Protagonist Book Reviews Samples For Students

Chinua Achebe, in the famous novel, Things Fall Apart, goes on to delve deep into the culture of two different communities through the story of the life of the protagonist, Okonkwo, who is a heroic character of his village in Nigeria. The protagonist is an acclaimed man who has three wives and many children. He is someone who has shown his valor and warlike skills for which he is known among all. The character has a tragic flaw, nonetheless, that leads to his ultimate downfall. He is obsessed not to reveal any sign of emotion or weakness to people.
However, ...

The novel "Guilty Pleasures" by Laurell K. Hamilton, is the first book in a series about a female vampire hunter named Anita Blake. Anita is an animator, a term used to refer to someone with the powers of necromancy, or the ability to bring the dead back to life. She raises the dead as a profession and is usually paid by a family who want to gain closure with dead relatives, although Anita is sometimes also hired by the police and government agencies to raise the dead in order to solve crimes or handle sticky legal issues. Through her job as an animator she ...

The remarkable story of The Prime of Miss. Jean Brodie illuminates two interlaced eras; the 1930s when most of the action takes place and the 1960s when it was published. . Most of the novel takes place during the 1930s at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland, The book center on the schoolmistress, Miss Jean Brodie and her girls, a small group of students, known as "the Brodie set." The girls are six, junior level, ten year old girls when they became Miss Jean Brodie’s “crème de la crème” and started a two year tutelage with ...

A Review

Dumbarton Drive, Bob Rager’s third novel, is a compelling intriguing and engaging story which begins when the unnamed narrator – homeless, jobless and with no money – wanders by accident into the overgrown garden of a mysterious house in one of the wealthier parts of Washington, DC. He is confronted by an eccentric and irascible old man, accompanied by his diminutive but loyal servant, and is nearly shot for his intrusion into the secretive and intriguing grounds of a mansion which seems stuck in the past.
Slowly and with consummate skill, Rager reveals more and more about the old man and his ...

Jeffrey Eugenides presents a dilemma that most people would find unimaginable and almost impossible to face if it occurred in their lives. Suppose one grows up knowing she is a girl, only to discover one day during her teenage years that the reverse is true, or even worse she is neither a girl nor a boy. It is unthinkable if such an individual discovered s/he is both. The author presents this kind of continual dilemma in this piece where the protagonist struggles to find a precise self-definition, a development that makes life almost unbearable. A universal reasoning in this ...

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (Phillip K. Dick) – Air Raid (John Varley).
‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale’ is a futuristic short story written by Phillip K. Dick, centered on the concept of memory manipulation. It takes on the undiscovered fields of new age science. The concepts involved in the short story are so complex and underdeveloped even in this age and time. But still the author immaculately and ostentatiously nails his narrative. In the same sense, ‘Air Raid’ written by John Varley, seems to be the perfect match for the pairing. Both these short stories ...

There can be no denial of the fact that the novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by the famous author, Mark Haddon, is one of the best literary works to be adapted in the cinematic form of expression. Indeed, the story in context has enormous scope of quintessential and aesthetic portrayal of the events, emotions, frictions, and mystery. The young teenager of the narrative, Christopher, is the hero of this story in context. The way he is portrayed in the literary narrative truly impresses the readers, and it provides ample scope for catapulting the affective ...

“Burmese Days” is a powerful and thought-provoking novel written by George Orwell that presents a grim portrait of imperialism and the British Empire. In the book, Orwell neither romanticizes Burma and its people nor idealizes the imperialists. Instead, he depicts bitterness, meanness, corruption, and wickedness. Using his own experience, the author skillfully depicts the cruel circumstances and tragic outcomes in a colonial society that is based on domination and fear and is in the service of the imperialists. The protagonist of the novel, John Flory, vividly demonstrates the dark side of the ruling class, and that the imperialists did ...

