Monologue College Essays Samples For Students

My Last Duchess by Robert Browning is a poem where the Duke of Ferrara narrates about his last wife to an envoy. Through the narration, the readers get to know about the duke and his last duchess. The poem, which appears to be a dramatic monologue, gives an insight into the duke’s nature. The paper will closely analyze the duke’s character and how he justifies the killing of his wife. The paper will show that the murder of the duchess only highlights the most defining characteristic of the duke, which is his excessive demand for control.
The poem ...

Vagina Monologues

Vagina monologues bring together several monologues given by different women. Previously, it was Eve Ensler’s task to perform each of these monologues by her. However, what followed her single performance were performances by three actresses. Now, Vagina monologues are staged with every role assigned to a different actress. One distinct feature is that there is a relationship between every monologue with the vagina. This occurs through orgasm, birth, masturbation, female genital mutilation, menstruation, rape, love, sex, various vaginal names or physical appearance of the body. Throughout the performance, the theme that never ceases recurring is that in which the vagina ...

Literature differs among different people. There are those whose area of interest is poetry, short stories, novels and other literal genres. Once a reader reads the different literature articles of even books, one might get a different understanding from other readers. Poems holder deeper meaning and a reader has to ensure that he/she understands the message that the poets aim to deliver. Understanding the tone, themes and stylistic devices that have been used in a poem helps a reader in getting a deeper understanding of a poem. Some poems maybe discussing similar issues but different language, tone and stylistic devices are used. This paper compares two ...

English literature

The 19th and early 20th century had to face a reality characterized by social, political and economic issues. Furthermore the World War One dramatically changed the already complex and troubled frame which gave birth to the Modernism. Indeed during the 19th century the traditional Victorian society turned itself into a modern and industrialized society, where cities were growing fast and the old ethical and religious values were rejected. This massive change also involved all the traditional forms of art, literature, architecture, philosophy, science and even all the aspects of the everyday lives.
Salient of the Modernism Era is the ...

Literary Criticism of T. S. Eliot’s Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Introduction

The poem Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock feels as fresh to the readers now as it did to Ezra Pound when he first read it. Among other traits, Prufrock exhibits qualities of a characteristic example of modernism in literature, a literary work from the era of literary history that stood towering for its capability for never repeating the same act twice. The poem is a great example of characteristic qualities of modernist poetry namely fragmentation, montage and objective correlative. The narrator T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J ...

A. One critic has called As I Lay Dying a "modern odyssey." In your interpretation, is this family journey to bury a dead mother worthy of being compared to a heroic epic such as The Odyssey?
As I Lay Dying is one of the famous novels written by William Faulkner. Using a stream of consciousness technique with 15 characters narrating the story over 59 chapters, Faulkner allowed his readers to delve deep into the psyche of the characters. The title of the novel is borrowed from the XI Book of Homer's 'The Odyssey' which narrates the journey of the epic hero Odysseus. ...

Introduction

Fences is one of the great American plays of the 1950’s and as in most of Wilson’s plays it explores the theme of race relations. Most of the time, the play focuses on the main character which is Troy and his experiences in baseball in the segregated society which was prevalent in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Fences continues to harp on the main theme which is race relations during the extensive discussion Troy has with his workmates and friends especially in the aftermath of his career in sport. Due to the fact that Troy was poorly piad, he ...

Introduction

The nature of "The Cherry Orchard", in terms of the genre has always been controversial. Often the play is defined as a "tragicomedy", or an "an ironic tragicomedy." However, it is vital to understand what genre the play is as it defines the code of reading the play and the characters. What does it mean to see elements of tragedy in the play? This would mean to a certain extent agree with the characters’ originality, their sincere and true suffering. However, it is impossible to see any strong trait in characters that are "weak-willed", "aching", "whining", and have "lost ...

