Richard Mitchell

In both "When Death Comes" and "I could not stop for death," the main similarity is that both speakers discuss death. However, their attitudes toward death are very different. In Oliver's poem, the...

The overall figurative meaning in this poem is that killer or sniper "dies" when he kills for the first time. It could also be supported that he becomes a "grim reaper," bringing death upon all...

In Ezekiel's poem, the scorpion serves as a metaphor for an overbearing fear. The scorpion in the poem does what scorpions do. He stings the mother because she got too close to him. However, the...

Reeves compares the many moods of the sea to a "hungry dog." In doing so, he illustrates that the sea is angry and unpredictable. During the day, the dog "rolls on the beach all day/ With his...

The incident that Amir speaks of when he says, "the last time I had done that, I damned myself," is when he allowed Hassan to be attacked and tortured without doing anything about it. He stood by...

The Kite Runner is full of examples of discrimination against Hassan and his people. The protagonist, Amir, is best friends with Hassan at the beginning of the story, but Hassan is a "hazari" and...

Jack and the rest of the boys have been separated from their parents and are living "motherless" on an island. The incident with Jack's hunters illustrates the boys' frustration with being on the...

Historically, Swift had tried several times to get the attention of the British Parliament and Irish officials, to make them see that the poverty and overpopulation of Ireland was a huge problem....

The key to answering this question lies in the one-sentence paragraph that serves as the transition between the introduction of the proposal and the actual proposal. Swift concisely states: I...

"Cooks Brook" by Al Pittman is primarily a poem about fear. The fear that the speaker feels about cliff-diving is not irrational, however, but very real. After all, he's diving into a natural pool,...

In the first two stanzas, the speaker relates to a "love" that he is unable to woo at first. He must work hard at it, drawing “by force/a thousand sighs a day, kindling again/in her cold mind a...

When Hamlet first encounters the gravediggers, his reaction is one of disbelief at the treatment of the dead: Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making? He goes on...

I would suggest "End of April" by Phillis Levin. It has some wonderful imagery and illustrates a feeling of loss and memory extremely well. It's also somewhat "modern" so that it will be a lot of...

I've enclosed the poem here for you to look at as I go through the different elements of it. If you take a step back from it and look at it as a whole, you'll note that in the beginning of the...

I would say that Macbeth would be described as a pawn of fate. He starts out as a great warrior that everyone is impressed with. His King promotes him to Thane of Cawdor and that is all free will....

In the Wife of Bath's tale a young man must set out on a journey in order to find out what women truly want. After his travels, he comes to the conclusion that: A woman wants the self-same...

Alfred Doolittle is a person who has clearly gone wrong with his life. He treats his daughter poorly as evidenced by the fact that she's a bit scared of him, even though she's not afraid to speak...

I've included the entire poem below and will illustrate examples of rhythm and rhyme scheme, paradox and understatement. I don't see examples of the others however. If you can keep your head when...

I would say that Shakespeare portrays the women through the witches in a very negative manner. The witches know what is going to happen and they set Macbeth on the course of self-destruction...

The relationship between the old man and the fish is one of respect and dignity. The old man reveres the fish constantly talking to him and asking what he's got next for him. He is awed by his size...

Alexander Supertramp's entire journey is a conflict between himself. He struggles with leaving his family, and he struggles in his travels with his attitudes towards the people he meets. When he...

I would have to say, like many of my counterparts, that Portrait was the most challenging book that I've read and finally understood. I've read Joyce's Ulysses as well, but when I say I've read it,...

Hemingway's style has always been known as very terse. He is not one to waste words by any means. In general, you can see this in the fact that The Old Man and the Sea is less than one hundred...

Everything that is happening in the Congo stems from the ivory trade. I believe this passage comes toward the end of the story in talking about Kurtz and his compound. Kurtz has fallen victim to...

Yes - Stephen is the moocow. In the first section of the first chapter, we get the first glimpse of Stephen's observation. The narrator says "he was baby tuckoo" meaning that his father always told...

Point of view is an extremely important aspect of Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. It's written in third person limited, but those limits imposed on the initial chapter are expanded to...

You're definitely on to something with your thoughts about the conflict being about the characters. You could certainly make the case that Heathcliff's conflict with Catherine stems from class, but...

In Chapter 9, Jack has become a self-selected king, while Ralph is trying to live on the island with some sort of dignity and righteousness. That is the main conflict of the story. However, Simon...

In "Ivy Day" the entire story revolves around a group of canvassers who are supposed to be out soliciting votes from the people they represent. However, they are not doing that. They are hanging...

The Wife of Bath offers some insight into her interpretation of marriage. It serves as a sort of warning against young men getting married. She's trying to tell them what they're getting into and...