John Gardner's "On Moral Fiction" John Gardner's "On Moral Fiction" is a fine example of fictional analysis. After reading the excerpt assigned in class, I was in awe at the truth and reality presented. I had never thought of morality in that sense and found it t...

The world of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is a world ruled by chance. From the very opening chapters, where a watchman is accidentally run over by a train at Moscow's Petersburg station, to the final, climactic scenes of arbitrary destruction when Levin searches for Kitty in a forest beset by lightning,...

Moll Flanders: Sinner or Saint? There are many reasons why Daniel Defoe's classic novel Moll Flanders is still studied today. One of the reasons that it is still so widely studied is that there are significant reasons to doubt the sincerity of Moll's repentance at the end of the novel. Her conver...

In the following excerpt, Kramer examines the interplay between Jane's concern for equality and her urges to submit or rebel. The fact is that the motivating forces of Jane Eyre's personality are not sexual concepts at all but personal concepts. She reacts as she does to erotic situations not...

Nick as Narrator When the novel first begins Nick begins telling us how he reserves all judgments for people, reflecting on his father's words of advice, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had" (5). He holds true to this...

MORALITY AND RELIGION IN DEFOE'S WRITING ( ROBINSON CRUSOE AND MOLL FLANDERS ) Daniel Defoe was born in 1660.Daniel received a very good education as his father hoped he would become a minister , but Daniel was not interested.His family were Dissenters, Presbyterians to be p...

The three novels read by us so far are dealing with the issue of oppression. Problems, which the characters in these novels have to deal with, portray many similarities, whether it has racist, sexist or any other kind of discrimination underlying it. The people affected by the issue are so differen...

Both novels are a heterogeneous collection of the same theme: the spiritual and emotional growth of the heroine. Both novels send forth, political messages traversing feminism idea of one's emancipation. Bronte uses Jane as a figure of female independence, while Sylvia Plath demonstrates her ...

The Rock The core character of a novel is responsible for maintaining the stability of society within the novel, exhibiting qualities of a true hero, and constantly emphasizing the novel's central themes. Atticus serves as this core in To Kill A Mockingbird. He leads his kids not just by telli...

Crime and Punishment is a book written by Fyodor Dostoevsky who spent four years at a labour camp in Siberia, followed by four years of military service. Raskolnikov's time in a Siberian prison, described in the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment, is based on Dostoevsky's own experiences at a similar ...

In The Awakening, a novel by Kate Chopin, the character of Mademoiselle Reisz is first introduced by the narrator as, "a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who had quarreled with almost everyone, owning to a temper which was self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the right...

William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, is a story about a group of good English boys, who's plane is shot down, and plummets onto a deserted island, trying to flee from war. After landing on the island, they try to organize a structure to the new society they are forced to live in. Th...

Faulkner's novel, The Sound and the Fury, shows the decline of a well-established and well-known southern aristocratic family. The novel's main focuses are the moral decay of the Compson family and time (not letting go of the past). Throughout the novel we see how the values of the Comps...

Atticus is obviously the most important person in To Kill A Mockingbird. At the beginning of the novel there is little indication of this because Scout and Jem show very little respect toward him. They are even embarrassed by his age because he doesn't hunt and fish like all of the other parent...

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, written in 1857 and The Awakening by Kate Chopin, written in 1899, both show the life of two women who unconsciously look forward to accomplishing their dreams but not knowing what it is they are seeking. Edna and Emma, the protagonists of Madame Bovary and The Aw...

"I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known." This quotation, made by Nick, is moderately true. He was not a completely honest man, but he was not as corrupt as the other characters. Gary J. Scrimgeour comments that Nick was neither honest nor high-principled. The only reaso...

Compare and contrast 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith and 'Anita and Me' by Meera Syal Zadie Smith's White Teeth is about three different cultures, and three families spanning three generations. Characters include Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, best friends who spend the...

"KINDRED" BY OCTAVIA E. BUTLER Kindred was the very first book by Octavia Butler that I read. Unlike many science-fiction writers, she spends no time discussing the dynamics of time travel, which for a tale of this emotional magnitude, is a good thing. Kindred is hard book to read...

Catch-22: A Study in Post-War Attitudes by Chris Nicholson In 1961, Joseph Heller published Catch-22, his first novel. Based on his own war experiences, the novel wickedly satirized bureaucracy, patriotism, and all manner of traditional American ideals. This was reflective of the increas...

After reading both novels Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass I can now compare and contrast both authors and their way of interpreting slave life to the reader. Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811. She was the seventh child of a famous protestant preac...

MARY SHELLEY"S FRANKENSTEIN When first published in 1818, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein awakened its readers to many issues. Despite the frivolous adaptations produced for the entertainment of popular culture in later years, Shelly's classic tale denotes great depth and meaning. The pe...

Deconstructing the Novel Okay, I will admit it. When the semester first started I was one of those people who believed that comics were not a serious form of literature. "Comics were those bright, colorful magazines filled with bad art, stupid stories and guys in tights"; this i...

Lord of the flies When set apart from ordered society, people revert from civilized behaviour to savagery. This is especially true in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, where many aspects of the island society represent the war and destruction occurring in the real world. At first, William Go...

Suffering in "Crime and Punishment" The idea of suffering plays a major role and guides the reader attracting his attention throughout the entire novel "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Suffering is the dominant theme of this work. It twists and contorts itself in...

There are many aspects of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy that involve the moral decision versus the immoral decision and God. The main theme that Dreiser maintains throughout the novel is Immorality. Each character in the novel possesses one or more characteristics that show that he or she i...