Module: module number

Women’s Role in the Early 20th Century. How Does Gender Influence the Narration in Dorothy Parker’s The Waltz?
Matriculation number
The semester you are currently in
Dorothy Parker is an American poet and fiction writer, who is well known for her humorous and satiric literary works. The Waltz is one of her short stories, which depicts social and gender problems in the society of the 1920s. By means of the first person narration and a specific word use, the writer manages to fully express the feelings and self-esteem of a woman at the beginning of the XX ...

Formalist Criticism of My Last Duchess

My Last Duchess is probably the best example of the dramatic monologue, a poetical form that was invented and applied essentially by one of the foremost Victorian poets, Robert Browning. A dramatic monologue should certainly have a character who speaks to some particular person, mainly certain silent listener, in the manner of a dramatic speech and has to take place in specific physical setting like that of a drama.
The poem My Last Duchess definitely belongs to the dramatic monologue because it, at first, possesses three formal elements, such as an occasion, a speaker, and a hearer. Secondly, the ...

Thesis statement:

‘Fences’ is a play full of allegorical allusions and deals with the problems faced by African Americans in society with the production seen at the Duchess Theatre in London particularly enticing and compelling especially with the great Larry Henry in the title role.

Overview:

- The full name of the play is ‘Fences’
- The theatre company presenting the production is the London Theatre Company
- The physical theatre is the Duchess Theatre in London
- I saw the show on the 21st August 2013 at 8pm
- The ticket cost GBP 20 and was made online.
...

‘Instructor’s Name’

The Narrators of ‘Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess’ – Similarities and Differences
Unlike comics or fairy tales, villain characters are not a common occurrence in modern adult literature, especially in poetry. In the literary works aimed for the grown up or matured reader segment, the authors more often than not, refrain from portraying a character which explicitly exposes villainous nature, or coal-black personifications of evil. Mostly characters who exhibit villainous traits are not easily located in such literary works, but their persona is revealed only after a deep scrutiny of the said work.
Particularly in the nineteenth century, as ...

In many instances, authors use powerful ideas that shift their readers in a way that intrigues their every day understanding of life. It is not debatable that Robert Browning and William Shakespeare were legendary writers of their time. It is also not ironic that although there are years separating the two writers, their work contains similar themes. As a common ground for my comparisons, this paper examines the common ideas and how the themes are brought out in William Shakespeare’s “Othelo”, and Robert Browning’s two poems “My Last Duchess” and “The Laboratory”. Using characters Iago in Othelo, The Duke ...

The play Henry V is one of William Shakespeare’s greatest works of historical fiction. The play is the fourth in a series, meaning that the audience had a good understanding of the characters and the backstory of the play before it even began; because of this, the thematic ideas and the emotionally-charged storyline could be examined thoroughly with only cursory attention paid to the development of the scene and the characters. Henry V tells the story of King Henry V and the problems he faced as he took up the role of King of England. Leadership is one of the ...

A soliloquy is defined as a portion in which characters are involved in talking to themselves without directly speaking to the audience. This have well been used in the play by Shakespeare in most his books to reveal more about the character. In the book Macbeth soliloquy is used to relate the character and their true emotions which make it easier to relate it to the audience. The most forceful example is Macbeth’s dialogue with the phantom dagger, here the ‘heat oppressed brain’ created by the power of imagination. The dagger is more than a mere recipient of a speech; it ...

The neo-noir genre consists primarily of films produced and set in the modern day which still follow the basic narrative and/or cinematic conventions of 1940s and 1950s film noir (Naremore 298). These types of films also follow detective-like characters investigating crimes and infiltrating the seedy underbelly of various criminal underworlds, but they also carry an undercurrent of modern cultural attitudes and perspectives. In the case of 2005's noir comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the characters fit into fairly standard noir archetypes, while bringing a postmodern malaise and self-aware knowledge of noir tropes to the proceedings. This results in a terrifically funny ...

