12th Grade

Antigone

Often, when we think of the word justice, legality comes to mind. Although justice is found in almost all laws, it is “exhausted in none” (Vecchio 176). I believe legality and justice are not necessarily synonymous for justice does not exist...

College

Giovanni's Room

Intimacy is a topic widely discussed and desired. Many think of intimacy as a sort of spectrum, and most hope to experience something as close to the real thing as possible. In Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin says that intimacy is not a spectrum, but...

College

City of God

To the average human, happiness lives as a personal goal. If we may not receive any of our desires in life, may we, at the least, possess happiness in the lives that we lead. St. Augustine, however, would argue the fruitlessness of this pursuit....

College

Fun Home

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home has the polished surface appearance of a charming comic about a young girl’s coming of age and struggles with self-identity. Bechdel’s strong personal voice emanates from the text with a captivating candor that renders ...

College

Sag Harbor

In Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, Benji is an embodiment of a changing definition of blackness despite his father’s attempt to orient his son to a desirable blackness. Thus I contend that racial socialization for privileged black boys does not...

College

Wall Street

The 1987 film Wall Street is an American financial drama displaying the life of a young and upcoming stockbroker, Bud Fox, as he learns to traverse the money-churning waters of Wall Street in New York City. Bud, the biological son of an airline...

College

Jasmine

“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.” Theodore Roosevelt

If living a life of overcoming challenges and unique obstacles is the milestone for leaving a name worth remembering, then immigrant...

11th Grade

Twelfth Night

Death, disease and suffering are very important themes in Twelfth Night and multiple charters suffer as a result of disease and death. Orsino suffers through lovesickness, which was a disease at the time and both Olivia and Viola suffer through...

10th Grade

Kurt Vonnegut's Short Stories

In his short story “Miss Temptation,” Kurt Vonnegut explores religious and social undertones through the contrast between women’s gender roles, using terse prose to allow the reader to unravel his many carefully placed controversial topics....

11th Grade

The Aeneid

Through strong personification and amplification, Vergil paints Rumor, the preliminary cause for Aeneas’ final encounter with Dido, and therefore her death, as a monster that is controlled not by the gods, but rather by her own will and the Earth....

College

Speak, Memory

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, Nabokov takes on a highly aesthetic approach documenting his past to bring faded memories back to life. Although memory is seemingly regarded as an involuntary recollection of history, Nabokov challenges this...