There is an age old question that has been causing arguments among people for centuries. This question has been brought up in many conversations over the past 20 years,and I have always remained neutral.Some people are far from neutral when it comes to answering this question. Who is the best frien...

The film "The Lady with the Dog" is based on the short story by Anton Chekhov. The story deals with an affair between a Russian man and woman. One of the main characteristics in this story is that the author designs the settings not only to help the audiences understand what is going on in the prese...

Getting married involves a lot of decision making, personal sacrifices, and unforeseen changes in your life. It's hard in the beginning to remember that you now have another person's future to be concerned about. All of your decisions don't revolve solely around you. Hopefully this wi...

Several critics have argued that William Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 refers to the biblical story of Job. In the book of Job, one can see several similarities that parallel the story told in Sonnet 29. Both stories begin with the idea of being wealthy in the materialistic aspects of life, which then dis...

The Thousand and One Nights is the world-wide classical literature which the Arabic literature has attributed to it. There are different theories about the origin and the formation period of this work, but the theory which manifests it has been originated from India and passed by Persia and been dev...

"Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson depicts the lives of a handful of Winesburg residents over a number of years. Each story concerns a different character or aspect of a character previously introduced, which provides insight into their grotesqueness. One of these recurring characters, George Wi...

In "Say You Love Me," the complex family dynamic, especially between the narrator and the sister, demonstrates how one can both love and hate a family member. Having to deal with an abusive, alcoholic father brings exceptional challenges. How do you find the strength and courage to endure something...

Anne Bradstreet's poem, "To My Dear and Loving Husband," is a relatively short poem in which she expresses her undying love, affection, and gratitude for her husband. It is Puritan culture for women to remain reserved, regardless of how they may truly feel; however she makes it her obligation to mak...

The way love and suffering have shaped my life is through my childhood. It was a difficult childhood but I learned as I watched my mother go through trials and tribulations with my father. Being raised in a home where the man ruled the house, at a very young age I witnessed my mother's love for...

Shakespeare explores the notion of romantic love in order to demonstrate that belonging in a relationship is a difficult process which ultimately leads to acceptance and fulfilment. The play's comedic structure allows characters to be removed from their world of corruption to a pastoral settin...

"Harold and Maude," based on a screenplay written by Colin Higgins, is a 1971 American dark comedy film directed by Hal Ashby. It is ranked number 45 on the American Film Institute's list of "100 Funniest Movies Of All Time." The film conveys some of the problems of society through a young man, Ha...

C.E. Morgan's 'All the Living' focuses on the young love of Orren and Aloma. Morgan shows us love is both simple and complicated at the same time. One pattern that I noticed when reading is that Orren and Aloma were both looking for love but didn't have an emotional connection. The story&...

"The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live." said Leo F. Buscaglia. On the contrary to the realists, some people love the e...

Charles Dickens' novel, Hard Times was written during the Victorian Era, right at the height of the Victorian Era. The Victorian era represented England under the rule of Queen Victoria. The culture was saturated with class structure, seeing the aristocracy immense amounts of wealth being redu...

It's crazy: crazy that the girl you once played mini-golf with in middle school could one day be your wife. It's stupid: stupid that it's possible your son could be in love with your seventeen year-old babysitter who is head-over-heels for you, the dad. That, argues this movie, is love. Dan Fogelm...

Gurov is an attractive man from the upper class who has been trapped for years in a loveless arranged marriage. Close to forty, he is an experienced seducer. He has had many affairs with different women and is always ready to start a new one. He is cynical and bitter due to his adulteries. Gurov is ...

Great Expectations is a novel of growth, understanding and life. Throughout the novel we see Pip Pirrup develop from a lonely young boy, to an ambitious boy, to an idle teen and finally a mature adult. Pip goes through a variety of events that help him develop the qualities that lead to him acquirin...

Last year my life changed dramatically. Towards the end of the school year I was starting to get the feeling my friends didn't want me around. At first I was denying it and kept going on as I usually do. Some of my friends in the group had been slowly starting to ignore my calls and texts and ...

''Good Country People'' addresses themes of good versus evil, the possibility of redemption achieved through an encounter with violence, and the foolishness of intellectual pretensions.Manley Pointer, a young disillusioned country boy who sells bibles, is an illusion of appearance versus reality.He...

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, and "Secret Heart" by Robert Tristram Coffin, both tell the story of a father's love and share the common theme that actions speak the language of love louder than words. Although the speaker in Hayden's poem realizes his father&...

The nineteenth-century American poet, Emily Dickinson, is best known for her short, cynical lyrics riddled with death and her personal reclusion from the outside world and even her family. Of course, as a recluse, Dickinson never married or had any significant romantic relationships, often wearing w...

William Faulkner's Acceptance Speech, given for the literature Nobel Prize in 1949, discusses Faulkner's view of what an author should utilize in their writings in order to become a good writer. This valuable and deep speech about writing influenced many authors. Toni Morrison was one of t...

Self-absorption is what drives conflict between characters in Shakespeare's comedy, "Much Ado about Nothing." This conflict could be stopped if these characters simply stopped to think about the big picture every once in a while. In fact, self-absorption is generally the bigger villain than co...

"The House of Bernarda Alba" takes place in Spain during the early 1900's, and "Like Water for Chocolate" is set in a similar time period, except that it comes to pass in Mexico. These two literary works have many similar qualities. Only one of these qualities will be addre...

"When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills." Louise Mallard dies at the end of Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" precisely for the reasons the doctors suggest. Heart disease serves as a metaphor for an affliction of the soul. Their diagnosis is most likely n...