Library of America Essays

  • Character Analysis Of Darl Bundren In As I Lay Dying

    1684 Words  | 7 Pages

    In Sanity Insanity takes on different forms. Some harm themselves or are a danger to others. Darl Bundren, however, is declared insane because he thinks differently from his family. Darl serves as the primary narrator in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a story of one dysfunctional family’s journey through the Mississippi countryside to the town of Jefferson to bury their matriarch. With the greatest number of monologues, Darl acts as a surrogate for Faulkner. His intuitive ability to penetrate

  • Loss Of Faith And Allocence In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

    832 Words  | 4 Pages

    Nathaniel Hawthorne, an author during the dark romantics, secluded himself in a room for ten years, dedicating his time to literature and his writing. It was in this environment that he wrote several novels and short stories on the nature of the sinful man. In a specific allegory titled, “Young Goodman Brown”, a man loses his faith and innocence throughout his encounter with the devil in a forest. He ultimately can draw the conclusion that everybody in the village is subject sin, including himself

  • Essay On The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man

    1861 Words  | 8 Pages

    Within the context of African American literature, there is a common portrayal of a self-conscious narrator who takes on a quest for his or her own self-definition. This portrayal is frequently led by the so-called mulatto, a character of mixed background who is passing and has this ability to be able to cross over the coloured line to the white side. However, this white passing comes with a heavy internal conflict and this struggle for self-identity is captured in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored

  • Evil Characters In John Steinbeck's East Of Eden

    918 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are contrasting opinions about Cathy Ames within the characters from Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, some of which are her neighbors whom she left them behind with "a scent of sweetness” (Steinbeck; Ch. 8); then there are other characters who thought of her as an inhuman monster who manipulates to do evil and destroy someone’s life. Her beauty does not reflect her actions, making her an innocent illusion, sugar coated, with despicable sprinkles, and poisonous filling. She mostly has evil intentions

  • Abigail Is Evil In The Crucible

    802 Words  | 4 Pages

    The background and the environment where a person lives in form his personality, behavior, actions and reactions. In the play Crucible Abigail was a victim of the society and the environment. Abigail was always under pressure by the rules the society enforces on her she got under pressure to the extent that she went completely to the opposite direction. Is she a true evil person? Was she born evil, or the society has changed her to an evil person. The actress preforming Abigail proved that Abigail

  • The Past In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1033 Words  | 5 Pages

    In Beloved, Morrison is attempting to prepare the ground for Sethe’s spiritual rebirthby recovering her missing connection to the unspeakable past. The past returns in the form of Sethe’s dead daughter Beloved, who comes back from the “other side” (75) eager to join the broken parts of her history. She claims for her place and for the history to which she thinks she belongs. She reclaims her place in Sethe’s history and present life as she emphatically says to her sister Denver: “She is the one

  • Character Analysis Billy Elliot

    961 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the film, Billy Elliot, directed by Stephen Daldry, set in County Durham, England during the miner’s strike in 1984, a character that I found thought provoking was Jackie Elliot. Jackie Elliot’s family (consisting of his youngest son, Billy, the main character of the film, and his oldest son, Tony, and his mother known as Grandma) is severely affected by the strike as both Jackie and Tony are miners who are on strike. Jackie is portrayed as a quick-tempered, narrow-minded and traditional father

  • Fire And Ice Robert Frost Summary

    1108 Words  | 5 Pages

    Fire and Ice- Robert Frost In his poem Fire and IceRobert Frost compares and contrasts the two destructive forces: fire and ice. Frost presents the reader two options for the end of the world, either in hot fire or in icy cold. Although Frost chooses fire for the end of the world, he gives a fair comparison that ice could be the victor of the world's destruction. The theme presents itself with Frost taking the position of fire. Frosts describes his view toward fire in the third and fourth lines

  • Prejudice And Racism In Richard Wright's Native Son

    1569 Words  | 7 Pages

    identity. Here in the novel "Native Son" will try to highlight the main character "Bigger" in the novel and how the environment affected him. Bigger is considered a tragic figure, as he represents the African American experience of oppression in America. Richard demonstrates that many of the quickly changing and unpredictable conditions of the modern world have created people like Bigger, exploring for a place for themselves in a world that, for them, has wasted many of its cultural and spiritual

  • Darl Bundren In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

    1814 Words  | 8 Pages

    Insanity takes different forms. Some harm themselves or are a danger to others. Darl Bundren, however, is declared insane because he thinks differently from his family and twentieth century society. Darl serves as the primary narrator in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a story of one dysfunctional family’s journey through the Mississippi countryside to the town of Jefferson to bury their matriarch. With the greatest number of monologues, Darl acts as a surrogate for Faulkner. His intuitive ability

