Protagonist Critical Thinkings Samples For Students

In the story Mechanics, the author, Luis J. Rodriguez uses an eloquent voice to show the neighborhood he had spent many years. Rodriguez uses most of his stories in the book to show the kind of life he lived as a father, resident, organizer and writer. The author uses the story Mechanic to show the neighborhood that gives more than its appearance allows. This essay discusses the value that women held in the protagonist’s life.
Mechanics presents a pessimistic/ optimistic outlook on love. The story involves a man, a protagonist, whose entire life concerns his children and wife. In his story, ...

In "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien and "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver, the short stories' respective characters deal with their masculinities, and its emotional consequences in a similar manner. There are also striking differences between their characters' portrayal of masculine behavior, as well as its consequences.
In "The Things They Carried", the protagonist, platoon leader Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, is beset by romantic reveries of his girl back home. He often daydreams about a girl from the States Martha (who was his college classmate), during his platoon's missions in Vietnam. As a direct result of his daydreaming, one of the platoon's ...

It was Virginia Woolf who famously suggested that greater female autonomy could be achieved through the craft of writing. Historically, women have been marginalized by their male peers, forced into stringent gender roles with little attention paid to their personal desires, hopes, or dreams. One of the primary methods that women have used over the the years to fight against this oppression is the creation of literature. Women of different cultures often have varied experiences, and Latina women are no exception to this rule; however, despite the cultural differences between different Latin cultures, Cofer, Martínez, and Erauso explore ...

Introduction

Literary critical theory is a complicated process - there are many different ways from which one can look at a story. The question remains, however, whether or not these readings are valid. Is the process of literary criticism a means of mental gymnastics, where theorists can force a reading into a text like a child pushing a square peg in a round hole? Looking at the various theorists who make up the most prominently observed members of the literary critical canon, it becomes clear that the act of reading itself is an interactive one, with the reader bringing just as much into the experience of reading as ...

Reviewing "The Yellow Wallpaper" through Plato and Christine de Pisan

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the tale of a young married woman who suffers from what is presumed to be post-partum depression. Her physician husband decides to sequester her for a ‘rest cure’ in their summer home, which turns out to backfire when she starts to slowly go insane. The story takes the form of journal entries denoting her gradual slide into madness, as she hallucinates and forms paranoid thoughts about her husband and the outside world. The audience sees all of this through a first-person perspective that allows us to see inside the mind of the protagonist, ...

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the tale of a young married woman who suffers from what is presumed to be post-partum depression. Her physician husband decides to sequester her for a ‘rest cure’ in their summer home, which turns out to backfire when she starts to slowly go insane. The story takes the form of journal entries denoting her gradual slide into madness, as she hallucinates and forms paranoid thoughts about her husband and the outside world. The audience sees all of this through a first-person perspective that allows us to see inside the mind of the protagonist, ...

It has often been said that poetry and lyrics are one and the same: indeed, lyrics are undoubtedly the modern day equivalent of the popular poem of previous centuries; the rock stars are the poets. Whether poem or lyric, they convey human emotions, stories of love and loss, and conjure up imagery for the reader/listener to imagine. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the words and ideas of one poem with its song counterpart. For this, I have chosen Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats and the lyrics to My Very Best by Elbow. ...

Introduction

Education plays an important role in teaching children valuable lessons that will help them change or become agents of change. This idea materializes in Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Told from the perspective of 9 year old Cassie, the girl leans valuable lessons, especially from bitter experiences of racism and injustice, which allowed her to grow and become an instrument or vehicle of change. The following discussion focuses on the lessons that Cassie learned, these lessons’ influences on Cassie’s point of view, behavior, and role in the story.

Coming of Age in Roll of Thunder, Hear Me Cry

Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear ...

Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Annie John (1991) is a pure reflection of female relationships that might be seen to go against societal norms. In the novel, the author creates a heroine who struggles in her search for self-identity but whose life is dotted with affection for fellow women starting from her mother to other girls with whom she interacts. The theme of homosexual or homosocial female love is present in the story and is best expressed through Annie John, the protagonist in the book. Annie expresses her desire towards her mother especially when she gets jealousy of the relationship ...

CRITICAL THINKING: DONOVAN'S CHARGE AND FENCES BY AUGUST WILSON

Scene 1: Cox Glen works as a counselor and a life guard in New York City. He fights an attacker during his duty and the attacker dies.
Scene 2: When the attacker dies, the police take him to Riker Island where he gets convicted of first degree murder since he killed the assailant.

Scene 4: After spending two years in a law library, the conviction was overturned solidly by a five judges. His charges were reduced to manslaughter. There was anticipation from both the officers and other inmates of Cox’s release based on his reputation of being a ...

