Book Reviews

Symbolic Essay - The Diary of Anne Frank

Blending Worlds

Mystery is usually caused by the combination of the real world and the spiritual world. Bell was somewhat effective when he mixed the real and spirit worlds together. He was successful with some of his feelings of reality in certain situations but not all of the reality he created was believable this is somewhat unclear and should be rephrased. The situations when Garnet spent the night in the log cabin and when Garnet and Raphella experienced the presence of Hanna support Bell’s effectiveness while the scene when the ghost men threw stones at Garnet and Raphella goes too much outside of reality to be believable.

The Joy Luck Club Research Paper

In the novel The Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan writes the stories by focusing on the clash between low-context American and high-context Chinese culture. The four mothers and four daughters grow up in very different education ways, which leads them to different characterizations. But love and hope can finally reconcile the serious conflict of generation gap. The author Amy Tan is born in America on 2.19.1952, whose parents are Chinese immigrants. She is interested in both Chinese and American culture since childhood, and is considered as a representative of American Chinese writers after the publication of The Joy Luck Club. "Tan was born in 1952 in Oakland, California. … Tan was strongly influenced by her mother's storytelling about the family's Chinese heritage, and she later used oral storytelling as a narrative device in her fiction. ... Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club, brought her acclaim, and rose quickly on The New York Times bestseller list" (Bomarito and Hunter Tan, Amy: Introduction 1).

Critical review on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Talking about Wuthering Heights is not an easy work at all. Since there are lots of articles already published concerning so many aspects of the novel, this essay is an attempt to establish a critical review on this great book. One of the general characteristics of the novel as a genre is the realistic intention; writers try to make an imitation of reality, or they try to show how reality should be, using the concept of verisimilitude. In Wuthering Heights, however, this concept itself is changed: we have spirits and ghosts in the narrative, leading us to a new style – the Gothic Novel. Another important remark is the hybridism of this genre in literature, thus it takes all others kinds of literature and put them together.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Inconsistency in Robert McCammon’s Novel Boy’s Life

The River Journey of Huck - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Mark Twain, is a story about a young boy named Huck struggling to find himself and is torn between what he should do by law and what he should do by intuition. For Huck and his friend Jim, a fugitive slave, the Mississippi River is the ultimate symbol of freedom. The river carries them toward freedom: for Jim, toward the free states; for Huck, away from his abusive father and the restrictive “sivilizing” of St. Petersburg. Much like the river itself, Huck and Jim are in flux, willing to change their attitudes about each other with little prompting. The Mississippi River plays several roles and holds a prominent theme throughout much of the story as a whole.

Book Review on Hills Like White Elephants Written by Ernest Hemingway

Without reading the story, what do you think the story is about just by looking at the title? Before I read this story, my eight-year old daughter saw the title, and she wanted me to read this for her because she thought it was about white elephants. I also thought about reading the story for my children. When I looked at the title, I had imagined white elephants, having escaped from a zoo, went up a hill and to live freely. Before Professor Hansen taught us about the symbolism that hills and white elephants represented, I totally misunderstood about this story. They were symbolism of pregnancy and unwanted gift (to express for main characters’ mind)

Maternal Obligations - A Paper Written on Tobias Wolff's Memoir This Boy's Life

Herbert Ward once said “Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.” In Tobias Wolff’s memoir, This Boy’s Life, Rosemary Wolff’s childhood causes her own parenting skills to suffer and reflect her past. This failure is much more evident in the novel than in the film. Rosemary is a loving mother to her child Tobie, but her abusive childhood causes her to live a life where she shadows her mother’s qualities and choices in men. This undermines her ability to assert authority over her son, and provide a suitable environment for him to live in, portraying her as a bad mother.

American Heroes are Not Always 'American Heroes" in Orson Scott Card's Novel Titled Ender's Game

American Heroes Are Not Always ‘American Heroes’
Christopher Reeve once said that “a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” In Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, the protagonist projects the psychological traits, the knowledge and the understanding of his surrounding environment, as well as the values acquired from experiences that are possessed by a true hero. Ender does not embody the American style hero, rather the generic heroic type, as the lessons he learns and values he acquires throughout the novel do not reflect those of the American culture. Ender’s label as a ‘Third’, his outstanding brilliance, and his values such as courage, commitment, compassion and faith, set him apart from the norm of children. These values allow him to successfully fight through the hardships that confront him as a result of his differences. Ender’s relentless character does not allow anything to stand between him and victory.

Book Review of 'Overthrow' by Steven Kinzer - Does the United States have a History of Overthrowing or Helping to Overthrow Foreign Governments?

Term Paper on the Book The War Over Iraq Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission by Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol

Essay on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Discrimination is all around us. It happened in the past, it happens now, and most likely will still happen in the future. But why are people discriminated? It could be because of their race, their gender, their religion, and etc. Of Mice and Men focuses on the struggles of two migrant workers, George and Lennie, in the 1930's as they try to achieve their dream of owning their own land. In the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, he reveals through his characterization and conflict that loneliness is the result of discrimination.

