
Esmeralda Keene
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Answered a Question in The Signal-Man
"The Signal-Man" is a short story by Charles Dickens. It was published in 1866 as part of the Mugby Junction collection. It is a brief but eerie story that follows the narrator's interaction with a... -
Answered a Question in Alex La Guma
"The Lemon Orchard" is a story that appeared in A Walk in the Night and Other Stories (1962), the first book by the South African writer Alex La Guma. I will address the three sections of your... -
Answered a Question in The Tempest
In literature (and in theatre, in this case), "exposition" refers to the first part of the work that introduces the primary characters, the setting, and, in some cases, the main conflict. Why is... -
Answered a Question in Literature
These quotes all revolve around the central concept of Judith Butler's 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. The main idea of the book is that gender is a social... -
Answered a Question in Samuel Beckett
There are a couple of key themes worth considering in a discussion of Beckett's radio play Words and Music, written in 1961 and broadcast the following year. (Let us be sure not to confuse these... -
Answered a Question in Caleb's Crossing
There are many themes we could choose to discuss in Geraldine Brooks's novel Caleb's Crossing (2011). These include the significance of names, the contrast between country life and city life, and... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
Feminist literary theory (or feminist literary criticism) revolves around the idea that literature reflects and shapes ideas about men and women and their roles in society. This form of criticism... -
Answered a Question in Rabindranath Tagore
Great question—and a difficult one to answer succinctly, as Tagore (1861-1941) was considered a polymath (a person who is an expert in many fields, not just one). For the sake of simplicity, let us... -
Answered a Question in Outliers: The Story of Success
In his nonfiction book Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), Malcolm Gladwell investigates the qualities that successful people have in common, analyzes the various factors that contribute to... -
Answered a Question in The Grand Inquisitor
"The Grand Inquisitor" is the parable (told in the form of a prose poem) at the heart of chapter five of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. The parable is related to us, as... -
Answered a Question in The Bean Trees
Turtle and Taylor have an unusual relationship in Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Bean Trees. Taylor is a free-spirited young woman who's off on a solo adventure. Turtle is the three-year-old... -
Answered a Question in Prelude; and At the Bay
Katherine Mansfield's short story "Prelude" was published in one of the writer's short story collections in 1920. But that wasn't the story's first publication: in 1918, it was released under a... -
Answered a Question in David Foster Wallace
The title of David Foster Wallace's short story "Good People" (published in 2007, the year before the author's death) is lifted from the text. Let's take a look at the use of the phrase in the... -
Answered a Question in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Let's take a look at the exact passage you're talking about in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. To set up the scene, our protagonist, Maya, is working in the home of Mrs.... -
Answered a Question in The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Charlie is the protagonist of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999). Holden is the central character in The Catcher in the Rye (1951). What do these two characters have... -
Answered a Question in Letters from an American Farmer
Published in 1782, Letters from an American Farmer is a series of epistolary essays by the French-American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur. As you said, the central question of... -
Answered a Question in Birdsong
The narrator of Sebastian Faulks's novel Birdsong is not one person or character: Faulks employs a third person omniscient narrator, which means that the narrator knows everything but does not... -
Answered a Question in Goblin Market
In her narrative poem Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti tells a story of two sisters tempted by fruit. It's not just any fruit: it's fruit sold by goblins in the evening at a marketplace near the... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
Shylock, one of the characters in Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, is vengeful almost by definition. He is a moneylender, so he has complex and sometimes tense relationships with the... -
Answered a Question in Amongst Women
In John McGahern's novel Amongst Women, the main character is a man, Michael Moran. But many of the story's other important characters are women: specifically Moran's second wife, Rose; and his... -
Answered a Question in An Astrologer's Day
"An Astrologer's Day," the titular story of a collection R. K. Narayan published in 1947, begins with an explanation of the astrologer's daily schedule. This is the first line of the story:... -
Answered a Question in The Epic of Gilgamesh
It stands to reason that literary archetypes have changed since the Epic of Gilgamesh was written: the epic poem is considered the earliest surviving example of a classic work of literature. Let's... -
Answered a Question in John Fitzgerald Kennedy
JFK delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 1961. His speech was carefully crafted with the help of a few of his closest advisors. So how did he use rhetorical devices (techniques a... -
Answered a Question in Native Son
Let's take a close look at the exact passage you're referring to in Richard Wright's novel Native Son (1940). To set the scene, Bigger Thomas is the protagonist: he's a twenty-year-old African... -
Answered a Question in The Color Purple
There is a major conflict between Sofia and Harpo, two characters in Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple. What is the cause of this conflict? First, let's establish the relationship between these... -
Answered a Question in The Bean Trees
The relationship between Taylor and Lou Ann is very important to the plot of The Bean Trees (1988), Barbara Kingsolver's first novel. Let's go over a few of the main ways that this friendship is... -
Answered a Question in Freak the Mighty
In order to analyze sentence length in certain chapters of Freak the Mighty, the young adult novel Rodman Philbrick published in 1993, we have to understand key elements of the story itself. And we... -
Answered a Question in The Fat Girl
"The Fat Girl" is a short story by a master of the form, Andre Dubus. The title refers to the protagonist, Louise, and the story covers her experiences from childhood through adulthood. It's worth... -
Answered a Question in Number the Stars
The climax of Lois Lowry's novel Number the Stars features the story's heroine, Annemarie, making the delivery of a package to her uncle. However, it might be helpful to provide a bit of... -
Answered a Question in Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was an important American writer and critic who tackled issues of race, sexuality, and social inequality in his novels and essays. Born into a large, poor family in... -
Answered a Question in The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Brick (also known as Jamie) is one of the central characters in Heidi W. Durrow's 2010 novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. There's a lot to talk about with respect to his character and the social... -
Answered a Question in Essays
The best way to approach this essay is to define the key components of Paine's characterization of America. How does he describe the United States in Rights of Man, published in 1791? The next part... -
Answered a Question in Slouching Towards Bethlehem
"Where the Kissing Never Stops" is an essay from Joan Didion's landmark 1968 essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The essay originally appeared under a different title, "Just Folks at... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
In Shakespeare's comedy The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio is one of several suitors of the central character, Portia of Belmont. Portia isn't only beautiful, she's rich: she's an heiress. It's... -
Answered a Question in My Antonia
There are several key differences between the two main families featured in My Ántonia. The Burdens are the family of Jim Burden, the orphaned boy who's the novel's narrator and protagonist, while... -
Answered a Question in The Beautiful and Damned
The pursuit of the "American Dream" is a recurring theme in Fitzgerald’s canon. But what does this phrase mean, exactly? Scholars point to the definition as it was first publicly laid out by James... -
Answered a Question in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian is fiction. But it’s based, at least in part, on the real-life experiences of the author, Sherman Alexie. Alexie came of age on the Spokane... -
Answered a Question in Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris is a humorist. Throughout his oeuvre, he points out ridiculous situations, and he makes fun of other people—and himself. This is especially true in a collection of essays like Me Talk...