Emily Shoemaker

A lot of Yunior's investment in narrating Oscar's story seems to be coming from his cultural background. He opens and closes the novel while talking about Fukú americanus, or more colloquially,...

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is the first novel in a series of dystopian YA where a second civil war was fought in the US over abortion. Shusterman built a fairly complex world for this series, so...

The simple answer to this question is that because Oscar's family lived through the trauma of Trujillo's dictatorship, he was raised in the shadow of that pain. His grandfather protected his family...

As The Odyssey takes place over many years and miles, there are a number of female characters that feature in the story. I agree that Penelope is one of the most important female figures in this...

A big part of the social changes during the Industrial Revolution was the burgeoning idea of worker's rights. This was because during this time, the way people worked changed drastically....

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy...

When Odysseus reaches the underworld, he is warned of the treachery of wives. He has spent ten long years wondering what has become of his own wife, Penelope, and of his homeland in his absence....

Ember is the setting of Jeanne DuPrau's 2003 science fiction novel. The city is an underground refuge in a post-apocalyptic world, and perhaps the most important characteristic is the electricity....

There are a lot of themes in Mama Day, even if they aren't the most prevalent ones. An important one that runs throughout the novel is self-image. Cocoa's perception of herself is very important;...

In addition to everything the other Educators have said, there is also added symbolism in the Three Laws of Robotics. The first law forbids a robot from injuring a human or allowing harm to come to...

This poem has an unusual structure that serves to force the reader to pay attention, even as the speaker drifts off peacefully. It is a rhyming poem—every line ends with a word that rhymes with...

Well, the tricky thing about "The Secret Sharer" is that the reader never really knows for sure what Leggatt is. Joseph Conrad, the author, was an avid fan of Sigmund Freud. Although much of...

Oscar achieves the American Dream without ever really recognizing it. The American Dream as a concept is really centered around the freedom to pursue success uninhibited by social class...

Homer uses descriptive phrases and other key phrases to describe Odysseus as an epic hero. First, it is useful to understand a few definitions relating to this question. Homer was fond of using a...

Although the ship is fixed by the end of the play, the reader knows from Miranda's opening monologue that it is initially destroyed in the tempest her father has called. In act 1, scene 2, she...

"On His Blindness" uses the metaphor of light vs darkness to depict Milton's struggle with feelings of uselessness after going blind. The first line—"When I consider how my light is spent"—has the...

The book ends with the narrator, Yunior, hoping that Isis (Oscar's niece) will grow up and start asking questions about her family, shining light in every dark corner. He says, "if she's smart and...