Essays on American Literature

The motif of vengeance runs throughout the poem Beowulf. The poet expresses the theme through numerous characters by intertwining current and past incidents. Notably, he interrupts the main plot with contextual digressions that relate to what is happening in the main story both explicitly and implicitly. Any of the characters...

Krakauer portrays Chris McCandless as a reckless adventurer Krakauer portrays Chris McCandless in his book "Into the Wild" as a reckless adventurer with risk-taking skills. He is portrayed as a very intriguing character who is driven to live a life that is not typical but exceptional. It's difficult to imagine Christopher...

When Charlotte Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," the system of American society in the nineteenth century saw men (White men) ruling all facets of life, including the livelihoods of their wives. Gilman's short story can be seen as an attempt to liberate women of the time from the constraints of...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Paper is a short story about a woman who is locked up in a room with the intention of resting after giving birth to her daughter. However, she believes that her partner, who seems to be caring at first, is misinterpreting her condition. Gilman interprets...

Fahrenheit 451 is widely regarded as Ray Bradbury's masterpiece. It is also one of the futuristic novels (along with Brave New World and 1984) that are said to have correctly predicted the future. Although this novel, published in 1953, does not accurately forecast current affairs, it does eerily capture key...

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift is a satirized literary work that delves into the deplorable circumstances in Ireland in the early eighteenth century. The publishing of the novel coincided with the arrival of the New World and the slave trade, in which people were commodified into commodities. Furthermore, Ireland,...

Comparing and Contrasting The Great Gatsby and In the Dubious Battle When we look back in time, we can t help but see the patterns that color and characterize specific eras. For example, World War II defined the 1940s, also known as the Fighting Forties. The 1960s were marked...

Great Gatsby is one of Scott Fitzgerald's novels that focuses on the gaiety of specific characters. The car and driving are two of the book's main themes. The automobile was becoming important at the time the book was first written. This seems to be a pivotal point in the book....

Frankenstein: A Tale of Morality and Madness Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in the early nineteenth century, tells the tale of a genius, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a man-monster whose name is eventually mispronounced as Frankenstein. Victor creates a creature that he comes to despise as a result of his discovery...

Introduction Because of the creativity and consistency in the prose, Mary Shelly's novel Frankenstein is arguably one of the most read books of literature. As a consequence, the novel has been subjected to scholarly review from a variety of literatures, with a variety of scholars describing their perspectives on the novel. Critical...