In Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," Edna Pontellier, the protagonist, is searching for her identity for most of the novel. Her identity is defined by the awakening of her soul; not only her soul, but also the awakening of her social life, spiritual life, sexuality, and her role in society. Edna t...

To be "optimistic" is to "believe that good things will happen in the future". Most readers would balk at the poems within Songs of Innocence and Experience is described thus. Afterall the collection is meant as a contradiction to Songs of Innocence – the latter showing life through the eyes o...

Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard. Thomas Grays Elegy laments the death of life in general while mourning long gone ancestors and exhibiting the transition made by the speaker, from grief and mourning to acceptance and hope. It was written in 1742 and revised to its published form in 1746, and...

Descartes' 'Cogito Ergo Sum' (I am, I exist) argument is a complex one. In many ways, he constructs a convincing argument for the existence of the self, and for the process of the thinking being, the essence of that self. In this meditation on his philosophy, Descartes on numerous ...