Like Water for Chocolate is a 1990 historical fiction novel written by Laura Esquivel. The story follows the life of Tita de la Garza, who is born with an intense love longing; she can literally feel everyone’s emotions and sense everyone’s feelings. This proves to be most difficult when she falls in love with Pedro, who … Read more
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club , follows the stories of four immigrant Chinese women and their American born daughters. Throughout her book Amy Tan emphasizes that modern Chinese-American families are a combination of old traditions and new ideas. The novel shows how mothers connect with their daughters through different means while maintaining relationships … Read more
Huckleberry Finn, a novel written by Mark Twain, has been one of the most controversial novels in American Literature. Throughout Huckleberry Finn there are many instances that show Huckleberry’s development throughout the story and his changes from a boy who doesn’t give a damn to a respectable young man. Huckleberry Finn follows the life of … Read more
The Catcher in the Rye is one of American author J.D. Salinger’s most controversial works. The novel is narrated by Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. The novel tells the story of Holden’s misadventures with sex and alcohol in New York City as he attempts to find … Read more
A Rose for Emily takes place in the South. A man named Homer Barron is supposed to marry Emily Grierson, but he never shows up; this lets everyone know that he’s not going to marry her and that they’ll have to find someone else. A few days later, she disappears. For a while, no one … Read more
The novel The Catcher in the Rye (By J. D. Salinger) tells the story of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield as he desperately seeks to preserve innocence and avoid corruption until his younger sister Phoebe is old enough to guard herself from the same fate that has consumed him. The book was published by a New York … Read more
The Color Purple is a novel that discusses the different cultural and social aspects of living as a woman in the early 1900’s. The setting takes place in rural Georgia and shows how double standards for gender roles can negatively affect people, especially women. The main character is Celie, a young girl who has to … Read more
Frankenstein is a story about betrayal. Frankenstein would not have been able to create his monster if all of those who helped him were not selfish, but that’s just what happened. Frankenstein’s closest friends betrayed him and Frankenstein betrayed the monster as well. Frankenstein was also betrayed by his family and even his own parents! … Read more
Lolita is an American novel written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1955. Lolita has also been adapted into two movies, Lolita in 1962 and Lolita in 1997. The Lolita novels are based on the true story of Lolita Lempkii who abducted by her father across state lines to marry her when she was only thirteen years … Read more
Jonas’s world is perfect. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community. When Jonas turns twelve, The Elders take him from his family and send him to The Receiver: an old man who teaches him about The past — a time when … Read more
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey that was first published in 1962. The story is about a man, Randle Patrick McMurphy, who arrives to an insane asylum pretending he is mentally ill to escape some jail time from some criminal activities. In the asylum, he meets many other … Read more
Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man is a fictional novel that has several allusions. Invisible man, which was originally published in nineteen forty-five, talks about an unnamed African American man’s life experiences. In the novel, Invisible Man uses many allusion s to explain his experiences and feelings towards them. Invisible Man is full of symbolism. Allusions … Read more
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a novel about Hester Prynne and her daughter Pearl living their lives exiled from the town of Boston for an unnamed sin which we later find out was committed by Hester’s husband Arthur Dimmesdale. The characters all try to make their way in this world, both surrounded and … Read more
” The Grapes of Wrath ” is a novel written by John Steinbeck that was published in 1939. The story involves the Joads, an Oklahoma family forced to leave their farm during The Great Depression and migrate throughout California working, unable to find steady jobs. The novel focuses on the plight of the poor during … Read more
In his novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez establishes his setting in Sucre, a small town of Bolivia. In this Bolivian society, all of the townspeople’s actions focus upon a theocentric outlook and derive conclusions based on guidance from hierarchal figures. Through his use of ironical and biblical references, Marquez implements satire … Read more
According to the feminist literary theory “The Male Gaze”, literary texts have a tendency to portray the world and women from a masculine point of view. These texts present women in terms of stereotypes and as objects of male pleasure. This usually occurs through the way males in a novel describe, talk about, and view … Read more
The graphic novel The Beats: A Graphic History by author Harvey Pekar, editor Paul Buhle, and illustrator Ed Piskor is an astonishing look into the lives of those who helped to form the Beat generation, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and even the women of the Beats, known as the Beatnik Chicks … Read more
Someone once said; “sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever,” a quote that utterly complements The Help. With this in mind, The Help is both, a movie and a novel. According to an article that Valerie Smith wrote in Gale Academic OneFile, the novel was written by Kathryn Stockett in 2009 … Read more
House of Tragedy The novel entitled, House of Sand and Fog was written by Andre Dubus Il and is based around the Behrani family who fled from their native country of Iran after the Iranian revolution. They found themselves in America living in an apartment way too expensive for their income. This forces Massoud Behrani … Read more
Focus Questions 1. In the novel, Outliers, the author, Malcolm Gladwell, defines key factors that leads one to be successful. To begin with, Gladwell asserts that “parentage and patronage” are key factors of success (19). In other words, success is measured based on one’s maturity level. For example, a younger child in the same grade … Read more
