moral dilemmas. He presents...

The Grapes of Wrath

Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, two novels published concurrently by John Steinbeck, both depict camaraderie between dust bowl migrants. The main characters in Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie, form a bond, while struggling to reach...

Night

Motivation is the condition of providing something as need, belief, or desire that induces a character to act. In the historical fiction Night, by Elie Wiesel, action and setting contribute significantly to the motivation of the central...

Miss Julie

Writers involved in the naturalist movement believed that actors' lines should be spoken naturally, and that mechanical movements, vocal effects, and irrational gestures should be banished. A return to reality was proposed, with the old theatrical...

Les Miserables

Les Miserables is a story of redemption, forgiveness, charity, salvation and moral obligation. The main character, Jean Valjean, enters the novel as a thief, having spent nineteen years in prison. He is given this second chance by M. Myriel, a...

Julius Caesar

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar opens with the concurrent celebrations of Caesar's defeat of Pompey and the annual fertility festival of Lupercal. The coupling of the two historically separate events each celebrating distinct gender roles dramatically...

A Hunger Artist

In Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" and in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's " A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," an understanding of the cruelty of mankind is revealed through an examination of the themes and the characters in both of their stories....

Hamlet

"The hallmark of the psychopath is the inability to recognize others as worthy of compassion."

-Shirley Lynn Scott, What Makes Serial Killers Tick?

"They are not near my conscience."

Hamlet, after condemning childhood friends to death.

Most readers...

Hamlet

Hamlet is the most baffling of the great plays. It is the tragedy of a man and an action continually baffled by wisdom. The man is too wise. The dual action, pressing in both cases to complete an event, cannot get past his wisdom into the world....

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Many of Edward Albee's plays are "overrun with devouring mothers, castrating wives, and remote husbands. . ." (Hirsch 18). As a result, a typical Albee marriage is one of domestic warfare. The women endlessly battle with their men in order to...

Galileo

It is a volatile point in history: the intersection of science and religion at the height of the Inquisition; it is a time when the Church reigns and a man, a physicist, must choose life or death, himself or science. Galileo Galilei's legendary...