Category: Literature Review
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Sum of Parts in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
These twelve lines capture the essence of all that is phenomenal about the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and the author T.S.Eliot. In these lines we see the carefully chosen allusions, repetition, lyricism, and maintenance of ambiguity that distinguishes Eliot from other modernist poets. In addition, the way in which these lines…
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The Role of The City in The Novel “Jazz” by Toni Morrison
When Christopher Morley explains in Where the Blue Begins that “All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim,” he may not realize how closely he is describing the city illustrated in Jazz, a novel by Toni Morrison. Jazz tells the story of those striving to…
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Role of Dreams in The Lover by A.b. Yehoshua
“[She] starts to sort it out, to turn over the day, scraps, feelings, words and laughter, all are like a thin layer of rubbish that [she] gathers up and throws into the basket” (9). In A.B. Yehoshua’s novel The Lover, Asya utilizes dreams to release her inner-tensions. Yehoshua employs Asya’s dreams as symbolic, prophetic mechanisms…
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A Comparison of Stephen Leacock’s “The Woman Question” and Jessie Sime’s “Munitions!”
In “The Woman Question,” Stephen Leacock uses empty stereotypes that he cannot support with evidence to argue why women are unable to progress in society. He does not have any evidence because women have never been given the opportunity to prove or disprove these assumptions. Instead, he uses fear and humour to undermine the fight…
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Manhood in a Gathering of Old Men
Manhood in A Gathering of Old Men In his novel, A Gathering of Old Men (1983), Ernest J. Gaines writes about a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s. The plantation’s white, Cajun work boss is shot and seventeen old black men and one white woman each claim to be the killer. These old men have…
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The Image of Cardinal Wolsey
This excerpt from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII describes Cardinal Wolsey’s reaction to his sudden dismissal from his position as advisor to the king. On a deeper level, this soliloquy displays Wolsey’s unfiltered and complex emotions as he thinks out loud, revealing a change in how he views the monarchical system. Indicated through figurative language, allusions, and…
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Erasure in Change-rae Lee’s “A Gesture Life”
Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life tells the story of a man of slippery character. Known by his neighbors as “Doc,” Franklin Hata is a friendly face around town, always maintaining a respectful, purposeful distance. He assimilates with the people of Bedley Run quietly and gracefully, but his peers can tell that there is more to…
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The Issue of Social Class and Race in “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte
In the literary work , by Emily Brontë, there is clear conflict within the issues of social class, race and love among the characters. In a society where money and power are necessary for success, Heathcliff, a poor, dark-skinned orphan, felt that it was his responsibility to rise in the social hierarchy to become suitable…
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Who is Pechorin: Ambiguity and Unreliability in a Hero of Our Time
The novel A Hero of our Time is a Russian novel about the life of a soldier named Pechorin serving in the Caucasus, written by Mikhail Lermontov and translated in one of its most famous versions by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov. Throughout his novel, Lermontov’s different points of view, the unchronological flow of the chapters,…
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A Brief Analysis of Robert Frost’s Poem The Gift Outright
Frost is known for his realistic depiction of rural life and his command over American Colloquial Speech. He frequently wrote about settings in Rural life in New England in the early 1900’s and using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes He was copiously influenced by Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Thomas Hardy, and John…