Dale Powell

The title character of The Giver, first known as the "Receiver" shows conflict with his knowledge.  He is the only one in the community who can seen the frivolity and violation that the...

I don't believe that they really were failures.  Napoleon firmly has his propoganda machine in place and he is not going to let Snow Ball be given any credit,  In fact, once...

Most people believe to a certainity that the headless horseman is Brom Bones.  That being the case, Brom knows very well the degree that Ichabod is scared of nearly everything.  His...

Simply put, it means the king answers to no one.  He only consults with himself and it only takes he and himself (a literary play on words that means  he and he alone) to make a...

Like most plays, Trifles depends on its dialogue and that does not always leave a lot of room for figurative language.  Most examples of figurative language show up in the the descriptions by...

If by activities, you mean, actions in the plot, we can start with some of the things that made Miss Emily Grierson so unique.  She was stubborn to the point of ignoring anything she disagreed...

The rest of the quote continues, "I am old--shake hands with me."  The previous points in the conversation are leading to death.  The old man is telling Starbuck that he does not know...

In Trifles, Mrs. Peters has the duty of taking in some things to Mrs. Wright at the jail.  In earlier America, the responsibility of female prisoners in a jail often fell to a sheriff's...

The conflict of the boy being raised in a home that is his aunt and uncles is carefully introduced in Joyce's "Araby" by detailing the boy's reaction to the house- he tells us early on that a...

By my literature studies, I would be more apt to call Orwell's "fairy story" a fable—but who am I to argue with Orwell? I believe it is like the Grimm fairy tales because it attempts to show a...

Let me give an overview of the purpose of Dante's Inferno, but please realize that analyzing this classic could be a book itself.  Inferno is the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy and is...

Let's look at each part of this question in relation to the ending of Updike's "A & P". The young married woman with her three children screaming about "some candy they didn't get." A young...

A platitude is a meaningless conjecture that is put forward as if it is original.  I am not going to claim to have found them all, but let's start with the title.  "Good Country People"...

This question proved more difficult than I thought.  I did come up with "Revelation", a popular short story by Flannery O'Connor.  In this story, Mrs. Turpin is attacked in a doctor's...

I think the best way to understand Ichabod Crane is to see his character from the perspective of human nature.  We as humans often want to believe the supernatural, so we sometimes allow our...

In O Henry's "The Cop and the Anthem", we have Soapy, our resident ne'er-do-well looking to get a stay on Riker's Island (New York City jail) for the winter.  In his endeavors to be...

After the death of Shakespeare, the allure of drama gave way to newer genres though not entirely and not all at once.  Printing techniques were being perfected and more books were printed to a...

Napoleon knows that Snowball could conceivably return so all blame is shifted to him. Little by little, everything that has gone wrong-including the re-writing of some of the history in minds of...

I hope you are asking this from a philosphical point of view rather than a pessimistic one.  Writers like Bradbury, Huxley, Orwell, and even Lois Lowry (The Giver) sometimes paint a bleak...

Similes are easy to locate and there are several in Chapter One of "Ethan Frome". Remember that a simile is a comparison of two unlike things or situations using "like" or "as".  That...

If you are asking what a thesis statement of the story itself is, realize there are many.  This story contains implicit, or implied, thesis statements, but it does not contain an explicit...

Some scholars claim Orwell was purely going after the Soviet regime in Animal Farm. Others, like myself, believe that while Orwell was alluding to the communists, he saw a bigger picture as well....

"The Road Not Taken" seems to be a bit of a conclusion in life; at the very least, the speaker is at a vantage point in his life where he can reflect upon the different choices that he has...

In O Henry's "The Ransom Of Red Chief", Sam is the "brains" (if there are any brains) of the operation.  At the beginning of the story, he reasons that given the size of a child that a child...

In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", the technical climax or the part where the narrative takes a dramatic turn is when Tessie states, "You didn't give him enough time to pick the one he...

