Newest Literature Essays

<i>"She wants...to be everything"</i>

A sense of individuality is essential for surviving the numerous emotional and physical obstacles encountered in daily life. A unique identity is perhaps one of the only true characteristics that...

In many of the short stories written by the American author Herman Melville (1819-1891), the main characters tend to exhibit some form of rebellion, usually against the normal dictates of society or against those who are in power. This trait is...

Though the title may be Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville's short story is much more concerned with its nameless narrator than its title character. Addressing one man's concept of himself and how that concept must be reevaluated when...

"Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet" (1173).

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Roughly halfway through Euripides' The Bacchae, a messenger describes to Thebes' bewildered king his encounter with the women who have left the city to practice their religious rites in the forest. His account cogently presents the basic...

Conformity is one of the most prominent themes of the satirical novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. The main character, George F. Babbitt, is middle-aged, middle-class, and lives in middle America in the 1920s. World War I has just ended and the...

In the aftermath of the Civil War, many artists and writers were inspired to reject the lofty ideals of romanticism and focus attention on a new movement - one representing aspects of everyday life. American realist authors such as Mark Twain and...

Within the School of Myth, many critics have associated Chopin's Edna Pontellier with the mythical figure Psyche. The Greek word for "psyche" translates as "soul" or "butterfly." Both words insinuate a change or an awakening. A soul continually...

Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, has borne a burden of criticism and speculation since its initial publication. While many past critics have chastised Chopin and condemned the novel for the portrayal of an adulterous heroine, modern responses...

Characters win the reader's attention through common grounds of understanding, situation, or personality. Playing the major role, protagonists possess distinguishing characteristics of a complex character. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin develops...

Creating a social sensation when it was introduced in 1899, The Awakening was labeled one of the first feminist novels as it fell into tone with the rapidly rising group of young women who demanded political and social equality. The reader...

Much controversy surrounds the ending of Kate Chopin's The Awakening and for good reason; the novel can be used to support two completely opposing views. On one hand the suicide of Edna Pontellier can be seen as the ultimate culmination of Edna's...

Society of the 19th Century gave a heightened meaning to what it means to be a woman. According to the commonly known "code of true womanhood," women were supposed to be docile, domestic creatures, whose main concerns in life were to be the...

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...

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...

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...

Northrop Frye and C. L. Barber's "green world" and "misrule" theories are very much evident in William Shakespeare's As You Like It (ASYI). Frye discusses his "green world" theory in his books Anatomy of Criticism, in 1957, and A Natural...

In the aftermath of the Civil War, many artists and writers were inspired to reject the lofty ideals of romanticism and focus attention on a new movement - one representing aspects of everyday life. American realist authors such as Mark Twain and...

In a romantic forest setting, rich with the songs of birds, the fragrance of fresh spring flowers, and the leafy hum of trees whistling in the wind, one young man courts another. A lady clings to her childhood friend with a desperate and erotic...

"It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it," (Faulkner, 233). In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, an obvious discrepancy exists between death and birth and between words...

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 notes two political communities that are âlessâ? than the polis: the household and the village. Of these two communities, the household receives far more discussion and is the foundation of much of Aristotleâs political theory. The...

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...

Note: The copy of Politics used for this paper is not the standard copy. I have tried to be as specific about passages as possible.

Aristotle and Machiavelli both extol the judgement of the masses on political affairs. Aristotle states that the...