Colin Cavendish-Jones, Ph.D.
eNotes Educator
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5825
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127
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About
I have more than 14 years of teaching, research, and course design experience. I graduated from Oxford University and worked as an international lawyer for several years before returning to academia to pursue a PhD in literature.
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in Pride and Prejudice
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet stands out as a woman who has educated herself and formed her own character in difficult circumstances. Three of her four sisters are ignorant and ill-bred,... -
Answered a Question in The Kite Runner
Rasheed in A Thousand Splendid Suns, Luke O'Neill in The Thorn Birds, and General Taheri in The Kite Runner are all overbearing, sexist, self-centered men. General Taheri is a conservative... -
Answered a Question in The House on Mango Street
There are various stereotypes portrayed in The House on Mango Street, and they are related to class, race, and sex. Although these are different areas of stereotyping, they are also connected in... -
Answered a Question in Turtle in Paradise
In Jennifer L. Holm's Turtle in Paradise, it is false that Elias is the newest member of the Diaper Gang. The gang was originally founded by Ira, and, when Turtle arrives on Key West, it is led by... -
Answered a Question in The Water Is Wide
In Chapter 4 of The Water is Wide, Pat Conroy's goal is to explore the island of Yamacraw, and get to know the people outside the school. The Water is Wide is a memoir of the year Pat Conroy spent... -
Answered a Question in The Crucible
The Crucible was written in 1953, and set in the late seventeenth century, at the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller, who was himself later questioned by the House of Representatives... -
Answered a Question in Life of Pi
At the end of Life of Pi, Pi himself invites the officials investigating the sinking of the Tsimtsum to choose which version of his story they prefer: “You can’t prove which story is true and... -
Answered a Question in Life of Pi
In Yann Martel's Life of Pi, when the Tsimtsum sinks, Pi gains experience, resilience, and an extraordinary story. In part 2 of the novel, Pi has already shown that he is a strong character,... -
Answered a Question in Once Upon a Time
In "Once Upon a Time," Nadine Gordimer illustrates her anti-apartheid stance with a frightening fable showing the dangers of inequality and social division. It is axiomatic that apartheid was... -
Answered a Question in Agha Shahid Ali
"Farewell" by Agha Shahid Ali begins with the speaker saying that he lost track of the addressee. The uncertainty of the situation, and the addressee's identity contrasts with the notion of the... -
Answered a Question in The Eve of St. Agnes
"The Eve of St. Agnes" by John Keats is primarily an idealized depiction of romantic love. However, Keats uses contrast and juxtaposition to emphasize the purity of Porphyro and Madeline's love,... -
Answered a Question in Alice Munro
Alice Munro's short story "Silence" is told from Juliet's perspective, and contains various speculations about Penelope's feelings and her motives for leaving. However, the reader never discovers... -
Answered a Question in The Pearl
John Steinbeck's novella The Pearl is full of symbols, and their meaning is not always clear. For instance, not all readers have thought that the pearl itself symbolizes goodness. It may also... -
Answered a Question in Johannes Kepler
You are being asked for a personal response, and your first reaction may well be that this is an unusual question to be asked about a scientific theory. You might expect to be asked this about a... -
Answered a Question in Germinal
In Germinal, the subordination of the women to the men in the mining community stabilizes the social structure by allowing the men to accept their own marginalized position. However severely the... -
Answered a Question in Henry IV, Part I
The misuse of language leads to the Battle of Shrewsbury at the end of Henry IV, Part 1, when the Earl of Worcester misrepresents the King's message to Hotspur and the rebels. In Act 5, scene 1,... -
Answered a Question in Lamb to the Slaughter
The representation of the women in "Chocolate" and "Lamb to the Slaughter" as domesticated creatures is significant because these stories are about betrayal, rebellion, and revenge. Both Tara and... -
Answered a Question in The Stolen Party
"The Stolen Party" by Liliana Heker suggests that youth is valuable because it is a time of innocence and simplicity. The party is stolen because Rosaura's innocent joy in celebrating Luciana's... -
Answered a Question in Julius Caesar
In Act 1, scene 2 of Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius reveal their contrasting character traits in conversation. Brutus makes the following observation about himself: I am not gamesome: I do lack... -
Answered a Question in Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita defines equanimity as even-tempered acceptance of reality, the ability to remain calm and indifferent to the vicissitudes of fate. In Chapter 2, verses 14-15, Lord Krishna tells... -
Answered a Question in The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar is revolutionary in its depiction of women and its challenge to conventional ideas of femininity and purity. The novel is also revolutionary in its use of language... -
Answered a Question in Roland Barthes
The theme of the essay "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes is the importance of the individual reader's response to a text. This emphasis contrasts with the more traditional approach of... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is essentially the same story as the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, which appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Shakespeare uses this story in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was written... -
Answered a Question in A Day's Wait
In "A Day's Wait," Schatz is portrayed as a brave, noble, sensitive, self-sacrificing character. Hemingway's story describes a misunderstanding in which Schatz believes he has a dangerously high... -
