Michael Stultz, M.A.
eNotes Educator
Achievements
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1913
Answers Posted
574
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About
~ Writer, Editor, Educator ~ Father of three ~ Cyclist
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illych follows the following plot outline: Exposition: We see Ivan's life as "climbing a ladder." He's a "cog in a machine," a good member of a Czarist... -
Answered a Question in The Catcher in the Rye
Chapters 9-12 in The Catcher in the Rye reveal three leitmotifs that Holden echo throughout the book (see below). Taken together, they reveal Holden's unwillingness to progress emotionally... -
Answered a Question in Antigone
Antigone is a tragic hero who makes at least two mistakes which contribute to her death: she takes an unbending course of action which leads, ultimately, to self-martyrdom; she refuses to suffer... -
Answered a Question in Othello
Foil: Literally a "leaf" of bright metal placed under a jewel to increase its brilliance (Holman & Harmon 198). Traditionally, a foil is a minor character who, through comparison and contrast,... -
Answered a Question in Cinema
There's a flaw, I think, in the nature of the question: cinema and TV are types of literature. I teach a class called Film Literature. They're not great literature, but literature... -
Answered a Question in To Kill a Mockingbird
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is told in flashback by an adult Scout in the late 1950s looking back some twenty-odd years on when she was six in 1933. So, even though the narrator is an... -
Answered a Question in The Color Purple
Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple is much darker and more complex than Speilberg's adaptation, which develops the comedy and the musical aspects more. In the book, the men are meaner,... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
Banquo is all the things the witches predict: Lesserthan Macbeth, andgreater. Not so happy, yet muchhappier. Thou shaltget kings, though thoube none: Throughout Macbeth, Banquo is a foil for... -
Answered a Question in My Papa's Waltz
I usually encourage my students to pick two or three closely-related poetic elements on which to focus in a thesis, like: Speaker, Audience, Tone Metaphor, Imagery, and Theme Prosody:... -
Answered a Question in Literature
My favorite method is quite simple. I like to forget about literary terms and look at a bigger picture: How does the work of fiction connect? 1a. How does this fiction of fiction... -
Answered a Question in As I Lay Dying
In As I Lay Dying (and The Sound and the Fury as well), Faulkner uses an experimental free-style narration to reveal multiple consciousnesses and shifts in time and space. The novel is... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
Yes, I believe there are subtle overtones of incest between the pair in Hamlet. Remember, Laertes is a foil for Hamlet, a more passionate double of the Prince. What one says or does... -
Answered a Question in Tuesdays With Morrie
Whereas the bedroom is an epicenter of activity (many guests) in "The Professor Part I" of Tuesday with Morrie, the bedroom is indeed a sickroom, more connected with suffering and death in Part... -
Answered a Question in Poetics
In his Poetics, Aristotle says that tragedy is the greatest of literary art forms because its agents and devices are better than us (the reader/audience). Whereas comedy is more realistic,... -
Answered a Question in Othello
In Act I of Othello, Roderigo complains to Iago that he is paying Iago money to get Desdemona to love and marry him, and--so far--it has not worked: Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindlyThat... -
Answered a Question in Oedipus Rex
In Oedipus, we should admire Oedipus, of course. He is my favorite tragic hero because of his double blind ambition both to know the truth and to punish himself for not knowing the truth.... -
Answered a Question in Othello
In Othello, Iago is a misogynist from the beginning of the play to the end. Quite simply, he sees women as inferior beings to men, and he has a hand in two of the three female characters'... -
Answered a Question in Othello
In Othello, Iago very cleverly uses much emotional imagery to evoke an emotional response from Desdemona's father Brabantio regarding her elopement. The images are as follow: Thief and... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
There's many perspectives from which to view ambition in the play Macbeth: from both then and now, and from Macbeth's and Lady Macbeth's viewpoints. During Duncan's regin, there really was no... -
Answered a Question in A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In O'Connor's short stories, including "A Good Man is Hard to Find," no one is a deep thinker: all are flat, static "wingless chickens" who care only for the material world, not the spiritual one.... -
Answered a Question in The Cask of Amontillado
As Poe's "The Cask of Amantillado" begins, Montressor says: THE THOUSAND INJURIES of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult. During the story, however,... -
Answered a Question in The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is told in flashback as Holden, age 17, narrates from a rest home in California. The action of the story proper takes place the previous year, when he is 16.... -
Answered a Question in The Importance of Being Earnest
My favorite satirical episode is in Act I of The Importance of Being Earnest when Algernon eats all the cucumber sandwiches. Algernon has invited his Aunt Augusta to tea. Before she... -
Answered a Question in Everyday Use
In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," Mrs. Johnson's dream is to be reunited publicly with Dee on a television talk show, like Johnny Carson. There, she will have tears in her eyes as her... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
In Romeo and Juliet, Old Capulet throws a masquerade party because it is tradition (it's "an old accustom'd feast") and, well, because he can. He is perhaps the richest man in Verona and he... -
