Cain and Abel

Strange Fruit In the mid 1930’s, a New York teacher by the name Abel Meeropol was stunned by an eerie photograph taken at a lynching on August 7, 1930. The revolting glimpse of the lifeless bodies hanging helplessly on a maple tree was said to “haunt” Meeropol “for days.” The sight disturbed him so much, it led him to write a poem titled, “Strange Fruit” in 1937, which was published and later converted into a song reperformed by Billie Holiday in 1939. “Strange Fruit” was significant to the…

Charles Dickens’s novel, Great Expectations, centers around the personal growth and development of a young orphan named Pip. When the novel begins, Pip encounters a convict named Magwitch while visiting the graves of his family. Magwitch scares Pip into giving him some food and a file to release himself from the shackles on his leg. Dickens uses several literary devices such as imagery, style, and point of view to recreate this scene in the readers mind. One important aspect of how Dickens…

Pip influenced several characters in Dickens' Great Expectations, because of the way he treated them. The character of Pip changes throughout the story, mainly because of his social ladder; from being at the bottom rung to going to the top of the rung. He changed both physically and mentally, from being an innocent boy to an arrogant man. Also, he realized at the end of the story, that how he treated the people that cared for him like nothing, was absolutely wrong. This had an influence on many…

Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” is famous for being written on New Year’s Eve, which marked the turn of the century. The very work darkling is an old word which has been used since the 15th century, while the Thrush is a type of songbird which is known for its beautiful voice. The title as a whole could be literally interpreted as a songbird whose song which is slowly fading over time but will not be forgotten. A deeper interpretation could be the fact that Hardy is perhaps looking back on…

My Papa’s Waltz The poem, My Papa’s Waltz is one of the best works by Theodore Roethke. When it is looked at first glance, it can be seen as a simple four-stanza body of work, but upon further analysis, we see it has a deeper meaning. Childhood experiences seem to play a significant role in the development of the plot. The dance that is described in the poem shows an interaction between a child and his father that has more nuances than it meets the eye. At first glance, there is a joyous and…

Being Kidnapped seems like a situation that would be terrible to be in. For one kid, it was the best few days of his life and he did not want to leave. “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry, is a fictional short story. Bill and Sam are the two main characters in the story. With much work they plan to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois. To do this they need two thousand dollars. These two men decide to kidnap Ebenezer Dorset’s child and offer a ransom. Bill and Sam take the…

“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses women for their strengths.” (Lois Wyse) She Stoops to Conquer is an 18th Century play by Oliver Goldsmith which tells the story of how a lady crosses class lines to conquer her love. The plot is unravelled when Charles Marlow, a man who is brought to marry noble woman Miss Kate Hardcastle by her father, has a minor foible whereby he is frozen stiff with fear when it comes to talking and socializing with upper-class women. However when it comes…

At some point in life, everybody has had dreams, hopes for the future, whether it be as a child, teenager, or adult. In the novel Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck and the short story “The Gift of the Magi” written by O’ Henry, hope is used as a theme and plot device driving the story forward. However different, in these stories the theme of hope/achieving goals can and is seen, George and Lennie's hope to have a better life vs. Della and Jim’s hope for a nice Christmas, how they go…

Sacraments Flannery O’ Connor’s story; The River, a child named Henry is left with his babysitter for the day. From the beginning, the child lies and steals a book. He is shown to be sinful with his small actions. He seems to be raised in an unfaithful household and has little attention from his parents. In the story, when Henry meets his babysitter, he states that she is like “...a speckled skeleton...” (O’Conner, 157) and that her kids are also like skeletons but “like a skeleton of an old…

Great Expectations is a novel composed by Charles Dickens, this novel is set in early Victorian England, a period when tremendous social changes were influencing the country. It is a story told in the first person narration by a moderately aged Pip, who is glancing back at his adolescence and youth. The story takes its starting when Pip is just 6 or 7 years of age and is living with his sister and her metal forger spouse Joe in light of the fact that his parents are dead. Great Expectations…