
Robert C. Evans
eNotes Educator
Achievements
17
Educator Level
3040
Answers Posted
1336
Answers Bonused
About
I am a college-level teacher of English and American literature and am the author of numerous books and articles.
Earned Badges
-
eNotes Educator
This badge is awarded to all eNotes Educators. Only official Educators can answer students' questions on our site. Educators are teachers, professional researchers, and scholars who apply to our... -
Outstanding Educator
The Outstanding Educator award is given at the discretion of the managing editor. It is awarded for consistently intelligent or insightful contributions to Homework Help. -
Hall of Fame
Educators can earn this badge by contributing over 1,000 answers on eNotes. -
Year One Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over one year. -
Year Two Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over two years. -
Year Three Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over three years. -
Year Four Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over four years. -
Year Five Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over five years. -
Year Six Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over six years. -
Year Seven Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over seven years. -
Year Eight Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over eight years. -
Year Nine Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over nine years. -
Year Ten Badge
This badge is awarded once an Educator has been in the eNotes Educator Program for over ten years. -
10K Points Earner
Educators earn points for every question they answer. This Educator has earned over 10,000 points. -
25K Points Earner
Educators earn points for every question they answer. This Educator has earned over 25,000 points. -
50K Points Earner
Educators earn points for every question they answer. This Educator has earned over 50,000 points. -
100K Points Earner
Educators earn points for every question they answer. This Educator has earned over 100,000 points. -
Expert
An expert badge distinguishes Educators who demonstrate strong knowledge in a particular topic, such as Hamlet or Math. It is awarded when an Educator has posted more than 25 answers on a given topic. -
Scholar
The scholar badge recognizes Educators who are especially knowledgeable about a particular author. This badge is awarded once an Educator has posted more than 50 answers on works by a specific author. -
Poetry Whiz
Bonuses are awarded when an Educator has gone above and beyond and impressed the editorial team by offering an especially lengthy, nuanced, or insightful answer. This badge is given to an Educator... -
Literature Whiz
Bonuses are awarded when an Educator has gone above and beyond and impressed the editorial team by offering an especially lengthy, nuanced, or insightful answer. This badge is given to an Educator...
Recent Activity
-
Answered a Question in The Awakening
One of the first lengthy descriptions of Alcee Arobin in Kate Chopin's short novel The Awakening appears in Chapter 25 and reads as follows (with key words placed in bold): He was a familiar... -
Answered a Question in The Awakening
Mademoiselle Reisz is a key character in Kate Chopin'sThe Awakening. She represents two contrasting models of womanhood in the novel. The other model, that of the "mother-woman," is represented by... -
Answered a Question in As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner is a writer who appreciated good writing. He wanted to be judged at least as much by the skill of his phrasing as by the themes or ideas dealt with in his works. He was, in fact, a... -
Answered a Question in The Great Gatsby
Near the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Nick (the narrator) is heading back to Long Island in a car driven by Tom Buchanan. Jordan Baker is the other passenger. Suddenly... -
Answered a Question in The Great Gatsby
At one point toward the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Jordan Baker speaks the following words as most of the major characters approach New York City: “I love New York on... -
Answered a Question in The Misanthrope
Misanthropy – a deep-seated, fundamental capacity to hate human beings – appears in a number of characters in works of literature written in a number of different eras. Examples include the... -
Answered a Question in The Catcher in the Rye
In Chapter 24 of J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Antolini, Holden Caulfield’s former English teacher, worries that Holden may be headed for a “fall”: "This fall I think you're... -
Answered a Question in Othello
Chance and coincidence play significant roles in William Shakespeare’s play Othello. Examples of chance or coincidence in the play include the following: After Michael Cassio has been stripped of... -
Answered a Question in The Alchemist
The characters in Ben Jonson’s play The Alchemist all have significant names, as the following list of the dramatis personae (“persons of the drama”) implies: SUBTLE, the Alchemist: Subtle’s name... -
Answered a Question in The Alchemist
Sir Epicure Mammon, one of the most memorable characters in Ben Jonson’s play The Alchemist, is associated with excess and with a commitment to material pleasures. These traits are especially... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
At one point in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, the title character asks a demon for books about planets and plant-life: Faustus Now would I have a book where I... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
The confrontation between the good and bad angels in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus is typical of this drama in many ways. Marlowe’s play is very much concerned with the conflict... -
Answered a Question in On a Drop of Dew
Lines 11-18 of Andrew Marvell’s poem “On a Drop of Dew” might be paraphrased and explicated as follows: But gazing back upon the skies, [But the drop of dew... -
Answered a Question in On a Drop of Dew
Andrew Marvell’s poem titled “On a Drop of Dew” might be considered a “metaphysical” poem for a number of different reasons. In the first place, the poem is decidedly philosophical as it... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
During Christopher Marlowe’s time and for centuries before then,“wrath,” or anger, was considered one of the “seven deadly sins.” In fact, Wrath appears as a character in Marlowe’s play Doctor... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
During Christopher Marlowe’s time and for centuries before then, “pride,” or self-centeredness, was considered one of the “seven deadly sins.” It was in fact considered the root of all other sins.... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
During Christopher Marlowe’s time and for centuries before then,“lechery,” or lust, was considered one of the “seven deadly sins.” In fact, Lechery appears as a character in Marlowe’s play Doctor... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
During Christopher Marlowe’s time and for centuries before then,“sloth” was considered one of the “seven deadly sins.” In fact, Sloth appears in as a character in Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus in... -
Answered a Question in Billy Budd
Captain Vere, in Herman Melville’s short novel titled Billy Budd, is one of the most complex characters in all of American literature. He is the focus of a great and enduring critical debate,... -
Answered a Question in Billy Budd
