Scott Schwartz

The novel Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick is a riveting novel that will keep you reading until page 273. The beginning of this novel starts on the main character, Leonard Peacocks, 18th birthday, and takes place within 24 hours of his beloved day. This day is a very eventful for Leonard, not only is it his birthday, but it is also the day he wants to become a suicide murder. What has driven Leonard to such a horrific state of mind? Was it his neglectful mother, or lack of friends…

Prohibition, which lead to the materialistic gains of bootleggers and parties roaring with alcohol. Speakeasys and surreptitious parties created a sort of underground culture that lurked in the shadows of high society. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald overlooked the glittering and shiny objects to unveil the moral corruptness present amongst the wealthy. Describing frivolous details of Gatsby’s party, Fitzgerald allows his repudiating beliefs towards the wealthy shine through. …

William Golding was a British author who wrote many novels in the mid to late 1900s. His most famous novel Lord of the Flies was written in 1954. Though during the time period that the novel was released it was not popular, in recent years it has become a prominent novel read across schools in the U.S. The Lord of the Flies comes in the wake of World War II. The novel is set on a remote island, where a plane was shot down by an enemy missile. Passengers on the plane were mostly young boys with…

“He flipped a switch. The gray windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light” (94). Unlike the various areas that represent a motif in Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, the Valley of Ashes is portrayed as a forsaken, dull, and polluted wasteland. Fitzgerald does an exceptional job at depicting the barriers of wealth and poverty by creating this location a common motif. The Valley of Ashes is described as “...a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and…

Fifty years ago, Harper Lee had the kind of success that most writers only dream about:Shortly after her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published on July 11, 1960, it hit the best-seller lists. In 1961, it won a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1962, it was made into an Academy Award-winning film. It has never gone out of print. Lee stepped out of the limelight and stopped doing interviews years ago -- and she neverwrote another book. Still, her influence has far outlasted most writers of her…

Children are pure and endowed with a quality that adults lose throughout their lifetime, innocence. Yet, we would not know if that innocence was ever there. When a group of children attempt to build their own form of government, the tables turn when ambitious boys begin become power hungry, and would do just about anything to achieve it. This book presents itself with a strive for survival with children of various ages attempting to live while preserving their sense of reality. In the Lord of…

back to the 1920s Roaring Twenties, a pivotal period that marked a turning point in Americans' lives, morally, materially and socially (Shen, 2012). This classic American novel is one of the finest pieces of American literature. It is such because F. Scott Fitzgerald has exhibit not only insight into the American psyche but also a magnificent grasp of “The American Dream” which Jay Gatsby represents (Pidgeon, 2007). The Great Gatsby's novel is more bookend the twentieth-century.…

“They were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Mark: 1: 22) The imposing figure of G.K. Chesterton, English writer and wit, was often seen squeezed behind a table in London restaurants. Chesterton always joked about his large bulk, saying that it gave him the consolation of offering his seat in the train to three ladies. During one of his literary lunches Chesterton was expounding on the relationship between power and authority.…

Introduction The true meaning of the American dream is nonexistent, everyone will define it differently. “The charm of anticipated success” that is the American dream according to Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political thinker and historian. Jim Cullen states in his book The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation “The Pilgrims may not have actually talked about the American dream, but they would have understood the idea: after all, they lived it as people who imagined…

Leisurely, the Industrial Revolution and Individualism article states, “Young single women had far more freedom of action in industrial cities than they would on farm households” (Chamberlain, 2018, p.2). Experiencing freedom outside the home, women were introduced to large amounts of leisurely activities. The article Recreation and Social Chaperonage in the Progressive Era discusses the activities enjoyed during this time, “A wide variety of commercial recreational venues soon developed to…