The purpose of this essay is to bring to light the significance of Marie as a character in Albert Camus', 'The Outsider'. Through analysis and criticism, this essay endeavors to reveal her importance as an aid to the better the reader's understanding of the personality of Meur...

In Requiem for a Dream the viewer bears witness to the rise then quick fall and self-destruction of the characters within the story. The director Darren Aronofsky tries to make the viewer realize the situation the characters are in foreshadowing and dropping symbols in the play to hint at what is g...

HEMINGWAY'S FAREWELL TO ARMS: A GOOD NOVEL, A POPULAR NOVEL Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) is basically structured around natural symbols that replace emotions and feelings. Characters endure the coldness and cruelty of the war but there is mention neither of pain nor ...

The Glass Managerie In "The Glass Managerie",by Tennesee Williams, symbols are used to describe the characters in the play. Laura, a very frail and insecure character from the play, lives in a world of illusions. Crippled with one leg shorter than the other from a childhood illness...

As we look at "The Story of an Hour", there many different views about Mrs. Mallard. Some people believe she was unwilling or unable to discuss what she wanted in everyday life with her husband. Other people believe she hated her husband and that is why she finally felt free when she he...

Gotta love the junk mail The art of hype pervades advertising of all kinds. You can see it everywhere you go. It's characterized by its extensive use of exclamation points, big words, powerful colors, and giant pictures. You're sure to see several trademark symbols and percentages that they claim yo...

Carson McCullers Having lived a difficult life made Carson McCullers a very strong minded person. Born into a highly respectable family with moderate means, she received an opportunity to play the piano at a very young age. McCullers was the oldest of three children that were born to highly regar...

Mafika Gwala's 'We lie under Tall Gum-Trees' explores a new level of sexual intercourse. In this essay Gwala's ironic ideas of love, union, emotional wars and sexual activities will become apparent throughout his poem by exploring his past and splashing into the deep end of his ...

Competition and compassion, contrasting Brad Manning's "Arm Wrestling with My Father" and Sarah Vowell's "Shooting Dad" Learning to regard a parent as a human being, not just as a father or mother, is one of the most formative emotional developments in an adolescent...

Conflict in the Outsider – A Man in Revolt The major source of conflict in the text, The Outsider written by Albert Camus, is ultimately Meursault's rebellion against the expectations of society. This conflict, caused be rebellion, controls the plot line of the text from the time of ...

Beloved: The Human Condition Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate l...

Grotesque characters in literature can hardly be considered lovable since they are strangers and freaks to ordinary society. Carson McCullers' novel "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" falls under the category of Southern grotesque style. However, McCullers succeeds in the difficult ta...

In Hamlet, taking a closer look at Ophelia's limited scenes with the help of feminist and deconstructionist interpretations give a better understanding of her character. Throughout Hamlet, Ophelia appears in only five scenes and is only one of two females present in the play. "Using fem...

Giotto, a pre-Renaissance artist and architect, was born 20 miles North of Florence Italy in the valley of the Mugello - it was described by his admirer John Ruskin as a lonely landscape. There were rugged mountains, rough ground, and olive trees. There were no gardens or lush landscapes for Giott...

Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" is filled with descriptions of emotional exchanges involving images of fire. Flame is associated with the passion that dominates Jane's emotions. Brontë uses the metaphor of fire to exemplify passion and to tie Jane's passion to madness. Bertha...

Love is, not surprisingly, one of the most frequent themes in all literary creations and especially in poetry. As such, throughout the centuries, love has been represented in many different ways in poetry, according to the specific aspect that the poets were trying to communicate. The two chosen poe...

The Agony of Waiting The dictionary defines the verb to wait as the looking forward to the probable occurrence of an outcome and or event. In life there are many things that people find themselves waiting for. People wait in line to check out, for the weekend, for another year to go by, to grow ...

In the book titled Illumination Night, Alice Hoffman has clearly defined each character, attributing to them the most unique and distinctive traits, but giving enough 'elbow room' for parallelism between them. As the characters struggle with family relationships, social acceptance, restriction and ...

The Theme of Isolation in Waiting for Godot and The Stranger Isolation is not a unique theme in novels or plays. It may be found under many different guises. Isolation can be physical, determined by concrete boundaries, emotional, or spiritual. Race, social development, and even persona...

Portrait of a Lady by T.S. Eliot is telling the story of a young man who is on the receiving end of an older woman's affections. He feels aversion to this lady, while she seems to be falling deeply in love with him. The poem is set in three different time frames, set out into the sections I, I...

The narrators of both "Araby" and "A&P" are young boys who endure a disenchanting moment, in which their ideals become distorted. There are similarities between the boys' experiences, and there are differences. There are universal features of growing up that these two boys...

In his poem, "A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body", Andrew Marvell uses intense imagery, unconventional structure, and personification to portray the body and soul as enemies who represent the conflicts between human spirituality and human instinct. Body and Soul are typically viewed as ...

Timeless Love The harsh nature in which loves consumes us can also contain our heart and soul for an eternity. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera confronts what is held to be the most sacred of human emotions as its primary theme and source of conflict. This emotio...

William Empson begins his critical essay on John Donne's "A Valediction: of Weeping" with this statement. Empson here plays the provocateur for the critic who wishes to disagree with the notion that Donne's intentions were perhaps less base than the sincere valediction of a weeping man. ...

True redemption of sin comes from suffering. When a person goes against what they judge as wrong, the only way to be freed of the guilt that their actions have caused is to feel the pain emotionally from the guilt of their sin. The guilt they feel on the inside and the shame they have to face others...