In Kings of the Forest, “cultural resilience” of the nomadic Raute hunter-gatherer society refers to their methods of incorporating the cultural elements of the larger neighboring Nepalese and manipulating it in order to preserve their own. The Nepalese have made numerous attempts to assimilate the Raute into their agrarian Hindu-Nepalese society, but have failed to do so as a result of their cultural resilience. To the typical outsider, one may view their nomadic lifestyle as one that is uncivilized, barbaric, and savage. On the contrary, the Raute are an intelligent group of hunter-gatherers who are well aware that they are but a single “strand in a larger web of nature and society.” The importance of their interconnectedness and relationship with their surrounding environment is apparent, especially in their use of language. The word “mana,” meaning elder brother, or ruler reflects their subordination to their Nepali counterpart. The Raute understand this, so to avoid any conflict they must use certain survival tactics to preserve their way of life.

Reversal of Power in Haha no Shukusho

I. Main argument: In Haha no Shukusho, Shono Yoriko is able to reverse the power relations between the narrator – the daughter – and the character of her mother through three distinct devices. Through control of her mother's size, her mother's role in the parent-child relation towards her, and through her control of narratives, the narrator of Haha is able to completely turn the tables on her mother; in the end it is the narrator who is in control of their relationship, not her mother. Noting the date of publication of the work – 1994 – it is not surprising that Shono also brings up some of the societal issues prevalent amongst youth at the time (bursting of the bubble, early 1990's) including school refusal syndrome (futoko), withdrawal syndrome (hikikomori), “parasite singles”, and the breakdown of the “enterprise society” (kigyo shakai). I wish to explore the reversals of power between the daughter and the mother in light of these developments to establish Haha as a social critique, which is just one possible reading of the text.

II. Brief discussion of early 1990's Japan, social setting, breakdown of the enterprise society

Seraphina Sullivan, from the novel Heave, grew up with an unstable home life. With an alcoholic father, a mentally unstable mother Seraphina was forced to be taken care of by her brother. Instead of having a mother to confide in or a father to protect her, Seraphina felt lost and alone all through her childhood. These aspects impacted her life greatly and at the breaking point of her life she became severally addicted to alcohol, which led her to experience the three stages of recovery. Author Christy Ann Conlin developed a realistic view on how hard it is to go through the phases of recovering from alcoholism in this novel. Anonymous poets who have gone through the three stages of recovery share how the three steps made a difference in their lives. Without going through these stages the addicts state, in a poetic fashion, how these stages helped them through the hard times. Most diseases and disorders are treated in the same general manner, but the fascinating part is how different the recovery is among people with the same issues. Take alcoholism for example. Alcoholism is a disabling addictive disorder.

Introduction
Milan Kundera has written the book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. He used life form to explain the human being difference existential style. He defined that heaviness and lightness to help us re-think human life. He designed four main characters Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz to show difference ways living style from urban to pastoral. This is response the existential question; what is better in our life? “Being unbearably heavy in life” or “being unbearable light in life.” Kundera said that philosopher “Parmenides posed this very question in the sixth century before Christ. He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/ darkness, fineness / coarseness, warmth / cold, being/ non-being. One half of the opposition he called positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative, we might find this division into positive and negative poles childishly simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness?” (Kundera: 1984: P.5) This question showed that problem of human being which one should positive, weight or lightness in our life.

Tomas existential style

In Chester Himes’s If He Hollers, Let Him Go, Bob Jones goes through many tantrums of anger over the four-day period in which the novel spans. Bob Jones reacts reflexively to racist acts with violent thoughts and even murderous intentions. He experiences episodes of hatred and rage due to unfair treatment from whites and blacks, males and females from various socioeconomic castes. However, the emotion of rage in this story is only encapsulates the surface. His outward explosions of rage only illustrate how he copes with his problems with identity. All of Bob’s anger and irritability stem from uncertainty about his masculine identity.

Essay on Susanna Kaysen's Character from the Novel Girl, Interrupted

Essay On The Catcher In The Rye By: J.D. Salinger

A title like “The Catcher in the Rye” makes one think twice when reading this book. There is a lot of thought put into the title itself, but its true meaning is not conveyed until the very end of the novel, making one have to think twice in order to really understand the story. “The Catcher in the Rye” is referred to in the book as “a person who catches little children as they are about to fall off of a cliff.” This meaning, while appearing to be quite peculiar, actually helps to explain the Holden’s actions throughout the entire novel. The main character, Holden, can only relate to younger people and has a problem with living as a teenager in a grown-up world. The phrase, “The Catcher in the Rye,” has a very innocent twist to it and Holden portrays this,
along with a very negatve and cynical view, in the novel.

Questions and Answers on But What Do You Mean by Deborah Tannen

1. What is Tannen’s purpose in writing this essay? What does she hope it will accomplish?

From what I gathered Tannen’s purpose was for us to comprehend the importance of communication in the work field. How the simplest verbal functions can be interpreted in many different ways. “Conversation is a ritual” I find so much meaning behind these four simple words, the article in its entirety are summed up by these word. Tannen wants to enlighten us to remember that our words are powerful. I believe she wants us to take back control over what we say. We are as infants and Deborah is as our mother, giving us our first words. Not to mention it seems as if she wants to open up the doors for men and women not only in the work place but in their homes; to become more aware and willing to really communicate with one another.

