10th Grade

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Gender division has been a global struggle for centuries, from rights to the general treatment of women. Women have been struggling to achieve equality because they have been experiencing discrimination, been steadily concerned about their futures...

12th Grade

Going After Cacciato

In the novel Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Paul Berlin’s war experience follows three elaborate storylines in order to explore the effect war has on a soldier. The storyline focusing on the fantastical pursuit of Cacciato reveals many...

College

Women and Writing

Mothers usually have their children’s best interest at heart, guiding them through life at an attempt to prevent offspring from repeating their own mistakes. In the short story, “Girl,” Kincaid depicts her teenage years after her mother gave birth...

College

Foe

“Hitherto I had given to Friday’s life as little thought as I would have a dog’s or any other dumb beast’s—less, indeed, for I had a horror of his mutilated state which made me shut him from my mind, and flinch away when he came near me.” (...

College

Modern Times

In Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, many elements of film are expertly used to best convey the message of the story. One of these elements, editing, is exploited by the use of its many advantageous techniques in order to create ties to the...

12th Grade

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.”(Fitzgerald) In Peter and Wendy, the child characters do not portray romanticized, heroic behaviors, but instead the realistic...

College

Flight

2007 American literature novel, Flight, is the story of a foster kid with zero hope, however Sherman Alexie’s (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) unique approach makes it anything but an ordinary bildungsroman. Unlike in a conventional coming of age novel...

11th Grade

Hangover Square

Patrick Hamilton represents women in such a misogynistic manner in Hangover Square that we do not get insight on a single positive portrayal of a woman that George, the novel's protagonist, meets on his journeys. Instead, we only hear a remotely...

College

Dave's Neckliss

Societal oppression persists in many facets of life and forces individuals into imposed roles that drastically determine their mindsets and identities. Those oppressed are not accepted into such societies and instead forced into subservient...

College

Always Running

Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez, boldly addresses multiple sociological themes that embody the entirety of the story. Rodriguez’s social construction of reality was predetermined by society’s expectations on him due to his race, socioeconomic...