Irish Drama: Comparing Two Plays

British literary landscape has long been diligently adorned and complemented by the magnificent works of Irish authors, all of them mirroring the peculiar culture, mentality and traditions of the people. In Irish literary legacy, dramaturgy is a remarkable genre, while history and myths are the common thematic aspects of the works. Interestingly, due to the complex historical background of Ireland and its Northern part, one could draw parallels even between seemingly different plays separated by decades.
A good example is observed in a kind of symbolic interplay between the plays Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme ...

How can daily life be led so that just decisions are made, opening up the way to an ethical life?

The aim of this essay is to present you with some ideas on how an ethics system could be built and organized in such a way that just decisions are made on an everyday basis in people’s lives. Ethics is considered to be a vague and difficult to be defined concept. Nevertheless, there has always been the commonly accepted primitive idea on what Ethics is, which is mainly based on the principles of Philosophy. ...

John Updike’s ‘A&P’ and Tillie Olsen’s ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ are two short stories that seemingly do not have anything similar, yet share some themes that form the central core of the stories. Although there are more differences between the two short stories the themes of conflict, feminism and self-analysis runs through both the stories.

Updike is multifaceted and was a novelist, an art and literary critic and a poet. He was a proliferate writer and is one of the very few writers who won the Pulitzer Prize more than once. Most characters in his works go through a personal ...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-British scholar. The man was a jack of all trades with influences as an essayist, publisher, social and literary critic, playwriting and a major poet of the twentieth century. His work has been widely admired with the peak being the Nobel Prize in Literature, an honor that was granted upon him in 1948 in appreciation of his pioneer and outstanding contribution and influence on the present-day poetry. Other pieces of work written by the poet include the Waste Land, Murder in the Cathedral, The Hollow Men and Four Quartets among others. The love Song of J. ...

One of the main characteristics of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are an artistic disclosure and analysis of the human psyche and the research of how human psychology determines people’s actions. The author considered the human personality not in the aspects of its morality, neither of its philosophical views, nor of the activity of political consciousness, but in the most difficult aspect – psychology. The prose heritage of Poe is mostly represented by his “scary” short stories, which include such tales as “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Oval Portrait”, “Ligeia”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, ...

John Updike’s ‘A&P’ and Tillie Olsen’s ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ are two short stories that seemingly do not have anything similar, yet they share some themes that form the central core of the stories. Although there are distinct differences between the two short stories, the themes of conflict, feminism, and self-analysis run through both the stories.
Updike is multifaceted, being a novelist, a literary critic, and a poet. He was a prolific writer and is one of the very few writers who won the Pulitzer Prize more than once. Most characters in his works go through a personal conflict and have ...

Introduction

”Why I live at the P.O.” is a monologue story in which the main narrator, whom other characters refer to as “Sister,” clearly explains how it transpired that she left her family home in China Grove, Mississippi. While in the process of her narration, she unknowingly reveals her characters as well as reveals many family secrets (Crow, 26).
According to the narrator, her experiences with her Uncle Rondo, her grandfather and her loving mother had always been harmonious until the 4th of July holiday. This is when her younger sister, Stella-Rondo, suddenly leaves her husband to return to her ...

The short story "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid presents a list of instructions for a girl from her mother. When analysing this directive, it is possible to state that mother's message to the girl is quite contradictory in its nature: it poses strict limitations for the daughter clearly delineating what is acceptable and what is not, expresses a certain level of disdain towards the girl, but at the same time shows mother's care and concerns about her child.
When reading the story, it is difficult not to notice the manner in which the mother talks: she keeps giving instructions one by one ...

In the Child's Mind: Language Acquisition and Mastery

Besides birth itself, there is no other event in a child's life that is more significant or elicits the excitement of proud parents more so than the utterance of his first words. Whether those words are "mama", "daddy" or "baba" is significant in itself, but the remainder of childhood will be spent adding to, and honing early language skills during the voyage through adulthood. Language acquisition and its mastery entail a vast array of cognitive processes -- ones that continually shape and re-shape the human brain until death.
While language acquisition as a part of cognitive development still largely remains a mystery, ...