Fairytales generally offer children a very limited choice of heroes and villains, and they cast men and women in stereotyped roles, because they are meant to socialize children according to the values of the society and according to their expected gender roles. Two feminine characters found in many fairytales are the wicked stepmother and the young and beautiful heroine, who is often a princess. In such fairytales as Grimm brothers’ “Snow White”, “Cinderella” and “Mother Holle”, the stepmother is an intruder who occupies the role of the good mother and persecutes the young, beautiful and kind heroine. She is ...

“A Serious Talk” by R. Carver covers the themes of separation, jealousy and identity crisis through the conflict development between protagonist Burt and his antagonist Vera with the help of limited narration, extensive symbolism, dramatic irony and absurd actions. The third-person point of view seems objective at first, but later clearly hints that the narration is limited to protagonist perspective, which shows how the main character is unable to let go of his wife. Moreover, it is seen in Burt’s attitude to Vera’s house, as if it is his own, and in his mention of multiple Vera’ ...

Introduction

Realism is a unique philosophical belief that suggests that a person’s reality (which can be characterized by his perception of life, including the things a person has and the experiences he has encountered), or a certain aspect of such reality is dependent on subjective factors and is ontologically independent from standard conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, perceptions, and other established system . Realism is generally the view that entities, which in this are humans, have an objective reality, a reality that is completely and ontologically independent of those entities’ conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, and etc. Thus, entities including abstract concepts and universals as ...

The biography of Marjane Satrapi is the focus of this paper. The author’s biography shades light on the lives of Islamic women governed by their religious and cultural norms and the role of the men in the same. Satrapi’s work depicts the life of a Muslim woman and the expectations the society has with regard to the female gender. Gender inequality is an important matter as it inhibits people of a certain gender from basic rights, thus subjecting them to a prejudiced life. Inequality that favors the men affects the society at different levels because the aforementioned restrictions hinder personal ...

Esteemed literary critic Vladimir Propp, in his essay "Fairy Tale Transformations," breaks down the essence of the fairy tale into a series of elements and functions, all linked inexorably to religious practices found in past traditions. According to Propp, fairy tales are an amalgam of the functions and roles of religion and culture in various societies; the tropes of fairy tales are reflections of these customs. These functions all exist in some form or another in the vast majority of fairy tales, allowing Propp to organize and codify the structures and natures of fairy tales. "We observe that the actors ...

“Hills like White Elephants” is a short story written by the eminent writer Ernest Hemingway. The story is set in a city of Spain, Zaragoza. As Hemingway wrote after the World War I, many of his stories focus on the depression and despair which was caused by the war. Hemingway portrays how people lost faith in themselves and in God. Due to this they started to indulge in faithless and vulgar activities like mindless physical intimacies and they just let go of their norms and traditions.

“Hills like White Elephants” revolves around two characters; a girl named Jig and a boy who is ...

Ernest Hemingway was an American author born in 1899 in Oak Park Illinois to a conservative middle class family in the suburbs of Chicago. At his late teenage years, Hemingway travelled to Europe to serve as a Red Cross office for the Italian army at the onset of the First World War. Later, Hemingway was to travel to different parts of Europe including Germany and France eventually becoming the European reporter for the Kansas City Star Newspaper. Hemingway leaves a legacy of novels such as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the most famous of all his novels ...

The Gold Bug, While Influential on Other Writers, is Not a Typical Edgar Allen Poe Story.

I. Poe has been called the “father of the detective story.”

A. This is primarily for his C. Auguste Dupin stories

B. “The Gold Bug” is a detective story, but with a different protagonist.

II “The Gold Bug” is considered as being influential upon the modern day treasure story.

A. Most treasure stories of the time were about treasure seekers.

“The Gold Bug” is about a treasure finder.

III Some elements in “The Gold Bug” are common to many Poe writings.

A. It follows a successful series he ...

Zora, the author of Dust Trucks on a Road, was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama and died in 1960. She was regarded as one of the best and contemporary American novelists, anthropologists, and folklorists of the Harlem Renaissance (Meisenhelder, n.p). While she was three, her family moved to Eatonville Florida, one of the first all-black towns to be established in the United States. This was a place where the blacks existed independently and as they desired. Due to this, Zora often referred to it as her birthplace. The death of her mother was the beginning of her misery ...

“A Good Man is Hard to Find”

Traditional convention suffered a string of devastating shocks in the first half of the twentieth century. A world war, a Great Depression, and another world war shattered many people’s faith in traditional institutions. A propos, Flannery O’Connor dispenses with the conventional tropes of hero and villain in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” She gives the reader a villain who is not evil and a hero who is not good.
Despite the third-person narration, this is the Grandmother’s story. The narrator presents her thoughts and feelings, but the other characters exhibit no evidence of inner life. They speak ...

