William Graham Sumner

In his short story Blankets, Alex La Guma takes us through the life story of Choker. He makes use of the blankets as a motif and flashbacks to help us understand the past, which intern help us to understand the present. The essay will show how the story of Choker can be seen as tragic, and how the onlookers are antagonistic toward Choker and vice versa. It will also show how the readers can show both sympathy and antipathy toward Choker, and will indicate a reversal of initial assumptions.…

often hide under a mask of goodness to cover their true intentions, those of evil and deceit. Once an individual’s disguise is destroyed by one’s reality, another can clearly see through one’s disguise and see who one truly is. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding proves the bitter reality of a world under the disguise of goodness; he emphasizes the darkness and evil of mankind through an island that alludes to the real world. Simon is developed as a Christ figure and one who is too utopic in…

American Romanticism is a literary and philosophical movement that was primarily in the 1800’s and was a response to the enlightenment. Some key things American Romanticism focuses on is nature, individual, imagination, insight, and intuition. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two famous American Romanticism poets from the 1800’s that were very influential. While Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are different in the ways they view society, they are similar in how they value the individual…

Carolyn Heilbrun’s The Character of Hamlet’s Mother describes the role and the characterization of the queen, Gertrude, in Hamlet. In comparison, T.S. Eliot’s Hamlet and his Problems, describes how the work of Hamlet is an artistic failure. When compared, Heilbrun’s essay is more practical and more agreeable due to its use of quotes from the play and its organized structure than that of Eliot’s. She uses this piece as a means to help readers understand the purpose that Gertrude plays in the…

The Divine Comedy, composed by Dante Alighieri some place around the year 1308 and initially called The Comedy, is generally viewed as one of the preeminent works of Italian writing. It is an epic poem that comprises of three books: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, which chronicle (portray) the experiences of Dante the Pilgrim (an imaginary character embodied by Dante himself) in his goes through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Albeit terrifying on a strict level, on a more noteworthy level it…

August Strindberg’s play ‘Miss Julie’ is a master playwright that has been the basis of critical controversy. Written during summer in 1888, the play was censored entirely in Europe during the late Nineteenth Century. The play was believed to deal with situations that were deemed as socially offensive. As much as the play presents a dramatic method which is characterised by an urge to experiment, the innovation Strindberg sought to cultivate were designed with having a social and moral agenda in…

It is surprising but true that audiences or readers would have come to the play knowing the outcome of the battle yet Shakespeare tends to create dramatic suspense and tension. John Summons defines 'dramatic tension' as "how you keep an audience hooked to the story of your play. It is about creating and maintaining an audience's involvement in the 'journey of your play." The playwright achieves this by using dramatic tragedy and twists, structure of the play and the characters and their…

Li Bai wrote “Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon” in 774AD when he stayed in Chang’an, which is the capital of the Tang Dynasty. In this time, Li Bai would like to achieve his ambitions. Because of his deceit and jealousy, and because his mistrusted Li Bai, Emperor Tang Ming Huang did not put him in an important position, for the emperor did not trust him. For this reason, Li Bai felt lonely, depressed and discontented. Moreover, one of his best friends, Zhizhang He, returned home several months…

Blood Brothers, by Willy Russell is a story about two twin brothers born in a unfortunate working class with a abandoned mother, named Mrs Johnstone. Mickey and Eddie are the twins. The main theme “seems to be saying that the real world social forces the shape of people’s lives.” The variance between social class effects most of the characters in the play, this expresses the story about family and friendship, which fluctuates the heart of the play and the core behind the social class. Willy…

In the tragedy Othello by William Shakespeare, the women are treated poorly, while the men are treated a lot better. In contrast to this message, the men in Othello are untrustworthy, while the women are more trustworthy, however, the women are unable to prove this because of the standard that society forces onto them. Shakespeare uses the message that humans, by nature, have a power imbalance accentuated through gender, as the men in Othello are given more respect and credibility, despite their…