Beth Sullivan

In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” by Washington Irving, the party at Van Tassel’s mansion serves as a turning point. Ichabod Crane is a schoolteacher in love with Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter...

Sula by Toni Morrison is a novel set in the town of Medallion, Ohio. Bottom is an area of town up in the hills where the town’s black residents live. White people live down in the valley, closer to...

Understatement and hyperbole are literary devices used to comically emphasize certain points in a text in two contrasting ways. Understatement means to take a significant event and minimize its...

I know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Maya Angelou’s autobiography about growing up in her grandmother’s house in Arkansas. She frequently felt out of place and had a difficult childhood in many ways....

The plot of any story (typically) begins with the exposition, where the characters and situation or problem are introduced to the readers. In the rising action, a series of events bring the main...

The opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens may be some of the famous lines in English-language literature. The rhythm and parallel content and structure of the lines evokes many...

When Marguerite first visits Mrs. Flowers, she doesn't know what to expect. She is surprised to notice that Mrs. Flowers's house smells like food, since she never imagined her doing normal things...

Maya Angelou begins her autobiography with a humiliating story in which she forgets the lines to a poem she is reciting at an Easter church service, hurries down the aisle to get to the bathroom,...

According to “Autonomy vs. Beneficence,” a Fast Facts page written by Steve Pantilat, MD For the UCSF School of Medicine website, autonomy is the “personal rule of the self that is free from both...

At the end of chapter 1 in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom is caught by his Aunt Polly sneaking into the house through the window late at night. When she sees that his clothes are a mess, she...

Henrietta's choice not to tell anyone about her cancer diagnosis may have its roots in the time period, her socioeconomic status, her personality, or some combination of all three. According to...

One theme in Lord of the Flies is the question of what it means to be part of a society or to be civilized. The wild, unfamiliar, setting presents challenges to the boys' understanding of societal...