Jay Gilbert, Ph.D.
eNotes Educator
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About
Oxford graduate with a doctorate in medieval literature and linguistics. I have taught poetry, Shakespeare, and medieval language and literature at many universities and tutored at the high school level.
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in A&P
In Updike's short story "A&P," the protagonist, Sammy, quits his job in the A&P as a misguided attempt to gain the interest and devotion of the girls who are walking around the store in... -
Answered a Question in History
The 1960s were a key decade for politics in the United States. A tumultuous decade, it led the American people to view liberalism and conservatism very differently. Some of the most significant... -
Answered a Question in Heart of Darkness
The key critical text on Heart of Darkness from a postcolonial point of view is Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." In this essay, Achebe discusses the... -
Answered a Question in Barter
It is very easy to confuse simile and metaphor, because both are types of figurative devices which are used to help illuminate a writer's meaning through the use of comparing one thing to something... -
Answered a Question in Miss Brill
Mansfield's "Miss Brill" is a sad little story about a spinster, the titular Miss Brill, going on her weekly walk to the park to watch the other people who are there. There is considerable... -
Answered a Question in Philip Larkin
When you are asked a "how" question like this, remember that you are actually being asked two things. The first question here is: what does Philip Larkin say about nature in this poem? However, the... -
Answered a Question in The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Grimsby Roylott is presented as a venerable but frightening figure in this short story. He is first introduced by his stepdaughter as "the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in... -
Answered a Question in The Great Gatsby
There are two elements to this question. The first one is about the distinction between West Egg and East Egg, a distinction that is important in the novel. Jay Gatsby is a wealthy man, but he... -
Answered a Question in The Great Gatsby
Class and upbringing are important in this novel, and the cars people drive seem to relate strongly to the nature and class of the characters themselves. For example, Daisy drives a white car, the... -
Answered a Question in The Great Gatsby
Tom levels several accusations at Gatsby. In doing so, he draws to Daisy's attention the fact that Tom and Gatsby move in utterly different worlds, which causes Daisy to draw "further and further... -
Answered a Question in My Papa's Waltz
This poem is often read as representing Roethke's recollections of a father who had violent tendencies. This is supported by many of the words in the poem, which all contribute to a semantic field... -
Answered a Question in Poetry
"Questions! Questions!" is part of a longer work by the Afro-Caribbean poet Marlene Nourbese Philip which asks pointed questions about the experience of the African diaspora. The longer work is... -
Answered a Question in Advice to My Son
This poem by Peter Meinke is an advice poem, part of a long tradition of such poems guiding sons in the way of the world. It is directly addressed to a son ("your," "but son..."), and the way its... -
Answered a Question in Literature
Mishra argues that there are two discrete types of Indian diaspora: the "old" and the "new." The people of the older diaspora are "exclusive," in that they have moved entirely away from India,... -
Answered a Question in Cupid and Psyche
I would argue that the primary theme of this story is the redemptive power of love. It is a story about the love between Cupid and Psyche, but in large part, it is also about how difficult it is to... -
Answered a Question in Andrew Young
This is a poem with a very unique rhyme scheme which is indeed hard to describe, largely because it isn't regular at all. In fact, if we actually go through the poem and write down the sounds at... -
Answered a Question in Sir Thomas Browne
In this treatise, Sir Thomas Browne begins by noting that we actually spend a significant part of our life asleep and that while the things we see during the day are true, the things we see in... -
Answered a Question in Death of a Salesman
The definition of the word spite is a desire to upset, annoy, offend, or hurt another person. In act 2 of this play, Willy tells Biff that he believes he will be undone by spite and that he is... -
Answered a Question in The Aftermath of World War II
Suburbanization is a process by which populations are funneled out of highly concentrated urban areas and into spaces outside of these core cities. In the United States after WWII, various federal... -
Answered a Question in Ghosts
Mrs. Alving is haunted by many ghosts, as alluded to in the title of this play by Henrik Ibsen. The play was widely received as scandalous when it was first performed, largely because of its frank... -
Answered a Question in Two Kinds
The plot of this story, in brief, is that the narrator’s mother has moved from China to the United States and now, raising a daughter in California in the 1950s and 1960s, believes that her child... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a play about love, but Shakespeare does not simply confine himself to presenting the youthful love of his "star-crossed" lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Nor does he present even this... -
Answered a Question in The Alchemist
You can find this information in the opening paragraph of the book, which describes how the protagonist, the boy Santiago, takes refuge with his herd of sheep in an abandoned church. The church is... -
Answered a Question in The Quiet American
One possible option would be to change the syntax of the sentence to privilege the element of it which is having the effect. So, for example, rather than beginning with "the effect," you could... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
The sentence types in Romeo's final soliloquy change over the course of the soliloquy in a very clear manner. At the beginning of the soliloquy, Romeo is clearly in a state of confusion and... -