The setting of the novel, for the most part, remains the caves wherein the group of human survivors attempt to keep on living, all the while attempting to figure out what to do about Wanda. The caves provide a nice, claustrophobic setting that help bring out the themes of redemption and paranoia that run throughout the book. All of the characters are trapped in their own caves - Melanie is trapped inside her own body, as is Wanda; the human characters are trapped into a hard life that none of them asked for, and so on. The claustrophobia helps to bring ...

Stephanie Meyer's novel The Host presents incredibly original ideas in a way that is fairly palatable to young audiences. This tale of identity crises and mixed memories, all in the wake of an alien invasion, provides an interesting setting for this science-fiction love story. The protagonist's struggle for understanding and control of the very body it lives in carries many unique scenarios that are presented in a sometimes fascinating way. This paper will overview many different aspects of the first part of The Host, including setting, character and conflict.

The first setting the book takes place in is a facility where the ...

The book review herein, and critical literary analysis seeks to present a cogent, well-thought out evaluation of the work written by Sherman Alexie entitled ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.’ At the outset, it is important to note that the main literary device the writer uses is a personal, first-person perspective and narrative. The tone is frank, casual and simple-structured English. Also, as the author provides myriad vignettes and short anecdotal stories throughout the book, the reader has an opportunity to deeply feel empathy for Alexie’s protagonist – but, sometimes cannot decipher whether to laugh or cry.
...

Book Review of the True Story of ah q

Book Review of the True Story of Ah q
Introduction and book analysis
The novel, a true story of Ah Q, by Lu Xun was first published in 1921. However, this book’s content has a lot to be desired about the time it was set, the twentieth century. Precisely, the author takes the reader through the life experiences of Ah Q, a peasant, spiritual and ambitious man, who lacks regard for the authority. Lu Xun was born on the 25th of September 1881 (Xun, 2009). He exhibited a great passion for writing over the years and maintained a ...

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

The Story Of An Hour is a short story that narrates the time that pass by between the moment protagonist, Louise Mallard, leans of the news that her husband died and later discovers that indeed her husband is still alive. Once she hears of her husband’s death, Mallard perceives herself as a liberated woman but her perceived joy is short-lived.

Symbolism

The troubled heart
The heart trouble that Mallard suffers from depicts a woman’s perceived physical weaknesses. It further represents Mallard’s hesitancy regarding her troubled marriage and her need for freedom. Mallard’s heart illness is the first thing ...

The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poetry that originates from Mesopotamia. It is among the earliest known literature in Mesopotamia. Many scholars believe that it originated from a series of Sumerian poems, and legends about Gilgamesh who is the protagonist. It is known to be the oldest recorded story in the human history that is over 4000 years old.
The story portrays Mesopotamia’s society in the third millennium B.C.E vision of after life. In addition, the story tells shows the reader how the people in Mesopotamia believed in the gods, and offered sacrifices for their prayers to ...

Book Review: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

The novel concerned in this book review is a novel by Chinua Achebe entitled Things Fall Apart. The novel’s main character is a man named Okonkwo; at the beginning of the novel, the protagonist is portrayed as a strong man, capable of doing good things for his village and his people (Achebe). However, the protagonist is living in his father’s shadow, as his father often borrowed money from those in the village with the complete inability to pay it back. In his attempt to seem strong, Okonkwo participates in the killing of a young boy who views him as a father figure; after the ...

Classic English Literature

Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee is a gripping tale of apartheid and in South Africa. The story mainly deals by subtly hinting the various thoughts and opinions of the main protagonist, David Lurie, in the beginning of the novel and certain gripping incidences which finally bring about a transformation in David Lurie. He is a professor in a university in Cape Town. Twice divorced, Lurie is well aware that he does not get along with women and yet he craves to be in intimate relationship with women.
The story begins by David meeting Soraya, a prostitute in a restaurant and follows with his torrid affair ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, took on themes of Hollywood and the film industry, pointing out its glitz, glamour and tragedy in equal measure. In the 1930s, the film industry began a transition from the artistic experimentation of its early days to the greater commercialism of Hollywood; Fitzgerald’s novel explores this transition in very intriguing ways. Telling the story of Monroe Stahr, a character loosely based on MGM’s golden boy Irving Thalberg, Fitzgerald paints Hollywood and the film business as an incredibly complex and inscrutable place, with its own politics ...

