The Awakening

In her novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin shows Edna Pontelliers confrontations with society, her imprisonment in marriage and Ednas exploration of her own sexuality. Chopin also portrays Edna as a rebel, who after her experiences at Grand Isle...

The Awakening

In the novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin takes Edna Pontellier on a journey of self-discovery. In doing this, she uses many symbols to show the relationship between Edna and the world. Clothing, or rather, the lack thereof, displays this...

The Awakening

Kate Chopin's master novel, The Awakening, takes the modern reader to an earlier time while still provoking the questions of morality and self-sacrifice that exist in the present age. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of the story, places herself...

As I Lay Dying

The single chapter in As I Lay Dying where Moseley becomes the narrative focalizer, is anomalous because the focalizer is a character that had not yet been mentioned, and is never mentioned again. The general pattern in the novel is that each...

Aristotle's Politics

What is the best regime? Building from his discussion of happiness, virtue, and the good life in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle answers this question elaborately in his later text, The Politics. In his elaboration, Aristotle investigates numerous...

Aristotle's Poetics

In The Poetics, Aristotle asserts that literature is a function of human nature's instinct to imitate. This implies that as humans, we are constantly driven to imitate, to create. By labeling this creative impulse an "instinct," one is to believe...

Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle devotes the first six books of his Nicomachean Ethics to a discussion of virtue. In doing so he divides virtue into two different categories: moral virtue and intellectual virtue and discusses them individually. However, in our approach...

Antony and Cleopatra

The value of loyalty is that it allows its recipient to feel secure in a world where almost nothing is absolute. Under this circumstance, loyalty has become a highly valued quality in today's society. Unfortunately true loyalty is a difficult...

Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra is a play of conflicting values and paradoxical ideologies. Its central dynamic is the Roman/ Egyptian dichotomy, with each pole representing a web of associated values and attributes. Egypt is variously associated with "the...

Antigone

Sophocles presents us with a high standard of moral courage and character in his play Antigone. Among the many thematic questions raised, Sophocles pursues in depth the issue of whether it is best to obey the law or to follow one's conscience....

Antigone

As the Greek tragedy Antigone builds up to a climax, Creon is warned that "[a]ll men make mistakes, it is only human. But once the wrong is done, a man can turn his back on folly, misfortune too, if he tries to make amends, however low he's...

Antigone

It is not often in Greek myth or tragedy that a woman is found portrayed as a tragic hero. However, Sophocles makes the hero of his Antigone, the third and last play in the theme of Oedipus' life, a woman. And though this is out of context for a...

Antigone

The idea of hubris is monumental in a plethora of Greek mythological works. In many ways the excessive pride of certain characters fuels their own destruction. This is certainly true with respect to the characters of Pentheus, Antigone, and...