Kristina Haley

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah devotes significant attention to nature.  He has been taught to pay attention to nature and to learn from it. He has grown up hearing his elders tell him that...

Chaucer uses satire in the descriptions of the pilgrims in the "General Prologue" of The Canterbury Tales to reveal corruption in the Church that was prevalent in society.  Many members of the...

Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale" is a medieval romance with the usual knight on an adventure.  Historically, knights in such Arthurian romances traditionally followed the code of...

Zitkala-Sa explains the significant bond between Native American mothers and daughters in "Impressions of an Indian Childhood." It is important to note that the first stories in Zitkala-Sa's...

In the epic poem Beowulf, Beowulf's battles with supernatural monsters represent the challenges facing the Anglo-Saxons.  The Anglo-Saxons were constantly facing attacks by other tribes....

Beowulf also appears selfish when he asks Hrothgar for permission to fight Grendel without the help of the Danes.  He wants the glory for himself and the Geats.  He goes on to say he...

In George Orwell's novel 1984, Winston does observe that Mrs. Parsons often breaks off mid-sentence and fails to complete her thought.  This observation is important for a couple of reasons....

"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the...

Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella is a story of unrequited love.  The speaker longs for Stella, although she is already taken by another.  In "Sonnet 45," the...

Anaphora is a rhetorical device that involves the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of sentences or clauses.  Anaphora is used to stress or emphasize an idea.  Shakespeare...

Everyman is an allegorical morality play that was performed to teach a lesson to the medieval audience.  The play teaches us that every man must face his death alone with only the good deeds...

We are able to feel sympathy for Christopher.  By experiencing the story as Christopher does, we view the world through his eyes and are able to understand his world.  I don't think this...

Nature is symbolic in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.  The horse stable is important because it is where Crooks is forced to live.  Lennie and Crooks are alike in that they are both...

I usually have my students, at least in the beginning, write a thesis statement and topic sentences for body paragraphs before I allow them to begin writing the actual essay.  I've even...

On the Beach by Neville Shute would be a great novel to pair with The Road.  It is set in a post-apocalyptic Australia during the '60s.  The characters know that the end of life is...

I think good modern day additions would be the Unemployed pilgrim and the Reality TV Star.  The Unemployed pilgrim could foster some interesting dialogue, especially with the CEO, Banker, or...

Redress means to make amends or to set something right and  retribution is payback or revenge. Revenge and redressment are essentially opposites of each other. A person who seeks to...

The title of A Raisin in the Sun is an allusion to Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem."  In the poem, the speaker is asking what happens to a dream that is not realized.  One of the...

The use of "like" in the quote signifies that this is a simile.  It is comparing the situation in the courtroom during Tom Robinson's trial to the event that occured earlier in the novel when...

The purpose of the short story "The Necklace" is to show the danger in the pursuit of material possessions.  Mathilde longs for status in society and is so worried about impressing others that...

One example of a literary device used in this story is irony. According to the doctor, Louise "has died of heart disease -- of the joy that kills."  The doctor has assumed that Louise's heart...