Book review (The Quiet American Dream)

Ethnic Stereotypes: Americans vs. Europeans.
Greene in his Quiet American Dream is vivid about the disparity between the Americans and the British in terms of their conduct. In this case, Pyle is one character that is used by Greene to establish the unruly conduct of the Americans. They are expressed to be untimely. That is; they are not time observant. On the other hand, they are different from the British people who are stern and concerned about what they do. For instance, Fowler, who represents the British, states that he, is not willing to wait upon a policeman to ...

Yahya Hakki’s The Lamp of Umm Hashim is a tale embedded in colonialism where the Egyptian protagonist Ismail goes to Europe for higher studies. It is a quintessential tale of ‘colonized meets colonizer.’ Egypt was under colonial rule and throughout the text, there are strong current of stereotypical representations f differences that had come to characterize the dichotomy of East vs. West. While in Europe, Ismail is exposed to the scientific way of thinking as he goes about learning ophthalmology. As scientific enlightenment piles on, his traditional and religious beliefs begin to wean away. Alienation in a foreign country notwithstanding, when Ismail ...

Many have rated the book Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness In The West (1985) as an artwork in American literature and even as Cormac McCarthy continues to publish books it has remained to be his masterpiece.
Blood Meridian is regarded as one of McCarthy’s best writing as it is a multilayered and complex reexamination of the American West mythology. Blood Meridian is defined as a historical novel as it adds in events that are documented chronicling the gang of Glanton who are hunters between the years of 1849-1850 before evolving to a band of ragged villains who murder and ...

Abstract

No New Land is a novel which was authored by M.G. Vassanji. It was published in the year 1991 to give an account of the experiences of immigrant minority groups in Toronto. The story revolves around Nurdin Lalani, an Asian who migrated from Tanzania, Africa to Toronto, Canada in pursuit of greener pastures. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that he finds it hard to fulfill his dreams. Despite finding it hard to get a job, he encounters several challenges that make him a very disillusioned man. These demonstrate challenges faced by such minority groups in the racially stratified Toronto ...

Classic English literature: America America

‘America America’ is a novel written by Ethan Canin in 2008, which represents the American country in retrospective of the 1970s – the time of elections for Presidency spiced with intricate family, love and social classes’ relationships. The novel draws America as a country, which it used to be and which it continues to be up to the present moment.
The system of the characters is quite sophisticated, but there are three obvious ones, who definitely stand out from the others and form the whole story. Corey Sifter, Liam Metarey and Henry Bonwiller – are three ‘whales’ who construct the plot of ...

1)
Some additional settings to this novel are presented in chapters 14-20. First, there is the cavern where the human underground lives; it is musty, dirty and makeshift; everything is improvised, with people seemingly keeping on the move and attempting to remain productive and on their guard. Meyer's description of the cave manages to sell just how desperate the human resistance is, as they are forced to live in terrible conditions just to stay alive. The claustrophobia of the caves adds to both Wanderers' and the human characters' paranoia.

Next, several chapters in this section take place in ...

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 features a dystopian future wherein “firemen” are given the task of burning subversive books that challenge the governmental establishment. In this world, reading is outlawed, as the current mode of thinking is anti-intellectual, and bereft of learning or knowledge. The protagonist, Guy Montag, one of the firemen, has his ideas about his job and the world in which he lives in challenged by an intellectual love interest. In the novel Logan’s Run, another dystopian future sees the protagonist, a law enforcement officer called a Sandman, tracking down those who do not voluntarily kill themselves at age ...