Marisa Lally

James Baldwin's essay "The Use of the Blues" goes beyond the musical genre of blues. He plainly states that he is using "the blues" as a metaphor to describe an experience in life. He writes, "I...

Mark Twain claims that the humorous story is one of the most difficult to master. He makes the distinction between the French witty story, the English comic story, and the American humorous story....

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is written as a letter to Coates's teenage son. The setting varies as Coates describes his past experiences in order to illustrate racial conflicts in...

Mood, also known as atmosphere, is a literary element that refers to the feeling that readers receive from a story. Writers can use a variety of literary devices, like setting and style. In Like...

Langston Hughes was an American poet who lived from 1902 to 1967. He is considered an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of Black artists, writers, and musicians in Harlem and...

The purpose of the essay "Labour and Exercise" is to discuss how the body stays in good health through both labor and exercise. As the essay was written in 1711, Addison cites labor as the primary...

Social reform is a general term that is used to describe movements organized by members of a community who aim to create change in their society. These changes often relate to justice and ways that...

The Outsiders addresses many important issues that teenagers have faced throughout time. Two major examples of themes addressed by the novel are love and identity. Love appears throughout the novel...

Greek and Roman theater varied both in their physical spaces (i.e., amphitheaters) and in the type and culture of performances held in those spaces. In Greek theatre, architects built semicircular...

While Victor Frankenstein does not have a traditional college major as one might have in today's colleges and universities, he studies a variety of relevant topics that lead him to creating his...

The narrator of the poem is describing a sexual experience he had with a married woman, hence the title, "The Faithless Wife." Translated from the Spanish, "La casada infiel," it could also be...

Rupi Kaur's book milk and honey is a reflection on identity, immigration, womanhood, and trauma, among other themes. Kaur popularized a straightforward style of poetry that some call "Instapoetry,"...