Category: Book Review

Many authors have been inspired to write by their environments, beautifully rendering their scenery with their words. Willa Cather and Mary Austin are two examples of such authors, who recreate the vast expanses of the Midwest’s grassy fields and rolling hills. Cather and Austin were both Modernist authors, telling their stories with less concern for…

Book analysis A rather short but interesting read by John Steinbeck called “Of Mice and Men” demonstrates a sort of utopian ideology, it conveys that for the vast majority the american dream is exactly that, but a dream. George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm, would allow them to become independent and most importantly,…

The reality of war unfortunately creates an oppressive system that causes soldiers to struggle with internal conflict and individual thought. In the book Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Paul Berlin’s thoughts and emotions are presented fluidly in the observation post as he accepts ideas of leaving the war as a means of embracing courage.…

It have some men in this world, they don’t do nothing at all, and you feel that they would dead from starvation, but day after day you meeting them and they looking hale, they laughing and they talking as if they have a million dollars, and in truth it look as if they would not…

The Cellist of Sarajevo, a novel written by Steven Galloway is set in the city of Sarajevo, during the Bosnian war in the 1990’s. Galloway chose this setting to recount the stories of eyewitnesses present during the siege of Sarajevo, and to give his reader’s a sense of what the perspective was of the people…

In The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon, Moses and Henry Oliver fight to overcome the discrimination they suffer due to prejudice in London towards immigrants. As insidious as the American South’s notoriously overt racism, London’s covert racism influences Moses’s critical view of London and forces Henry Oliver to come to terms with the flaws of…

Love Conquers Hate In the book Lost [1] Names by Richard E. Kim, the Koreans ingenuity from experience bolsters Edward Siedensticker’s opinion that Lost Names is not a poem of hate, but a poem of love. The Koreans in Lost Names do not fight the Japanese’s hatred with hatred back to the Japanese. The Korean…

What would you do if a loved one nonchalantly informed you that later on in the night he or she planned to take his or her own life? This is the news Thelma Cates is faced with after returning home to her daughter Jessie, in the play ‘night, Mother by Marsha Norman. Sick with Epilepsy,…

Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness tells the story of a Mennonite teen, Nomi Nickels, and her response to the rise of conflict and tragedy in her family. This novel, however, explores not simply the life of a fictional coming-of-age young woman, but also of the author herself. The novel exists symbolically as representation of Miriam…

T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock demonstrates several Modernist ideas. In particular, by frequently employing imagery, repetition, alliteration, assonance, rhetorical questions and references, creatively shaping lines and sentences and weaving in ambiguity and uncertainty in his words, Eliot includes Modernist characteristics in his work. Thematically, there is also a focus on…