In the novel The Other Wes Moore One Name Two Fates written by Wes Moore, each Wes led similar lives but due to seemingly minor decisions in their lives their outcomes drastically differ. There are choices that will come up in life and as seemingly irrelevant or innocent those choices seem can come back and … Read more
The pure tenacity that seeps from the pages of Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle is mesmerizing enough in its own right to merit the praise that has been heaped upon the memoir; these pages expose their readers to the scorching heat of deserts’ sundance-yellow sands and the blackened clothing and miners’ pails of a soot-and-work … Read more
Diasporic experiences can be extremely challenging and testing at the least, and Akhil Sharma’s life, represented in his novel Family Life, is no exception. The semi-autobiographical novel illustrates the hardships faced by an Indian family after moving to the United States and soon after, almost losing one of their sons to an accident that changed … Read more
Most would think that the heroine of a novel is strong and courageous. However, in the novel Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, this is not the case. The heroine in this novel is more like a damsel in distress, someone who is confused and entangled in many life problems. Eleanor Tilney’s characteristics of vulnerability and … Read more
John Boyne uses narrative voice and a variety of other literary devices to convey the main ideas of prejudice and discrimination, power of friendship and innocence in his novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (BITSP)”. Boyne’s novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” portrays the story of a young German boy in Nazi Germany … Read more
Thesis: Authors use rhetorical devices to demonstrate the impact that society plays on the personal development of an individual. The main character in Hurston’s novel, Janie Crawford, Janie’s hair is a symbol that portrays her individuality and resistance to the stereotypes that are intertwined in her society. As Janie begins to settle into her home … Read more
“How To Read Literature Like A Professor” Outlines many motifs authors use to enhance the text, such as irony, allusion, setting, and so on. These Ideals for writing found in the novel “How To Read Literature Like A Professor” by Thomas Foster can be found in the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora … Read more
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one … just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had. ” Chapter 1 “… what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. ” Chapter … Read more
34, 28, 4, 65, 1, 79, 52; taking a chance on numbers such as these can change a person’s life forever. The winner of the insurmountable cash prize is not determined by how poverty stricken or destitute one may appear, but simply, luck of the draw. No one can predict the outcome of the lottery … Read more
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a nonfiction novel that follows a young African American womaen, and her battle with Cervical Cancer during the 1950’s. During the 1950’s there had been little done to research cCervical cCancer, and the known effects were often missguided. At this time Cervical Cancer was thought to be somewhat … Read more
The pieces of literature Perfume by suskind and Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Garcia-Marquez usage of diction and imagery create a memorable impact on the reader; these details linger within the minds of the readers to further incite the overall plot of the story. In Suskind novel Perfume the author is able to demonstrate … Read more
Imagine a world devoid of colour and emotion, a world without individuality. This is the kind of world that Jonas lived in, a world where no one knows their real parents, where they don’t celebrate birthdays, where they don’t truly know all of the joys of life. That was all Jonas knew; at least, until … Read more
Addiction is the fact or condition of being dependent upon a particular substance. The ripple effect caused by addiction not only affects its victims but also the loved ones and people close to them. As someone that has seen the disastrous effects addiction can cause for both parties, there isn’t one specific path it can … Read more
What would you do if you learned that your home and family were directly in the path of an unstoppable, insatiable insect army made up of 68 billion ants that are devouring every living thing it encounters? This is the question that Carl Stephenson asks in his short story, “Leiningen Versus the Ants,” which was … Read more
Education is the key to human survival To Kill a Mockingbird is the perfect book to ensure that young adults enter the real world prepared for the challenges they will face. Harper Lee shines a light on many important morals that are continuously overlooked in society today. This novel benefits high school students because it … Read more
Discoveries deepen our understandings of ourselves and the world and have a transformative effect on those who discover. In William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, and Gwen Harwood’s poem ‘The Glass Jar’, the authors use the characterisation of main characters in their texts to explore the ways in which discovery affects people and how it changes … Read more
The novel, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is an illustration of the various challenges that women faced prior to the emergence of the feminists and gender advocates (Gilman, 2013). The story by Gilman elaborates fully on the challenges the character (unnamed female) undergoes after her post partum. This condition was merely a nervous condition that needed to … Read more
In the novel the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini he illustrates the sacrifice one gives for love. Over the course of the novel, Amir, Hassan, and Baba all face dramatic events that shape them to the person they are. Each one of them sacrifice a piece of their own happiness for the one they love. … Read more
Many economic and political factors lie behind the cause of the American Civil War. Among such causes, the issue of slavery is raised repeatedly. Many men and women sacrificed all that they had in opposition to the evils of slavery. Through these hardships comes the inspiration for such an epic of American literature as Uncle … Read more