  • Eudora Welty Character Analysis

    1902 Words  | 8 Pages

    What do you think a personality is? How it affect the story? Is every protagonist having similar personality? William Faulkner and Eudora Welty were born in different centuries, but their book, “A Rose for Emily” and “Why I live at the PO” have many kinds of similarities and differences throughout the story. Both stories have similar settings, which takes place in a small town in a South part of the United States. We could see that the story has similarities in the places, but both stories takes

  • Imagery In 'An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge'

    975 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ambrose Bierce displays writing skills in the short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” that create an unforgettable tale. By using key literary devices, he takes the reader through an emotional journey. Imagery, prominently displayed throughout the story causes the reader to immerse themselves in their imagination, causing the largest effect on the audience. Within this imagery, Bierce includes symbolism to further enhance the text. Through it, he not only uses imagery to create a world

  • Neo Slave Narrative Analysis

    1118 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Neo-Slave Narrative and the Master Narrative Kindred is a clear instance of the neo-slave narrative, an Afro- American genre of writing that recounts the personal experiences of slaves that examines the past of African-American slaves and represent the nineteenth-century slave narrative tradition, that was first published in 1979. Ashraf argues "that there are three types of neo slave narrative: the third person historical novel of slavery, the first person narration of the life story of a slave

  • The Beast In The Jungle Literary Analysis

    1285 Words  | 6 Pages

    In “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James, the theme develops throughout the story to add a surprising twist at the end. The main character, John Marcher, is in a constant state of belief that something will happen in his life that will either change it for the better or worse. He really does not care which, he is just waiting for that defining moment throughout his entire life until his life is almost over. He then realizes that during his passive state of mind he has missed out on so many opportunities

  • Huckleberry Finn Individuality Analysis

    2393 Words  | 10 Pages

    Conformity Over Individuality: Dreiser's Sister Carrie and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn Human life boils down to personal comfortability. It is in our nature to surround ourselves with a sense of societal complacency in order to survive. Human nature is directly correlated to human instinct. All three of these statements directly affect human nature. It is engraved in our hereditary impulses to always strive for progression in order to conquer the obstacles of daily life. Throughout Mark Twain’s novel

  • The Giraffe Mauro Senesi

    481 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Giraffe by Mauro Senesi is a short story about a group of boys taking care of a giraffe after the owner passes away. The story starts off with a salesman bringing along a giraffe with him to a town to attract customers however, he passes away. The town’s people have no clue what to do with the giraffe, but a group of young boys take responsibility for it. Subsequently, everyone in the town gets upset by the giraffe so they vote on killing it, but the group of boys run away with it to protect

  • Censorship In David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing

    1207 Words  | 5 Pages

    Something we may not think about often while loafing around at the house sunrise-to-sunset, is how much our reactions and responses connect to how your day goes. Essentially, this closely relates to the banning and censorship we see in bookstores and libraries perpetually. I, personally, assuredly believe that the actions of sensitive parents who worry about the content their children read, affects the education and facts that they are learning from literature. A person 's decision impacts others in an

  • A Very Brief History Of The Yuma Territorial Prison

    1363 Words  | 6 Pages

    The Yuma Territorial Prison was significant because it was a prison that eventually became a major historical landmark in Yuma, Arizona.The Yuma Territorial Prison was the ultimate location because of the work done by Jose Maria Redondo and R.B Kelly, they saw the potential the prison had to help the economy so that was why it was chosen over Phoenix, Arizona. Ever since the prison was first established the population of Yuma Arizona increased.It was the prisoners who had actually help construct

  • The Student Fear Factor Essay

    1010 Words  | 5 Pages

    Do you ever wonder what college students fears might be? Do you ever wonder what is going through their mind? In the article “The Student Fear Factor” by Rebecca Cox, it explains many different factors that a college student might be going through. The article gives many point of views from other students and what their thoughts about college was. There are some students who either are incoming high school students or are returning which can be a big fear for them the most because they don’t know

  • Examples Of Rhetorical Analysis

    780 Words  | 4 Pages

    creating my rhetorical analysis paper I used all of my typical writing processes. I began this assignment by selecting a commercial that I thought would be the most appealing in the superbowl. After selecting my commercial I did some research at the library using EBSCOhost. I then created an outline on what my paper would be about and pieced all of its parts together. In the future I will try to recieve help earlier on because at first I struggled to understand what the purpose of the paper was. Eventually