John Claggart, the villain in Herman Melville’s short novel Billy Budd, can in some ways be seen as an example of the kind of corrupted individualism sometimes associated with so-called “dark... -
Answered a Question in Paradise Lost
Perhaps the most important “crisis of authority” in England in the seventeenth century was the rebellion against King Charles I and his execution as part of the English Civil War. Milton was a... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe’s most famous play is called, on one of its early title pages, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. This title implies that Marlowe, at least, thought of it as a kind of... -
Answered a Question in Utopia
The idea that greed and the personal ownership of private property are behind much of the injustice in the world needs to be examined carefully. For example, greed is not necessarily the same... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
The central character in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus undergoes a gradual tragic downfall in a number of ways during the course of the play. Consider, for instance, these examples: In... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe’s play titled Doctor Faustus is typical of the Renaissance in its fusion of classical and Christian ideas. Because Renaissance Christians believed that Christianity was... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
The anonymous work known as Everyman and the play by Christopher Marlowe titled Doctor Faustus are both “morality plays” in the simplest sense, since both attempt to teach moral, Christian... -
Answered a Question in Doctor Faustus
Differences between the middle ages and the so-called “Renaissance” can easily be exaggerated. Both, after all, were eras in which Christianity was taken extremely seriously, although by the... -
Answered a Question in Everyman
The late medieval morality play titled Everyman teaches moral and religious lessons while entertaining its audience, and in fact it often teaches such lessons by entertaining its audience. Writers,... -
Answered a Question in Everything That Rises Must Converge
Near the conclusion of Flannery O’Connor’s short story titled “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” an arrogant and inconsiderate Julian tells his elderly mother, who has just been struck to the... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
One literary technique used very prominently in Act VI, scene 3 of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is the technique known as anaphora, when a series of adjacent phrases, clauses, or sentences... -
Answered a Question in D. H. Lawrence
Some of the differences usually assumed to exist between Victorian literature and modernist literature can be glimpsed by comparing and contrasting Matthew Arnold’s poem beginning “Come to me in my... -
Answered a Question in the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
The poem by e. e. cummings that begins “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls” might be considered an example of literary modernism for a number of reasons, including the following: The... -
Answered a Question in Song: To Celia
As Terence Dawson and Robert Scott Dupree note in their splendid book titled Seventeenth-Century English Poetry: An Annotated Edition, Ben Jonson’s lyric beginning “Drink to me only with thine... -
Answered a Question in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” might be considered a reflection of the “realist” movement in American literature for a number of reasons, including the following:... -
Answered a Question in Harrison Bergeron
Kurt Vonnegut arguably wrote his story titled “Harrison Bergeron” for a number of reasons, including the following: Vonnegut may have wanted to appeal to readers’ interests in prophecies about the... -
Answered a Question in Slaughterhouse-Five
Individual readers will have to decide for themselves whether Kurt Vonnegut, in his novel Slaughterhouse Five, has presented a credible depiction of the effects wartime stress can have on those who... -
Answered a Question in Defence of Poesie
Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry is one of the most important pieces of prose of the entire English Renaissance. Sidney’s defense of poetry is important not so much because its ideas are... -
Answered a Question in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
In his story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce disrupts normal chronological order, placing news of the successful hanging – which takes place very early in purely chronological... -
Answered a Question in The Miller's Tale
Geoffrey Chaucer uses humor frequently and in numerous ways to make social criticisms in his poem titled The Canterbury Tales. One of the tales, the one associated with the Miller, is especially... -
Answered a Question in History
Satire is a use of language that involves mockery or ridicule. Sometimes the mockery is explicit; sometimes it is only implied. In this paragraph, for instance, the mockery is implied rather... -
Answered a Question in The Bluest Eye
In Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, the Foreword and Afterword (which are combined in some editions) make a number of points, including the following: Most people know how it feels to be... -
Answered a Question in Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut uses imagery of light and darkness in various ways in his novel titled Slaughterhouse Five. Examples include the following: At one point, Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in... -
Answered a Question in A Defence of Poetry
At the very conclusion of his essay “A Defence of Poetry,” Percy Bysshe Shelley says of poets, They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all... -
Answered a Question in The Poetry of Blake
William Blake’s poem “The Divine Image” is a lyric from the first part of his collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and Experience. Like many of the other “songs of innocence,” this one... -
Answered a Question in The Lottery
As its very title suggests, Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” focuses on an apparent game of chance. Unless lotteries are rigged, they are supposed to be decided purely by accident,... -
Answered a Question in Astrophil and Stella
One important theme of the first poem of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella is love, or at least physical desire. Another important theme is the desire to write poetry that... -
Answered a Question in Astrophil and Stella
Lines 9-14 of the first poem of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence titled Astrophil and Stella might be explained as follows: But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay, In spite of... -
Answered a Question in Astrophil and Stella
In the opening poem of his sonnet sequence titled Astrophil and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney is already beginning his depiction of Astrophil as a foolish young man who has trouble controlling his... -
Answered a Question in The Lottery
Since the final effectiveness of Shirley Jackson’s story titled “The Lottery” depends strongly on a sense of surprise, Jackson constructs the story in various ways so that readers will not expect... -
Answered a Question in Sigmund Freud
Although Sigmund Freud was a psychologist rather than a literary theorist or literary critic, his ideas were quickly and enthusiastically applied to literature by many thinkers who are often called...
Showing 1-50 of 1244