Ask a question in any subject and get help from an expert.

An allegory often puts a spiritual or abstract message in concrete terms. For example, in medieval European drama, a sin, such as greed was often made into a person called Greed or Avarice so that...

The narrator of "The Black Cat" says that, under the influence of alcohol, he behaved abusively towards both his wife and his pets, with the exception of his cat, Pluto. The cat's person was...

Raymond has a mental disability--he is mentally handicapped--and although he is older and bigger than Hazel (Squeaky), the first-person narrator, she often feels like his big sister. As Squeaky...

Lyman is upset because the picture was taken on the last day of his brother's life and because it reminds him of how lost and hopeless Henry was when he came back from war. Lyman and Henry were...

At the end of Act I of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare juxtaposes the antics of the comic characters with absurd behavior from the more serious ones. The most straightforward comedy is derived from the...

In the center of a herbaceous stem is a tissue known as pith or medulla. The pith is a soft, pale, whitish tissue with a spongy texture, made of parenchyma cells. It transports nutrients and water...

In The Things They Carried, “How to Tell a True War Story.” contains numerous examples of untrue stories. In a general sense, the entire book is a set of such stories, by which Tim O’Brien is...

"Gitanjali Number 50" describes an encounter between a beggar, the speaker of the poem, and God, the "King of all kings." The beggar is expecting to be given wealth. Instead, the king begs wealth...

In The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut describes an explorer called Salo from Tralfamadore, a world which features in several of Vonnegut's books. Salo's spaceship breaks down, and to repair it, he...

It is certainly the case that the lived experience of someone residing in an industrial society would have varied based on where on the social structure they resided. Occupying the bottom of the...

Neither Bernard nor Helmholtz fits comfortably into the society of Brave New World. The main difference is that Helmholtz is a genuine nonconformist who sees the shallow tawdry nature of a society...

Theoretical yield: "It is the maximum amount of product that can be formed in a reaction." Theoretical yield can be calculated using stoichiometric relation. If there are two reactants then it is...

In Chapter 5 of A Child Called It, Dave's mother stabs him with a kitchen knife. Despite her former abuse, this appears to Dave to be an accident, as she is stumbling and swaying from side to side...

Parallelism means that one or more sentences have been constructed in grammatically similar patterns. The way phrases, clauses, or even sentences are intentionally crafted reflects a balance in the...

The first of these two interesting quotations from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking comes from page 292 in the Little, Brown and Company ebook edition. Be aware that...

The causes of World War I were numerous and complex, but among the most immediate were the complex web of alliances between European nations and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of...

Your answer to this question will depend on whether you believe Pelzer's account of the abuse he suffered in A Child Called It. The book is controversial, Pelzer's parents are dead, and other...

To help you get started on your essay assignment, let's look at some of the basics about the Civil Rights Movement, the reasons behind it, its tactics, its successes, and its defeats. You will have...

Statistics alone show that the Vietnam War was a real war. During its course, which lasted from the mid-1950s until 1975, over 3 million people were killed, including millions of civilians....

W.W. Jacobs' short story, "The Monkey's Paw", has a rather limited setting. All the action takes place in and immediately outside the White family home of Laburnam Villa somewhere in England. It is...

To make a Homeric code of honor for modern-day heroines and heroes, consider the importance of pride, community, and resilience. The heroine or hero should probably think highly of themselves. The...

The Golden Compass is a children's fantasy novel written by English author Philip Pullman. It is originally written as a children's book, however it is also classified as a young adult novel, as...

To write a summary of A Raisin in the Sun in your own words, you can begin by identifying its most important elements, including the characters and significant events. A summary may focus on the...

Briefly, the plot or action of "The Interlopers" revolves around a long-standing feud between Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym over a strip of wild land. Searching for each other with bad...

The structure of Tom Stoppard’s play Indian Ink collapses time, which allows him to present his concerns about colonialism and a person's literary legacy. The movement between Flora’s and Eleanor’s...

You'll be hard-pressed to identify a single work of William Shakespeare that people would agree on being his most significant. Shakespeare was a prolific writer. Having written at least...

In the second chapter or stave of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Past, and he is transported back in memory to times of both joy and sadness. Scrooge sees...

In the “guillotine passage” in The Stranger, Albert Camus pairs a blunt diction and style with literary elements like hyperbole and juxtaposition. During the passage, Meursault, the main character...

The two characters who are "onstage" in this scene of "The Interlopers" are the feuding neighbors, Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym. The two carry on a feud which has already lasted for...

Sports management is a broad term that can be applied to myriad occupations within the sporting world; yet, generally, sports management involves practices like planning, evaluating, and leading a...

In the short story "The Interlopers" by Saki, the author provides context concerning the location, the situation, the characters, and the background of their relationship, especially as it affects...

The antagonist of Heather Morris's novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz is not so much a person as a system. It is the system of death that the Nazi regime has created at Auschwitz and that opposes...

There are several ways that writing about literature can improve your own creative writing skills. Some of these include the following. Writing about literature forces you to examine the way...

The themes of Tom Stoppard's play Indian Ink include the nature and purpose of art, memory, cultural conflict, colonialism, and nationalism. Let's look briefly at each of these. The theme of the...

While there was no single universal reaction to the end of the Cold War, the transition from the United States being one of two opposing global power blocs to being the only world superpower led to...

The choice that is not true depends on how one thinks about William Wordsworth’s The Prelude and the version in question. If one is speaking about the 1850 Prelude, the version published after his...

While children's books have a history, as outlined by scholars such as Bob Dixon, of "gelding" or limiting youth by replicating a society's racism, sexism, or false moralizing, a book like The...

Throughout the nineteenth century, African American and women writers increasingly regarded the declarations of equality made by the Founding Fathers as promises that had yet to be kept. Popular...

In his story "Ralph the Duck," Frederick Busch frequently refers to the weather, and he uses the weather to enhance the story's mood and as a reflection or commentary on the events in the...

We might say that Achilles is a flawed hero in many ways, and he makes extremely poor decisions at times that carry severe consequences for his comrades. Let's look at this in more detail. When...

In Pride and Prejudice, the narrator chooses to pay more attention to Elizabeth's thoughts and feelings as she is the story's protagonist, and it is largely through her that we gain an...

One of the very fascinating effects of a well-run totalitarian regime seems to always be the work that goes into breaking down typical family and community relationships. In East Germany and in...

In Race and Reunion, Blight describes three "overall visions" of Civil War memory: the reconciliationist vision, the white supremacy vision, and the emancipationist vision. He argues that these...

These lines are spoken by Friar Laurence to Romeo, in act 2, scene 6, just before Romeo and Juliet get married. Friar Laurence is warning Romeo not to be too rash, reckless, or extreme in the way...

One theme in "The Changeling" by Judith Ortiz Cofer is the expected role of women. The speaker of the poem longs for adventure. When she slips into the "dungarees" of her brother, she is allowed...

Time and fate are central themes in the poems of Andrew Marvell. Let's examine some of these poems to see what the poet has to say about these important realities. In "To His Coy Mistress," Marvell...