Answered a Question in King Lear
This is a great question. I think what you're being asked to consider is how far Edgar's own experiences over the course of the play actually contradict his assertion here. Edgar is suggesting that... -
Answered a Question in Washington Irving
The plot of "The Stout Gentleman" by Washington Irving is a slender one. The narrator of the story has been confined indoors due to a fever. He is staying at an inn in Derby, in England, and it is... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
It is fairly explicit in Gertrude's commentary in act 4, scene 7 that Ophelia did not go down to the river with the express purpose of drowning herself. On the contrary, according to Gertrude,... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
Hamlet actually compares himself to a recorder, not Guildenstern. When the players enter with their recorders, Hamlet asks to borrow one, and then presents it to Guildenstern, asking him to play... -
Answered a Question in Nature
Emerson's chief suggestion about the poet's appreciation of the natural world is that the poet's view of nature is one which does not take into account the trappings of modern society, within which... -
Answered a Question in Nature
Emerson actually suggests that there are multiple unremarkable events which could cause him to feel what he calls a "perfect exhilaration." The example he gives is of an occasion when he was... -
Answered a Question in Nature
Emerson suggests that in order for a person to actually achieve a state of solitude, they must remove themselves not only from society as a whole but from their own "chamber" or their own lives. He... -
Answered a Question in Nature
In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson describes the intensity of nature when one fully understands it. He observes that a person who is properly at one with nature will be filled with a "wild delight"... -
Answered a Question in Paul Revere's Ride
There does not seem to be any particular reason why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow repeats the word tread specifically across these three lines which fall close to each other apart from the fact that... -
Answered a Question in Reference
The question here asks to "evaluate the effectiveness," so your answer should focus on discussing what elements of the Warnock Report and subsequent legislation were effective, but also which... -
Answered a Question in The Seafarer
In addition to considering modern translations of "The Seafarer," it is worth considering the instances of alliteration in the original Anglo-Saxon text of the poem. For example, in Anglo-Saxon,... -
Answered a Question in John Donne
John Donne was writing at a time when the difference between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism was largely a political one. Anglicans believed that the Pope was not the head of the Church; instead,... -
Answered a Question in King Lear
The story of Gloucester and his two sons runs in parallel to the main story of Lear and his three daughters: essentially, the Gloucester story is a B-plot which helps to further illuminate the... -
Answered a Question in Edgar A. Guest
The poem "Don't Quit" by Edgar A. Guest is an inspirational exhortation to the reader to keep going, even when life may seem incredibly difficult and painful. The general thrust of the poem is that... -
Answered a Question in Poetry
Omar Sakr's poem "Botany Bay" describes a modern Australian scene, in which two men kneel upon a "grassy plain" which overlooks Botany Bay. They are facing the East, or in the direction of Mecca,... -
Answered a Question in Dulce et Decorum Est
"Drunk with fatigue" is indeed a metaphor. The soldiers Owen is describing are not literally drunk, and of course it is not literally possible to drink fatigue. However, what Owen is suggesting is... -
Answered a Question in Dulce et Decorum Est
This vivid simile is an interesting one to try to unpack. Owen describes the "hanging" face of a soldier who has been thrown into a wagon. His eyes are "writhing" in his face and his lungs are... -
Answered a Question in Dulce et Decorum Est
"Dulce et Decorum Est" is not a sonnet. A sonnet is a particular type of poem which must demonstrate certain key features. Sonnets are fourteen lines long and adhere to a particular meter and rhyme... -
Answered a Question in Dulce et Decorum Est
Owen describes the soldiers' feet in vivid terms as being "shod" in blood, suggesting that the coating of blood is thick and all-encompassing, like shoes. So, one could argue that this is a... -
Answered a Question in Robert Southey
In his poem "Inchcape Rock," Robert Southey does not describe the rock itself at any great length. He notes simply that it is "perilous," but the story of the poem makes it clear why this is. The... -
Answered a Question in Home Burial
There are three human relationships at play in this poem. The two interlocutors are Amy and her husband, a man she seems to feel is cold and even frightening. This is a difficult relationship, but... -
Answered a Question in Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
In this Petrarchan sonnet, Wordsworth describes the view of London from Westminster Bridge on a quiet morning in 1802 before the usually bustling city is awake and moving. When Wordsworth notes... -
Answered a Question in Still I Rise
There are multiple symbols in this poem which contribute to its central meaning. The speaker describes herself as "dust," which she contrasts to the "dirt" into which her detractors would like to... -
Answered a Question in Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton
Tennessee Williams wrote this one-act play in 1946, but he deliberately choses to set it some sixteen years earlier, in 1930. It is a play concerned with a very particular place in time and... -
Answered a Question in I, Too
The main theme of Langston Hughes's "I, Too" is racism. More specifically, the poem deals with the lines that are drawn between Black and white people in the United States, which seem to disregard...
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