Introduction

Apparently there are little similarities between Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry” and Audre Lorde’s “Power”. In terms of theme, tone, subject matter or style, the two poems have more distinctions than common points. This essay analyzes Collins’ and Lorde’s poems with the purpose of comparing and contrasting “Introduction to Poetry” and “Power”, delineating how each poem makes use of stylistic elements for expressing the subject and theme of their poem to their audiences.

Body

In “Introduction to Poetry”, Billy Collins uses the first tense to develop a monologue. The monologue is in fact a critique addressed to the readers of ...

The contemporary society relies so much on literary works such as comedies and fictions which range from plays, poems and drama. One of the most prevalent misapprehensions in the arts and entertainment arena is that playwright and screenwriting are almost tantamount in function if not substitutable. These literary works have some distinctive unique features that the writers try to incorporate while writing the scripts so as to differentiate the various categories. The media chosen to be used as a channel of conveying the message also has an inordinate upshot on any one exacting script. The screenplay “Ray’s Male Heterosexual ...

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams has always been known as an experimenter, an innovator, a revolutionary figure in American poetry. Yet in comparison to artists of his own time who sought a new environment for creativity as expatriates in Europe, Williams lived a remarkably conventional life. A doctor for more than forty years serving the New Jersey town of Rutherford, he relied on his patients, the America around him, and his own ebullient imagination to create a distinctively American verse. Often domestic in focus and "remarkable for its empathy, sympathy, its muscular and emotional identification with its subjects," Williams's poetry is also characteristically honest: "There ...

Dear Sir,

I have selected to study Ishmael Reed’s ‘The C Above C Above a High C’. It is a famous play, which presents the intermingled aspects of racism, superstardom, betrayal and politics through its characters. I chose to study it, not to elucidate its significance on the racial ground but to analyse whether the use of unrealistic elements in a play add to appeal? I am exploring whether it’s the use of unrealistic elements which expands the scope and charm of a play? But the answer to this critical question was not difficult to seek.
As I read the play twice, ...

Expressionism was a literary and performance style of theatre that came to prominence in the early part of the twentieth century. It began in Germany as an artistic movement, but the ideas that made up the foundation of this style quickly traveled across Europe and to the United States (Packard 169). Sophie Treadwell was a working journalist and playwright in the United States in the 1920s, and wrote what is arguably her most famous play, Machinal, in 1928. The plot of Machinal was based on a murder case that she was reporting on at the time, and revolved around a young woman that ...

Analysis: Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson

Thesis Statement
Tennyson’s Ulysses, when compared to Dante’s Inferno, is a more realistic version of Odysseus’ discontentment with domestic life and his yearning for his final journey.

Paragraph 1: Introduction to the poem

Paragraph 2: Overview of the form of the poem
Paragraph 3: Background of the poem followed by a discussion of Ulysses’ views of his domestic life, his country and his wife
Paragraph 4: Discussion of Ulysses’ view of his administrative duties, his people and his strong desire to live life to the fullest

Paragraph 5: Discussion on Ulysses’ view of his past adventures and his hopes for the future

Paragraph 6: Comparison between the characters of Ulysses and his son, Telemachus
Paragraph 7: Conclusion
...

Introduction and Thesis

‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning is a very famous and much-anthologized poem. It is a dramatic monologue written in rhyming iambic pentameters – that is to say the poet adopts the voice of someone else and speaks throughout as that person. It was first published in 1842 and is one of many dramatic monologues that Browning wrote. This poem is based on real historical events. Duke Alfonso II of Modena and Ferrara (1559 – 1597) married Lucrezia de Doctors and she died four years after the wedding in mysterious circumstances. This is the starting point for Browning’s poem. Victorian Britain was ...