Answered a Question in Carl Deuker
Two symbols in Carl Deuker's novel Golden Arm are the name of the protagonist and the trailer park where he lives. The main character in Golden Arm is Lazarus ("Laz") Weathers. His first name is... -
Answered a Question in History
The terms culture and empire are both vague. This means that the question is best approached through specific examples, which will help to clarify their meaning. One of the ways in which culture... -
Answered a Question in The Tell-Tale Heart
The setting in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is an old house that the narrator shares with his victim. The reader does not discover much about this house, but it appears to be a wooden construction in a... -
Answered a Question in The Wealth of Nations
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith points out that highly developed societies are not absolutely just but describes them as being preferable to less developed societies that are, or were, more... -
Answered a Question in Edward Lucie-Smith
"The Lesson" by Edward Lucie-Smith is a sixteen-line poem in unrhymed iambic pentameter, arranged in two stanzas of equal length. It can be summarized as follows. The speaker is a ten-year-old... -
Answered a Question in The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence of the thirteen states shows ethos in its most famous sentence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by... -
Answered a Question in Robert Frost
D.H. Lawrence and Robert Frost both create strong visual images of the creatures they describe, though Lawrence's hostile attitude to the bats is very different from Frost's affectionately... -
Answered a Question in Poetics
Aristotle differentiates between history and poetry in Poetics by saying that poetry has greater philosophical value than history because it expresses universal truths rather than merely relating... -
Answered a Question in Biographia Literaria
In the Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses the phrase "Things identical must be convertible" to mean that if one identifies two things as being the same, each must be able to stand... -
Answered a Question in The Horse and His Boy
In chapter 8 of The Horse and His Boy, Prince Rabadash outlines a plan with two objectives: to capture Queen Susan and, eventually, to conquer Narnia. Rabadash's plan is to ride across the desert... -
Answered a Question in How I Met My Husband
In Alice Munro's short story "How I Met My Husband," minor characters like Loretta Bird and Mrs. Peebles provide context for, contrast to, and commentary on Edie's tumultuous emotions. Like the... -
Answered a Question in The Horse and His Boy
In The Horse and His Boy, Shasta goes to the Tombs of the Ancient Kings on the edge of the desert outside Tashbaan after he leaves Prince Corin. In chapter 4 of The Horse and His Boy, the Narnians... -
Answered a Question in Death, be not proud
The problem in the octave of John Donne's sonnet "Death, be not proud" is that Death appears to many as a tyrannical and frightening figure, who takes away all the best people from the world. The... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
In book 12 of the Odyssey, Zeus creates a storm at sea, which destroys Odysseus's ship, killing everyone on board except Odysseus himself. Helios, the sun god, asks Zeus to send this storm to... -
Answered a Question in History
Thomas Jefferson gives his opinions on manufacturing in his Notes on the State of Virginia, written in 1781 and published in 1784. Jefferson preferred local, small-scale manufacturing to... -
Answered a Question in Death of a Salesman
In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, some of Willy Loman's character traits are worship of success, delusion, insecurity, and mediocrity. The vicious circle in which Willy is trapped is that he... -
Answered a Question in Lolita
In Lolita, Humbert warns against the dangers of uncontrolled desire by juxtaposing his expressions of such desire with periodic realizations of how it must appear to the rest of the world and... -
Answered a Question in The Thorn Birds
Perhaps the most overt misogynist in The Thorn Birds is Luke O'Neill, who objectifies women and is unkind and tyrannical in his conduct towards Meggie, taking all her money in order to keep her... -
Answered a Question in The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner is set in a deeply misogynist society. This misogyny is often depicted by women being ignored and marginalized and by men being forced to conform to a... -
Answered a Question in Literature
The essay "From the Fountainhead to the Future" by Alexandra York argues for a classical ideal of beauty as a basis for contemporary art. York believes that art has become politicized and... -
Answered a Question in Sir Thomas Wyatt
In "Forget Not Yet" by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the speaker rhetorically urges the addressee to remember his devotion and the "great travail" in which it has involved him. The poem is composed of five... -
Answered a Question in Sir Thomas Wyatt
The literary devices in the poem "Forget Not Yet" by Sir Thomas Wyatt include alliteration, grammatical parallelism, and several types of repetition, including anaphora and epiphora. The word... -
Answered a Question in The Joy Luck Club
The main conflict in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is intergenerational and cultural conflict between mothers and daughters. The mothers are Chinese and tend to expect to control their daughters in... -
Answered a Question in A Farewell to Arms
Several objects in chapter 41 of A Farewell to Arms might be read as symbols. Three of these are Catherine's hospital gown, Henry's breakfast, and the newspaper Henry reads at dinner. The hospital... -
Answered a Question in Blow-Up
In "Blow-Up," Julio Cortázar explores the theme of gaze or seeing as a violation of privacy and a way of constructing narratives while emphasizing that a spectator is ultimately an impotent figure.... -
Answered a Question in Blow-Up
The original title of Julio Cortázar's "Blow-Up" is "Las Babas del Diablo," which literally means "The Tears of the Devil." The two titles are very different: one is lyrical and elegiac, the other...
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