Category: Literary Criticism
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The Features of Literary Techniques in To Kill A Mockingbird
In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the author demonstrates how she uses literary techniques to convey the theme to the readers. The story is about a young girl named Scout living during the Great Depression and the Jim Crow era with her brother and father. The town is a society sharply…
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Essay on Symbolism in ‘The Outsiders’
Although published in 1967, Outsiders by S.E Hinton an easy-to-read narrative is still relevant to many teenagers today. Darry and Sodapop host a ‘good cop, bad cop’ bringing up and complimenting one another’s stern affection for Ponyboy. However, Pony also feels Darry is pushing and expects too much of him which is collateral to teenagers…
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Essay on ‘Oedipus Rex’: Analysis of Point of View
When comparing whether family or authority holds a higher status to Sophocles, it becomes clear that the aspect of the family has greater value. Although many of the characters believe that a strong authority prevents chaos, the need for authority was taken too far and resulted in their downfall. Even though certain characters were facing…
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Essay on ‘Oedipus the King’: Oedipus at Colonus Antigone
Sophocles’ The Three Theban Plays explores the faults in one’s character that triggers irrational and unlawful behavior. A specific fault seems to recur throughout the plays and pushes characters to commit the greatest crimes. To find this fault, it is vital to retrace the motivation of each character’s actions. The root of all their actions…
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Essay on ‘Oedipus the King’: Who Told Oedipus His Fate
Brilliantly interesting and convincingly demystifying was Joseph Campbell’s revelation of the hero monomyth. This revelation is detailed in his prominent work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which Campbell stresses the significance of the hero monomyth present in all heroic myths. And because the monomyth can be identified in any work presenting a hero,…
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Essay on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Tragedy
Quote: ‘just because everything’s different doesn’t mean anything has changed’ – Irene Peters Young people often make irrational decisions that determine the outcome of their lives. William Shakespeare’s Dramatic Tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1895) explores love and how characters can hold more responsibility than fortune does. Irene Peter’s quote, ‘Just because everything is different doesn’t…
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Essay on ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’: How Does Wilde Poke Fun at the Upper-Class Lifestyle
Wilde was actually looking to ridicule the rigid aristocratic lifestyle by observing their snob-ism through a tale of romantic webs and dual identities. Being an aristocrat himself, Wilde had other feelings as to what an aristocrat should really be: not superficial or materialistic, but more intelligent, well-educated, and passionate about true life morality, and ethics.…
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Essay on ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’: How Does Wilde Use Lady Bracknell’s Words to Poke Fun at Marriage
Jack creates an alternate identity in order to take a break from sides of his life that become straining. To further explain, when he is bored he leaves the country and goes to the city to help his pretend brother who he has named Ernest, this is the man Gwendolyn thinks she is marrying. Society…
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Essay on ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar’
The acquisition and maintenance of power within the political landscape are shaped by an individual’s compromise between private ambition and public image. William Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar (1599), is a study of a multitude of characters and their distinctive strategies for attaining power through their understanding of the nature of politics. Shakespeare explores this idiosyncratic…
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The Image Of Narrator In The Tell Tale Heart
During Edgar Allan Poe’s time, most writings and books were about the bible or related to religion. However, Poe wrote twisted, grotesque short stories that had a recurring theme: a narrator with a mental illness. In his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator has a mental illness, specifically schizophrenia. Looking at this story in…