Answered a Question in The Man He Killed
The poem "The Man He Killed" is told to us by an unnamed narrator (a man in a bar) who overhears a one-sided conversation (a kind of dramatic monologue) made by a soldier who killed a man.... -
Answered a Question in Oedipus Rex
In Oedipus Rex, the Chorus acts as an intermediary, much like Jocasta will later when she comes between Oedipus and Creon. They try to be the voice of "reason" (logos) in response to the... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
In Act II of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern act as foils for Polonius, whom Hamlet has just dismissed, and Horatio. Whereas Hamlet trusts Horatio as his only friend in the play, Hamlet... -
Answered a Question in William Shakespeare
Shakespeare no doubt respected Sophocles' role as the father of tragedy. Just as Sophocles limited the role of the chorus and focused more on humans than gods, so too did Shakespeare reveal... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
In addition to the superb answer above, the first line is a paradox, verbal irony, and an equivocation, all of which reveal opposites conjoined. The phrase "A little more than kin and less... -
Answered a Question in Lady Lazarus
Why does anyone write anything? To speculate is to diminish the art. The New Critics would not like this question... Poetry is confession, catharsis, therapy, a way of making sense of... -
Answered a Question in Edmund Spenser
The Amoretti, by Sir Edmund Spender, is a series of sequential sonnets. "Sonnet 67" picks up where "Sonnet 66" leaves off. Whereas most of Petrarch's sonnets end with death or... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
Obviously, he shouldn't. Murder has physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences. The murder of a benevolent King who was also family? Even worse. Macbeth becomes a... -
Answered a Question in Two Kinds
In Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club, Suyuan's belief in American Culture is similar to the other Chinese mothers: You could be anything you wanted in America (141). Suyuan and the other mothers want the... -
Answered a Question in The Return
Pound's "The Return" is a free verse poem that, most critics agree, is the poem that incited the free verse movement that was so prevalent in poetry at the beginning of the 20th century. The poem... -
Answered a Question in Literary Terms
Staccato sentences: a plain, tough style of narration leads to greater believability; the audience trusts a writer more who doesn't use excessive words; Hemingway said he "distrusted adjectives,... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
In Acts I - IV, Hamlet calls himself an "ass," a "coward," a "beggar," "mad north-north-west," "pigeon-liver'd," "tame," "not splenitive and rash." In short, he is anything but... -
Answered a Question in Bildungsroman
Bildung ("education") + Roman (novel) = a novel dealing with a young person's formative years in terms: education (spiritual, ethical) maturation (physical, emotional) coming-of-age... -
Answered a Question in A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The family, specifically the grandmother, are alazons (those who think they are better than they really are); they are essentialists (those who believe in a perfectible human nature); they are lost... -
Answered a Question in A Good Man Is Hard to Find
I'll say Flannery O'Connor. Ultimately, it is only she who controls the LACK OF MORALITY in her fiction. She would not want us to choose either the Misfit or the grandmother since all... -
Answered a Question in King Lear
In Act II.ii of King Lear, Kent (disguised) is taking Lear to Regan in hopes that she could lodge her father and his troops. Instead, Kent is placed in stocks because of what he says to... -
Answered a Question in 1984
In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother, the symbolic figure-head for the totalitarian police state regime, holds hypnotic power over the populace, using abusive tactics of the extreme left (communism) and... -
Answered a Question in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The first line has inverted syntax (the subject and predicate are placed at the end): Whose woods these are I think I know. The imagery is as follows: natural imagery: "woods," "snow," "frozen... -
Answered a Question in The Catcher in the Rye
I think Holden is deciding if he is a fish or a duck. His biggest decision is, as the Clash say, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" Holden's dead brother Allie is the fish frozen forever, trapped in... -
Answered a Question in The Cask of Amontillado
"The Cask of Amontillado" would lose its timelessness if it were narrated the day after. Revenge and revenge stories are dishes best served cold. You can't tell them hot. If it happened... -
Answered a Question in As I Lay Dying
The Bundrens are to the Southern U.S. what the Oedipus family is to Greece and the Hamlets are to Denmark: dysfunction, though not incestuous. By the time they reach Jefferson all are wounded... -
Answered a Question in Brave New World
The world is a monolithic community. There is one World State, run by a Controller. There are no separate nations; all have been amalgamated into one. This world state controls... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
There's no such thing as fate or blame in tragedy, at least not by the characters therein. Shakespeare is to be blamed for the tragedy, not anyone else. He controls fate only. He knew... -
Answered a Question in The Importance of Being Earnest
Lane is Algernon's self-depricating servant. He serves as the eiron (character who thinks he is lower than he really is), a comic foil to Algernon's alazon (character who thinks he is better... -
Answered a Question in To Marguerite—Continued
Matthew Arnold's "To Marguerite--Continued" is a romantic poem (both literally and figuratively), filled with passionate despair regarding the sea's isolation, a metaphor for his possible...
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