Communist Manifesto

As a young writer in a time of brewing class tensions, Marx studied the historical and present relationship between the classes and wrote several works, including "The German Ideology" (1845-46) and "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848). In...

Daisy Miller

There are hundreds of differences between the 1878 edition of Daisy Miller and its 1909 / New York edition. While many of the changes are slight modifications to the placement of words or changes of some terms to an American English spelling, some...

Frankenstein

Frankenstein revolves around the conflict between two characters, Victor Frankenstein and the creature. At first glance, the discordant enemies appear to be nothing alike since they are adversaries from the first time they see each other. Many...

Mule Bone

"The Negro's universal mimicry is not so much a thing in itself as an evidence of something that permeates his entire self. And that thing is drama." (Hurston, 830) In her own words, Hurston captures the gritty picture she paints in the highly...

Keats' Poems and Letters

The Romantic Movement of poetry focused on the return to the individual as much as the political revolutions of the time. In doing so, there is also a return to the natural world in poetry that had been superseded by a more predominant abstract...

The Outlaw Sea

In an era when primal instincts are constantly checked by the civilities of modern life, it is easy for the American mind to fall prey to the strong delusion that civilization has no end. From the west coast to the east, laws are made and laws are...

Iliad

Many authors employ the device of the simile, but Homer fully adopts the concept, immersing many provoking, multi-layered similes into even the most ordinary of battle scenes in the Iliad. This technique both breaks up the ponderous pace of...

The Guest

"He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool" (Wyatt). As this quote by Albert Camus suggests, he was not a very optimistic writer. His gloomy look on life itself can be seen all too clearly in "The...

The Odyssey

The character of Nausikaa is somewhat of an anomaly within The Odyssey. Among women, she is a wholly developed character. Though such depth initially engages Odysseus, it becomes the force that propels him to his ultimate homecoming.

A remarkable...

The Tempest

While the magic of Prospero, the deposed duke of Milan at the center of Shakespeare's The Tempest, is frequently associated with art or creativity, this reading of the text seems incompatible with a substantial amount of textual evidence. Most...

Heart of Darkness

Throughout history, women have often been relegated to trivial and demeaning roles. From one standpoint, women in Heart of Darkness appear to have much more power than traditional roles have allowed. For example, Marlow's aunt has significant...

As I Lay Dying

One of William Faulkner's most celebrated qualities is his inventiveness. As I Lay Dying has fifteen unique narrators, one of them a dead woman, and the novel avoids traditional ideas of linear and chronological structure. Faulkner's style demands...

Wuthering Heights

In Wuthering Heights, author Emily Bronte depicts Heathcliff, one of the main characters, as an incarnation of evil. Heathcliff is first introduced in the novel as the unpleasant, unwelcoming landowner of Wuthering Heights, and from this first...

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Peter Lerangis' Sleepy Hollow is a magnificent example of romantic fiction. It contains and expounds upon all of the vital elements of romanticism. Lerangis includes an exemplary romantic hero and his quest to find truth in an abstract issue. An...

The Scarlet Letter

In the first chapter of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, a solitary rosebush stands in front of a gloomy prison to symbolize "some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human...