Edgar Allan Poe uses a lot of name symbology in "The Cask of Amontillado" and other stories and poems.  I have pondered the name Luchesi on previous occasions and have never found a language...

We don't need to read any more into what Holden Caufield means with this now classic statement "Mothers are all slightly insane" from Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Although we may hear people...

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn tells Tom the cure for curing warts and that is what takes them to the graveyard.  Hucks states, ""Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts...

There could be a number of reasons for this.  One that comes to mind is that the story has a lot of qualities of the fable which usually uses animals with human qualities to make a...

As a slave who became educated and free, Fredrick Douglass was a renowned speaker who once stated that he did not even own his own head because there was a price on it (Race to Freedom, DVD). ...

So much can be read into the fact that the king is "semi-barbaric".  He does know right from wrong, but he chooses to ignore it and go with with whatever he fancies.  In a sense, this...

In A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, the narrator (called Buddy) tells his memories of living with an older relative (some sort of cousin) and how they were partners.  She (the relative) is...

In "Battle Royal", the narrator has been completely humiliated doing what he was taught to do--giving the whites their "yessuhs" and always being complacent and accomodating to the whites who are...

In The Scarlet Letter, as is often seen today, it was not the out of wedlock sex; it was the production of a baby.  Ironically (but maybe not so much as we think) the issues of abortion and...

Hawthorne was writing The Scarlet Letter more than 100 years after the Puritans reigned supreme in New England.  In many of his writings including The Scarlet Letter and "Young Goodman...

In Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado", Montresor has gone to great lengths to make sure he is not caught in punishing Fortunato.  Remember, that Montresor states that he must "punish with...

In Poe's "Cask of Amontillado", Montresor waits until he has completely has Fortunato "fettered" (chained) to the wall before he begins building the wall.  After he has tricked Fortunato deep...

This question asks us to look both at Poe and the story, "The Masque of the Red Death".  It is no secret that Poe, at the very least, had a fixation on death-largely due to his own life...

"The Lottery" is a story about death.  In a larger sense, it a story about a communal murder- the darkness and foreboding storm refer to what is going on on the underside. Yes, it is June 27-...

The character Tessie Hutchinson is the unfortunate winner in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery".  She is the sacrificial lamb, the one chosen to atone for the "sins" of the community for the...

In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", the conversation takes on an ironic tone in at least two places.  One is the commonplace tone of the talk of taxes and everyday life when a death is...

Multiple readings of "Young Goodman Brown" provide the reader with increased allegory, but here are a few that I find most striking.  Goodman Brown has already failed his conscious by taking...

In Poe's "Cask of Amontillado", Fortunato makes a strange gesture that Montesor does not understand.  When Montresor does not understand, Fortunato concludes that Montresor is not of the...

The problem in answering this question is that inevitably, someone of significance is bound to be left out.  The Bronte sisters quickly come to mind as significant women novelists of the...

Often, authors will use characterization to build the character they are creating.  Symbology in the name is often a tool.   In Great Expectations, Dickens chose the name, Mr....

In Animal Farm, Old Major believes that the ideal situation for animals were occur if he can rid himself of all dealings with man.  In principal, these are the ideals behind the Seven...

In The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale has felt great pangs of guilt for not confessing to being the father of Pearl, Hester Prynne's child for which she must bear the scarlet letter...

Napoleon, one of two pigs who takes pre-eminent lead in Animal Farm, shows true dictator skills over his rival, Snowball.  Very early in the story, Napoleon takes charge of Bluebell's puppies...

The irony becomes apparent in Act 5 of Julius Caesar.  Brutus argues successfully with Trebonius and Cassius that Mark Antony should be spared in the murder plot against Caesar.  However,...

This seems to be an end of life confession, perhaps made in writing rather than spoken.  He asks for no forgiveness and states that for half a century no mortal has disturbed Fortunato's...