Ester Baumgartner, Ph.D.
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About
High school English teacher.
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in The Castle
The Castle by Franz Kafka Summary (979) Introduction (200) The Castle is an unfinished novel by Czech modernist Franz Kafka, published posthumously in 1926. Kafka is known for his surrealist style... -
Answered a Question in Dream on Monkey Mountain
Chapter Summaries Prologue-Act I Summary (983 words) Prologue Summary A singer and Chorus lament to a mother that her son is in jail. The singer emphasizes that there is no one to help her son get... -
Answered a Question in The Black Cat
Guilt The unnamed narrator of “The Black Cat” describes himself as “moody,” “irritable,” and increasingly “violent.” He lashes out at his wife, “offer[ing] her personal violence” and verbally... -
Answered a Question in The Bluest Eye
Preface and Autumn The Preface describes a typical family: mother, father, son, and daughter (they are named Dick and Jane), a cat and a dog. There is a simplistic depiction of the family’s... -
Answered a Question in Literature
Sunjata Bhatt's poem "Counting Sheep White Blood Cells" takes a familiar concept and flips it for effect and meaning. We associate the term "counting sheep" with sleep; it's something people are... -
Answered a Question in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
Both Phillis Wheatley and Mary Rowlandson were colonial American women writers who emphasized their Christian faith in their works. While both writers addressed the specific concerns of women in... -
Answered a Question in Julius Caesar
In Cassius's speech between lines 60 and 80 in act 1, scene 3, he interprets strange events and omens in Rome as signs that the universe disapproves of Caesar's imminent dictatorship. Cassius... -
Answered a Question in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The speaker in the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is alone with his horse, and there is no dialogue in the poem. However, we can analyze how the speaker communicates his meaning to the... -
Answered a Question in Little Women
Most of the conversation about marriage in chapter 20 occurs between Jo and Marmee as they discuss whether Meg loves John Brooke and who would make a better partner for Meg between John and... -
Answered a Question in The Yellow Wallpaper
The narrator's imaginative power in "The Yellow Wallpaper" arguably leads to her hallucinations at the end of the story. In the passage in question from the early part of "The Yellow Wallpaper,"... -
Answered a Question in Things Fall Apart
Chapter 8 of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart sees protagonist Okonkwo suffering after the death of Ikemefuna. The boy had been staying in Okonkwo's household during his captivity, and Okonkwo had... -
Answered a Question in The Raven
While the speaker himself seems to view the raven as real in Edgar Allan Poe's famous narrative poem "The Raven," because of the speaker's disturbed state of mind, the reader could also interpret... -
Answered a Question in On the Road
In Langston Hughes's short story "On the Road," doors seem to symbolize discrimination. In this particular story, Sargeant is a Black man in need of shelter and food, but he cannot find anyone to... -
Answered a Question in On the Road
In Langston Hughes's short story "On the Road," Sargeant is an unemployed, homeless Black man who is looking for shelter on a snowy night. The story opens with the narrator explaining that Sargeant... -
Answered a Question in Everyday Use
Character is significant in "Everyday Use" because Alice Walker embodies two different attitudes toward family, heritage, and culture through the distinction between Dee/Wangero and Maggie (spoken... -
Answered a Question in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
In the middle of T. S. Eliot's famous poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the speaker notes that he has "known the eyes" and "the arms." Prior to these two stanzas, each of which... -
Answered a Question in The Joy Luck Club
In the first chapter of the novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan introduces the reader to Jing-mei Woo and reveals that her mother, Suyuan Woo, has recently passed away. As the novel opens with the... -
Answered a Question in Death, be not proud
John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10, "Death, be not proud," is a metaphysical poem from the early seventeenth century. Metaphysical poems are typically associated with style techniques such as conceits... -
Answered a Question in Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein opens with Robert Walton, an ambitious explorer, finding and immediately bonding with an emaciated, frozen Victor Frankenstein. As Victor proceeds to tell his life story... -
Answered a Question in Maus
Art Spiegelman's Maus is a two-part graphic novel in which Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek and translates his story of surviving the Holocaust into an illustrated narrative. In the first... -
Answered a Question in The Angel In The House
Coventry Patmore's "The Angel in the House" sets a standard for how Victorian women of the middle and upper classes should behave and feel toward their husbands and children. The wife is expected... -
Answered a Question in The Song of Achilles
When we consider Achilles as a tragic hero, we must think about the extent to which his own personality flaws lead to his downfall. Greek mythology certainly explores the role of fate in human... -
Answered a Question in Othello
Judging Othello's character by the end of Shakespeare's play Othello will be somewhat subjective. Some readers may not feel any sympathy for Othello because of his cruelty toward, and eventual... -
Answered a Question in The Handmaid's Tale
George Orwell's 1984 was published after World War II and prophesized the rise of totalitarianism in England. In the world of the novel, a symbolic figure called Big Brother is said to be "always... -
Answered a Question in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is her autobiographical account, published under her pen name Linda Brent, of her life as a slave and her escape from her master in the... -