Final Project Part II

Cultural Awareness
CRIM 103
The film “Windtalkers” directed by John Woo came out on big screens in 2002. The movie was name after brave marines of Navajo origin that served as code talkers during the war. Navajo language is so difficult and so rare that American army chose is it as a coding language for their operations. It played a crucial role of the US army's success in Japan.
The movie starts with a departure scene, in which future Navajo soldiers say goodbyes to their friends and families. In this scene we meet the protagonists Ben Yahzee and Charlie ...

Race and ethnicity

The media in all its shapes and forms influence, to a great extent, the way we perceive life around us. The issues of race, ethnicity and class are amongst the most debatable topics influencing the masses and their daily lives. The media in the form of movies and other forms are some of the ways that people prefer to get information. As inaccurate as the media is sometimes, it is common practice for people to believe in the things that they see. This is the case when it comes to people’s perceptions about race, ethnicity and class. The movies ...

Similarities between Torvald Helmer and Nils Krogstad

Torvald is an executive who has received a promotion at his bank where he works with Krogstad. Over the storyline, Torvald admits to have studied with Krogstad in his childhood but they this does not make them friends (Ibsen 2010). In fact, in the play they are portrayed as different identities of men in the society. However, they do have similarities.
The first similarity is that the two men have a very shallow view of the society. All their efforts in the play are dictated by how they are viewed in the society. Torvald is a proud representative of the middle-class ...

Mark Twain was a humorist, an American journalist, lecturer and a novelist. Samuel Langhorne Clemens is his real name, Mark Twain being his stage name. He acquired fame internationally for his narratives on travel. The adventures of Huckleberry Finn provide a description of his hometown and his experiences. It begins in St. Petersburg, with encounters in Jackson's Island by Huck and Jim. It then shifts its attention to a journey full of perils down the Mississippi river to the Deep South. The distance from St. Peter in this journey creates a different distance, a complex and ironic perspective of the book, which is his masterpiece ...

The disabled character in To Kill a Mockingbird is Tom Robinson; his disability is a physical one, as one of his arms was mutilated in an accident some years prior to the events of the film. To that end, he is unable to use it in any way. Despite his physical disability, he is an extremely strong character; for one thing, he demonstrates a kindness and compassion for others, as he states that he helped Mayella (the woman he is charged with raping and beating) because he felt sorry for her during his testimony. He often took up Mayella’s requests for help ( ...

Critical Essay

Role reversals exhibited by Macbeth and his lady
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are dynamic characters and Shakespeare reveals the distinct and different thought processes of these two characters through soliloquies and dialogues. As the play progresses, their mindscapes alter until a complete reversal of roles occurs between the protagonist and his wife.
In the first act, a bleeding captain describes the protagonist as “brave Macbeth”, who is “valour’s minion” and a lion, who vanquishes the Irish rebels, as well as the Norwegian invaders to protect his king. Thus he wins the title “Thane of Cawdor”.This title probably lays ...

The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast two beautifully rendered pieces of literature; The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and ‘And the earth did not devour him by Tomas Rivera. Both the novels will be discussed in juxtaposition to each other to aid the process of drawing out similarities and highlighting points of comparison. To commence, it must be noted that both the authors are chicane identity wise and hence much of their work is set in the same background. Both the authors are successful in launching their plots’ owing to their knowledge of ...

Analysing the short story
Analysing the short story
The Magic Barrel is a collection of thirteen short stories, written by Bernard Malamud which was published in 1958. One of the short stories from the collection was titled the same as the book- ‘The Magic Barrel’. It is quite an interesting account of a young rabbinical student seeking a marriage-broker for suitable match and their experiences henceforth. With an amusing as well as mischievous tone, it does leave the reader skeptical at times. This essay presents an analysis of the very story through the following points:
- The Storyline
...

In the 2009 film adaptation of the Stiegg Larsson novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the character of Lisbeth Salander is an enigmatic, aggressive, yet troubled girl who rebels against tremendous oppression subjected to her by the government and corporations. The film is a very interesting and fascinating example of radical feminism, as evidenced through Lisbeth Salander and the things that happen to her and the other female characters in the film (Harriet, namely).

Radical feminism showcases a society in which women are oppressed primarily by men. The patriarchy is a male-dominated society that seeks to take advantage of women whenever ...

There are several phrases that have been used repeatedly by Leopold Bloom in the course of Ulysses. For example ‘High Grade ha’ – this seems to be referring to the novel itself. The ‘high grade’ is so because the author can show off knowledge of Hebrew, discourse on reservoirs and gravity. The author is depicted as an annoying genius without self control, washing the reader away in vain and infantile torrent of words.

Stephen Dedalus is the literary alter ego of James Joyce. He appears as a protagonist and antihero of his first autographical novel. He appears in Ulysses as the ...