Mike Walter, M.A.
eNotes Educator
Achievements
15
Educator Level
1487
Answers Posted
373
Answers Bonused
About
Nationally certified English teacher in the Atlanta, Georgia area.
Earned Badges
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eNotes Educator
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in Native Son
Richard Wright’s Native Son is about a young black man named Bigger who accidentally kills a white woman. Most of the story takes place as Bigger tries to evade capture. The first part of the novel... -
Answered a Question in Literature
Unlike Everyman, the characters in “The Pardoner’s Tale” and the Pardoner himself do not come to any sort of internal revelation that results in a significant change in their perceptions and... -
Answered a Question in Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver’s Travels is a satirical novel published by Jonathan Swift in 1729. The purpose of the novel is to expose the weaknesses and problems of life in eighteenth-century England and Ireland. In... -
Answered a Question in The First Seven Years
Bernard Malamud’s short story "The First Seven Years" is about a father, Feld, who wants to ensure a secure future for his daughter, Miriam. To understand Feld’s motivation, it helps to understand... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel’s Night is an autobiographical story of his experience during the Holocaust. This small book is book is a favorite among high school teachers and students because of its honest,... -
Answered a Question in Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie is a Native American writer from the Spokane, Washington area. He had some challenges as a child that kept him from taking part in some traditional kids' activities, like sports. One... -
Answered a Question in Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird” is poem about the effects of slavery that echoes a famous poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar called “Sympathy.” Both poems juxtapose images of two birds, one free and one... -
Answered a Question in Everyday Use
Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" is about a rural African American family involved in a struggle over interpersonal roles. The narrator is the mother of the family. The two daughters... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel's novel Night tells the story of his Holocaust experience as a young teen. The novel, written in a darkly poetic style, leaves the reader wondering how the world could turn a blind eye... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel's Night is the semiautobiographical story of Wiesel's Holocaust experience in his early teens. The story is filled with haunting imagery and symbols and poetic diction. Wiesel refers... -
Answered a Question in World War II
The moral dilemma was probably the most frequently cited reason against dropping an atomic weapon on Japan. It is fairly well countered by the idea that if the United States had not used the bomb,... -
Answered a Question in The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a novel written in the romantic tradition, telling a story of guilt, suffering, and redemption. The end of the story traces the development of the... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel’s short novel Night is a semiautobiographical account of his experiences as a teenaged boy in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. A motif is a recurring image or idea that helps... -
Answered a Question in Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness was published in 1899. At that time, England was still a colonial power in various parts of the world. To understand the novel and how Conrad uses the... -
Answered a Question in To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story, also known as a “bildungsroman.” In this kind of story, the protagonist, in this case Scout, is shown to grow and develop as a person.... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel’s semi-autobiographical book Night tells the story of his survival of the Holocaust during World War II. Therefore, discrimination is pervasive throughout the entirety of the... -
Answered a Question in The Most Dangerous Game
Richard Connell’s short story "The Most Dangerous Game" is the story of a hunter whose favorite game is the hunting of humans. The word "game" is a pun. It can mean a "game" that people play, or it... -
Answered a Question in To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird can be read as a story about parenting. Lee draws the character of Atticus Finch in such an endearing manner as to make him as memorable as the first person... -
Answered a Question in The Open Window
Saki’s short story “The Open Window” features a literary technique called dramatic irony. A writer creates dramatic irony when he/she reveals information to the reader that one or more of the... -
Answered a Question in The Scarlet Ibis
James Hurst's "The Scarlet Ibis" is probably one of the saddest stories you will ever read. Hurst tells the story of two brothers, one of whom (Doodle) is physically disabled. The older brother... -
Answered a Question in Gulliver's Travels
The first answer to this post thoroughly covered the allegorical connections in part I of Gulliver's Travels. Swift goes on to write three more parts to Gulliver's Travels. Each part takes... -
Answered a Question in The Interlopers
“The Interlopers” by Saki is often taught in schools because it is such a striking example of plot twist--the main characters, bent on killing each other for so long, come to an agreement to end... -
Answered a Question in The Seafarer
“The Seafarer” is an Old English poem by an anonymous author. Composed sometime in the Anglo-Saxon period or Early Middle Ages, it reflects the poetic style of its day in that it utilizes the sound... -
Answered a Question in Emily Dickinson
One way to identify and analyze tone is to look at the writer’s word choice, which we refer to as diction. Emily Dickinson’s poem “Success is Counted Sweetest” is, like most of her poems, very... -
Answered a Question in The Progressive Era
The American Progressive movement is generally considered to have originated in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to the abuses of big business and the problems that plagued the lower... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