Answered a Question in Atonement
In Ian McEwan's Atonement, the protagonist Briony begins the novel as a young, precocious girl who loves to write. She has a playful relationship with Robbie, a working class boy who works on her... -
Answered a Question in The Joy Luck Club
Situational irony is a type of irony that depends on plot events and circumstances. In a literary work, situational irony occurs when something happens that is the opposite of what is intended or... -
Answered a Question in Maus
The graphic novel Maus is a Holocaust memoir about author and illustrator Art Spiegelman's father, Vladek. In the novel, Spiegelman creates a clever allegory by drawing the Jewish characters as... -
Answered a Question in Two Kinds
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club presents the stories of four mother-daughter pairs. Each of the mothers was born and raised in China, while each of the daughters is brought up in San Francisco,... -
Answered a Question in The Joy Luck Club
This quote occurs near the end of "A Pair of Tickets," the last chapter in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. In this quote, Jing-mei describes a scene in which she and her half-sisters, who have just... -
Answered a Question in The Joy Luck Club
In the final chapter of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, "A Pair of Tickets," Jing-mei Woo goes to China with her father, Canning, to meet her long-lost half-sisters. Jing-mei's mother Suyuan has... -
Answered a Question in Girl
Bret Anthony Johnston's "Boy" is a short piece of fiction modeled on Jamaica Kincaid's earlier piece "Girl." In the original text, Kincaid creates a narrative voice (probably that of an older... -
Answered a Question in Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is a frame narrative that begins with letters from Robert Walton to his sister. The letters tell the story that Victor narrates to Robert and in the innermost... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
This quote appears in a soliloquy spoken by Macbeth in act 1, scene 7, before Lady Macbeth re-enters the room. Macbeth is considering the reasons why he should not proceed with the planned murder... -
Answered a Question in In Cold Blood
Once Perry and Dick are convicted of the Clutter family murders, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood proceeds to describe their lives in prison and on death row. The pre-death row prison details mostly... -
Answered a Question in Othello
First, to be clear, I don't think Othello is justified in killing Desdemona, and I think most modern readers are appalled by his actions. However, in the society in which the play is set, women... -
Answered a Question in Oedipus Rex
The scene between Oedipus and Teiresias in Oedipus the King is crucial in terms of characterization and themes. First, the interaction reveals Oedipus's obstinacy and arrogance, tragic flaws that... -
Answered a Question in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The title of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is mostly ironic, though there is a way in which we could view this poem as a "love song." The title figure, Prufrock, is a neurotic, anxious man... -
Answered a Question in Young Goodman Brown
ritten in and are set in different times and contexts. Nevertheless, they have several elements in common. 1. Narrative voice and reliability: In "Young Goodman Brown," the unreliability comes from... -
Answered a Question in Educated
Early in Westover's memoir, we learn that her father is very anti-establishment and wants his family to live "off the grid" -- so much so that the children don't even have birth certificates.... -
Answered a Question in Li-Young Lee
Li-Young Lee's poem "I Ask My Mother to Sing" is about the powerful emotion that can be both felt by singing and conveyed through song. The poem also suggests that the mother and grandmother's... -
Answered a Question in Everyday Use
In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker explores the theme of cultural identity through depicting a conflict between two sisters, Dee and Maggie, over a family quilt. When the story begins, Dee returns... -
Answered a Question in The Souls of Black Folk
As a child, Du Bois first becomes aware of racial difference and comes to realize that his race will lead to him being treated as inferior to his classmates. He first rebels against this... -
Answered a Question in The Joy Luck Club
First, let's establish what "yin" and "yang" mean and describe the relationship between the two. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "in Eastern thought, [yin and yang are] the two complementary... -
Answered a Question in The Joy Luck Club
The story "Without Wood" from Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club centers on Rose Hsu Jordan, namely her marriage to Ted. The title comes from something Rose's mother, An-mei, says about her: "She said I... -
Answered a Question in The Kite Runner
Analyzing Baba in terms of morality yields rich and complex observations. Baba is a wealthy and powerful man in Kabul, and he uses his position and money for the common good. One of Baba's most... -
Answered a Question in The Kite Runner
The protagonist and narrator Amir is definitely the most morally ambiguous character. He presents a challenge to the reader in that he is not as sympathetic as his friend Hassan, so we are less... -
Answered a Question in Othello
Othello is presented as a strong, noble character who seriously falls victim to the machinations of Iago. Othello's faults become obvious late in the play, and they lead to a tragic fall for... -
Answered a Question in Othello
I'm not sure what themes you are working with, but Iago is certainly presented as the villain and the mastermind of the schemes in Shakespeare's Othello. From the start of the play, we know that... -
Answered a Question in The Story of an Hour
While you won't find a "thesis" as such in a piece of short fiction as you would in an argument-based essay, you can think of the story's "thesis" as its main idea, theme, or message. In the case...
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