When a book is published today that includes the story of an affair between a married man and/or woman, hardly anyone raises an eyebrow in protest. After all, this is 2003, and extramarital affairs occur regularly in real life and even more so in literature and films. However, the situation was ...

After the Russian occupation in Afghanistan, there was some order and a group resembling a government. As time went on, the country slowly broke apart internally. Many tribes and terrorist organizations began to take control of regions and any sort of true government was lost. The Taliban to...

Subject Jemima J by Jane Green is a classic story of ugly ducklings and swans for the Internet age. Jemima Jones is an employee at the Kilburn Herald, a small London newspaper. As she eats her way through her disappointments, her model thin, fly-by-night flat mates treat her like a maid. Two peo...

"To kill a Mockingbird", an acclaimed novel, by Harper Lee is recognised throughout the world. Having read her novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 soon after its publication, I was compelled to consider the novel in greater depth but was particularly intrigued to examine the cha...

Darl's Insanity In the novel As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, Darl sees the world as a corrupt place filled with a crooked society. Through symbolism, Darl's multiple points of view, and simple diction plus illogical syntax, Faulkner shows that Darl views society as corrupt which...

"To kill a Mockingbird", an acclaimed novel, by Harper Lee is recognised throughout the world. Having read her novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 soon after its publication, I was compelled to consider the novel in greater depth but was particularly intrigued to examine the chara...

Any man who tries to argue Jane Austen's ability to draw characters would be undoubtedly a fool, for the author's talent in that area of prose is hard to match. However even the most ardent fans of Austen will have to agree with the fact that the personages she creates are not appealing to every ma...

When reading an Ernest Hemingway novel, one must try very hard to focus on the joy and encouragement found in the work. For Whom the Bell Tolls is full of love and beauty, but is so greatly overshadowed by this lingering feeling of doom--a feeling that does not let you enjoy reading, for you...

Title: Darkness Be My Friend Author: John Marsden Publisher: Pan Macmillan Publishers Publishing Date: 1996 Setting: This book is set in fairly modern times about 1990. I know this because the teenagers speak the same way my friends and I do and dress just like people do now. I also know thi...

Although all of the primary characters in Conrad's Heart of Darkness are male, it is important that the true significance of the roles portrayed by the women of the novel is not overlooked. At first glance, the three women in the novel have seemingly modest roles. In actuality, these women c...

When reading an Ernest Hemingway novel, one must try very hard to focus on the joy and encouragement found in the work. For Whom the Bell Tolls is full of love and beauty, but is so greatly overshadowed by this lingering feeling of doom--a feeling that does not let you enjoy reading, for you are alw...

The theme of The Count of Monte Cristo, is one of vengeance, forgiveness, and power. The Count of Monte Cristo, is a story of revenge, and forgiveness all in one. This is a story of extreme revenge. The main Character Dante goes to great lengths so that he can avenge his enemies. He realizes at the ...

Any man who tries to argue Jane Austen's ability to draw characters would be undoubtedly a fool, for the author's talent in that area of prose is hard to match. However even the most ardent fans of Austen will have to agree with the fact that the personages she creates are not appealing to every man...

One of the challenges posed by Jane Austen, of her heroine Emma Woodhouse, in the novel entitled Emma, is how Emma must learn to be a good reader of both male and female characters. The persona of Frank Churchill poses a constant series of challenges to Emmaâ€"is Frank a ro...

Community is often thought of as a town, city, or even neighborhood, but community can refer to just about any group who has common beliefs, common values, or some sort of commonality. Families are small communities, and so are schools, churches, and groups with like ideals or causes. Bo...

There is a single problem common to Uncle Tom's Cabin and All Quiet on the Western Front, despite the works' having been created in different centuries on different continents and nominally about different subjects. The single, common problem is this: the valuation of one group of human be...

Since the early 1990's Defoe has written many great novels on which he has based his life upon. Out of his writings, Moll Flanders is by far the best description of Daniel's young childhood up to his late adulthood. In this novel he expresses real life situations and compares them to his...

Jane Austen wrote the novel "Sense and Sensibility" in the 19th century whereas "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" was written by Muriel Spark in the 20th century. The fact that these novels were written at different times means that the societies that they portray are diff...

The Awakening by Kate Chopin was a novel that caused uproar when it was released in 1899. Over a hundred years later, students that read the novel still form a small uproar of their own. They are shocked that the ending is not the "happily ever after" they had envisioned for Edna, the pr...

Jane Austen's classic is not merely a story of Emma Woodhouse's journey of self discovery, nor is it just a tale of country romance, but rather, Emma chronicles the anxiety of its time: the destabilization of the classes. As the Industrial Revolution allowed for the democratization of money, more an...

Move Over Batman and Robin: The Use of the Sidekick in Contemporary Detective Fiction It is sometimes difficult to find a detective novel worth reading, especially amidst all of the grocery store trash that many people seem to thrive on and consider "great literature". However, two ...

The novel "The Summer of the Monkeys" written by Wilson Rawls introduced me to a character who passed from being an egocentric poor boy to a generous and loving one. He comes from an extremely poor family that lived in northern Oklahoma on a farm called Cherokee land because it was in the...

My Dear Beloved In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, there are many characters mentioned in the book. Some of the main characters are mentioned throughout the whole story while other supporting characters are only mentioned once or twice. They all play a key role in the plot formation though ...

"To you I am neither a man nor a woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me- the sole ground on which I accept your judgement." - Charlotte Bronte, to a critic (Oates, V) Charlotte Brontë's reputation may be explained in part by the...

John Myers Theme 1 Cold Mountain Written from a third person, perspective point of view, Cold Mountain is a novel that depicts the themes of self-determination, undying love, generosity, and self-reliance, several themes that are found in society. Author Charles Frazier creates the char...