2. What does Tannen mean when she writes, “Conversation is a ritual”?

The Brethren - The third book in the Annie’s People series. The novel is set amongst the Amish in Paradise, Pennsylvania. The author Beverly Lewis portrays mercy and judgement in each circumstance of the Amish life.Throughout the novel each couple deals with the ups and downs of the Amish life these couples include; Esther and Zeke Hochstetler, Annie and her father Jesse Zook, and Annie and Ben, each couple goes through both the judgements and mercies of the Amish community. We will look at their struggles and how they press on while facing these challenges.

Firstly, Esther and Zeke, with Essie (Esther) shunned and “Zeke in his mentally disturbed state” (Nesdoly, Violet. "Book Review." 26 Nov 2006) They are judged by the brethren when Ester becomes pregnant just before Zeke is held in jail after confessing the murder of his brother Isaac 15 years ago.

Never Forget

In George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, he uses animals instead of humans to show the way in which power corrupts. The animals go from being ruled by humans, to overruling the humans and gaining power over the farm. “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” is shown through the pigs rise to power once, Old Major gives a speech about a dream he had. This dream was then followed and there was a change to absolute control and power.
For the animals, Mr Jones had the power over “Manor farm”. He was the one who looked after the animals and fed them “if he were gone, we would starve to death”. The Animals believed that man was bad, and that they should never to turn out to be like them. Old Major, who was a well-respected pig “he was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour’s sleep to listen to what he had to say” died, leaving the animals with the idea of rebellion from a dream he had. The animals immediately took control and decided what needed to be done.

Life events often inspire other ideas and arguments sometimes expressed through literature. Unable to control enormous occurrences, writers comment through various themes of work. Like the rest of the world on September 11, 2001, Bud Sparhawk struggled to come to terms with the infliction of merciless acts on other humans. Sparhawk translates his frustrating experiences with inhumanity onto paper, highlighting certain qualities of humans that together form the complexity of human condition. Using the theme of sacrifice, Sparhawk defines the features of human condition as both common and inevitable to human existence. “Bright Red Star” demonstrates the many faces of ignorance, bravery in all its forms, the decency of humans and their common need for connection.

Blood Lines by Rendell Ruth

Main Topics/Themes in the Story:

Looking for something to live for. We can definitely see that the main character's behavior is influenced and derived from the fact that she is in a search for meaning. She (Angela) is looking for the excitement, for reasons to get up in the morning and go to work.

Trust. The idea of trust is presented in the story when referring to Angela. She is considered to be trustworthy by her surroundings, but the narrator shows us that she is not as honest and trustworthy as everyone expected and considered her to be.

Morality. The issues regarding trust generate issues regarding morality. How do we handle this contradiction between the real Angela, and the Angela everyone believes in? How can she live with this dissonance? What makes us question Angela's morality?

Discussion of the topics:

I think that the two most important topics in this story are the issue of looking for meaning, and the ideas regarding trust. I believe that "trust" and "morality" have many aspects in common and are strongly related to one another, as I elaborated in part 1, and this is why I will refer to both as "trust issues".

Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep
More Than Just Another 'Whodunit'

Discovering Womanhood in the Hood

Everyone does it. Everyone has to grow up sometime, and growing up brings many circumstances that can alter how people live. Changes in life can often decide how people see and experience different things in life; a young persons optimism could be shattered by the death of a loved one, or moving to a new neighborhood could set someone’s social adeptness back a forever. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza’s slowly evolving maturity and sexuality change the way she perceives and views the men and women of Mango Street, as well as herself.

The Catcher in the Rye Essay - Reviewing the Holding Complex

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." Chapter 25, page 214 is a quote that leaves me puzzled, even more because it's the last saying in the novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951) written by J. D. Salinger. It may have many interpretation but to me it is an advise that the narrator and may be the author too gives us to enjoy time passed with people because even if we think we don’t appreciate someone we miss him once alone..And this is absolutely what happened to Holden Caulfield, experiencing life in New York. Holden is a complex character in the book that can be assimilated to a kind of anti-hero as he gives himself the difficult task of fighting society's phoniness, and in the end commits that task hypocritically. To what extent the message conveyed by the narrator during his only moment of freedom is merely?

The Strange Addiction of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The thing or someone that people think about all the time, talk about all the time, and can even dream about all the time is called addiction. Addiction is what people do think about that makes their life not boring. It gives them motivation to do something, but can lead to trade-offs in their life. They will start spending more time doing that addiction than doing the things they liked to do, having withdrawals, and a higher amount of usage in that addiction according to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) . In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll makes a potion that releases his bad side and he feels much more free and alive as Mr. Hyde. With this experiment, Dr. Jekyll experiences these signs of addiction.