The Odyssey, composed sometime around 900 BC, is notable for many reasons. It is full of memorable stories that writers and artists have alluded to in their works for about 3,000 years now. One of... -
Answered a Question in To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird is told from the first person point-of-view of the character Scout. It is often mistakenly said that the story is told from her perspective as a... -
Answered a Question in The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant
W. D. Weatherell's short story "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant" is about a fourteen-year-old boy who develops a crush on a seventeen-year-old girl named Sheila Mant. Sheila is clearly... -
Answered a Question in The First Seven Years
Bernard Malamud's short story "The First Seven Years," is about a middle-aged Jewish man named Feld who must come to grips with his daughter Miriam's independence. Feld wishes for his... -
Answered a Question in The Cold Equations
Characterization is one of a writer's most important jobs. Characters that act and sound like real people—like people we know or perhaps can identify with ourselves—make a story much more... -
Answered a Question in The Cold Equations
Tom Godwin's story "The Cold Equations" is a science fiction story about a girl who stows away on a supply ship bound for a planet called Woden. Like any good science fiction, the story derives its... -
Answered a Question in A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun's characters of Asagai and Murchison are, as the previous posts noted, very different. The way they differ from each other makes them a kind of character that we call a "foil."... -
Answered a Question in Harrison Bergeron
One of the themes to Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" is the idea that all people should be forced into a mold that makes them equally "successful." That's why we see weights attached to ballet... -
Answered a Question in Blues Ain't No Mockingbird
Toni Cade Bambara's short story "Blues Ain't No Mockin' Bird" is about a rural black family whose privacy and dignity is invaded by a pair of bumbling county workers. The county workers are... -
Answered a Question in Blues Ain't No Mockingbird
Toni Cade Bambara's short story "Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird" appeared in a collection of her stories in 1972. It is about a black family trying to deal with a pair of white county government... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
The epic hero is a literary convention that defines a specific type of character. This kind of character typically possesses a number of particular traits, including some sort of extraordinary... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
In the epic poem Beowulf, Beowulf engages in several battles with supernatural monsters: Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon. The battle against Grendel's mother contains an important... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
The epic poem Beowulf draws a sharp contrast between the human characters and the monsters they do battle with. Grendel, as a monster "spawned in that slime," is fundamentally different than... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Hrothgar, king of the Danes, built the mighty mead hall Herot for several reasons, both of which reflect the context in which the epic poem Beowulf was composed. Hrothgar wanted to build the hall... -
Answered a Question in Night
A writer's purpose can usually be found in the themes that he develops in his work. In Elie Wiesel's Night, there are several themes that run throughout the work. When Wiesel writes about the... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Beowulf's victory over Grendel early in the epic establishes Beowulf as a great warrior, possibly the greatest warrior in the world. The Geats and the Danes both celebrate his victory--thinking... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
When Beowulf was first transcribed into Old English by Anglo-Saxon monks, England was not yet the unified country we know today. One of the factors that eventually brought about that unification... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel's Night tells the story of a young teen subjected to the horrors of concentration camp life in the last year of World War II. In the book's fourth section Wiesel briefly describes a... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel's Night is a Holocaust story that is based on Wiesel's experiences at several concentration camps in 1944-1945. In the third section of the book, fourteen-year-old Elie and his family... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
When Beowulf enters Hrothgar's Herot, he wants to present himself as the warrior who is going to free the Danes from Grendel's terror. Never one to be timid, Beowulf touts his own accomplishments... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
As all of the previous posts noted, the act of hanging Grendel's arm over the rafter is a way for the poet to show Beowulf's prowess as a warrior. Never one to miss a chance to boast, Beowulf opted... -
Answered a Question in Animal Farm
Orwell did indeed want to comment on Communism with his allegorical fable Animal Farm. The society that the animals set up is analogous to the beginnings of the Russian Revolution. The ideas that... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
A tragic hero has to have a great fall. The drama in the epic is derived from watching the hero unwittingly ensnare himself in a trap he can't get out of. As the hero finds himself defeated because... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
There is not actually one definitive list of epic hero characteristics. Different sources identify different traits, depending on their own perspective. The list in the previous post is pretty... -
Answered a Question in The Canterbury Tales
Journeys are an important part of many literary works. The journey is a plot device that makes it possible for Chaucer to have all his characters together long enough to tell their stories. It...
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