Story Literature Reviews Samples For Students

Abstract

This peer review looks at Alex Pierce’s story, The Challenging Two Mile, which is a story about a young man who is running a two mile race at Virginia State Championships. This tale is a self-reflection and personal growth story that follows a chronological plot format, focusing on the character and his pain as the main imagery from the audience’s viewpoint. While the overall image of the two-mile race sets the backdrop, it is the internal and external body struggles that make this story so captivating. Fast-paced and well-written it is an honest, simple and down-to-earth learning ...

A Literary Analysis

Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” takes place at a train station in Spain on a very hot summer day. The two main characters, the American and Jig, the girl, are travelling by train because the girl is going to get an operation. They are waiting for the next train that will take them to Madrid, the location of the operation, and they have forty minutes waiting until it gets there. The operation is likely an abortion, and the American is pushing for it while Jig is concerned and hesitant to go through with it. During ...

Are most relationships nothing more than mere momentary impulses that fade with time? In everyday life, relationships are complex interactions that require nurturing, protection and consistency. In this respect, they are so much more than just about fiery first encounters. The literary work discussed for this paper was Katherine Mansfield’s short story entitled “Something Childish but Very Natural,” a literary piece published in 1914 about two characters, Henry and Edna, who meet each other randomly in a train station. In telling this story, Mansfield utilizes a lot figurative language and symbolism to tell the story of Henry and ...

“The Happy Family” is a sarcastic little tale written by Hans Christian Andersen. The most important theme of the story is the ignorant and narrow-minded nature of human beings. The story features two snails that believed they were the most outstanding creatures in the whole world and that the entire forest of burdocks was built for them. They wanted to get into the “manor house to be boiled and served on a silver plate” because they thought it was a very special and honorable thing to have that happen to them. However, what the two snails believed about themselves and the world ...

Abstract

This paper will analyse three of the literary elements – tone, point of view and symbolism - in Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour. Each of these elements will be analysed in turn so that their contribution to the overall meaning of the story can be assessed. These three elements have been chosen because they are crucial to a full understanding of the story and also because, as this paper will demonstrate, at certain points of the story they are closely interlinked: that the tone depends on the point of view, that the symbolism depends on the point of ...

Love and marriage have always been an inexhaustible topic in the literature of all nation and all times. Depiction of various shades of emotion in this context has offered the reader a great enjoyment as well as some food for thought. The short story The Story of an Hour by an American writer Kate Chopin is one of the examples of Considering the moral conventions of the her time, especially with regard to female rights and behavior, this story was definitely an unusual approach to interpreting the relationship between the sexes: the female protagonist hears about the abrupt death ...

The society has changed and crime is increased and good behavior reduced among the youths which is not good for civilization. The unity in the society is not anymore which caused writers such as O’Conner and Oates to write on the behavior of the current society. It is with no doubt that a good man is hard to find in the present society due to loss of trust and many young people having adopted bad lifestyles. This means that the arguments written by O’Connor and Oates are very good in giving the picture of what the society ...

Frankenstein is a novel written by Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley is an English writer who was born on August 30, 1797. Among her works it is possible to mention The Last Man, Valperga, Lodore and other. However, her most famous novel is Frankenstein. The idea of writing a horror story was proposed by Lord Byron. It was at this time when Shelley started to work at her novel Frankenstein which was written in 1818. The book immediately became a success. In fact, it is still considered as one of the most successful books of the 19th century and there ...

The story ‘How to Get into Medical School- Part 1’ is an account written by a third party, about two characters studying hard to get an admission to medical school, and who love each other, but one of them cannot openly admit. The author’s intention is to bring out the conflict by putting the reader in a position where he/ she visualizes the actual events as they occur. This paper analyzes the story ‘How to Get into Medical School- Part 1’. It looks deeper into the characters as portrayed in the story, how the writers theme is brought ...

Introduction

The theme of the story is the unappreciative nature of human beings. The story features two snails who had the whole forest build for them. The story reflects the story in the Garden of Eden in the Genesis chapters of the bible. The two snails had were of a kind just like human beings are when still were in the Garden of Eden. They were the only two of their kind in the forest; the story in part describes the snails to have been the “aristocratic race in the world.” This only shows how noble the two white snails were, ...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper was published in 1892. The story introduces a candid female protagonist who’s isolation from society, and from her writing, drives her insane. Written from a first person perspective, the story allows the reader to become personally involved with the narrator. Gilman uses symbolism throughout the story, two examples of which are the wallpaper and the wallpaper pattern. The story reveals interesting clues about how mental illness was treated at the time, and how women in particular were repressed by society. Through the use of a first person narrator and symbolism, Gilman ...

One of the interesting things about the writing of John Steinbeck is the way in which such an ostensibly egalitarian writer condescends toward so many of the characters in his novels. The life story of four peasants was told by a writer with a cheerful sense of humor and at the same time was permeated by a sad sympathy for ordinary people, who were noble, honest, faithful to each other, but did not find their place in life. Even though those people live a simple (even poor) life, they are happy, because they are not suffocating from the spirit ...

Introduction

Oedipus Rex (c. 430 BC) of Sophocles is the story of the supremacy of the gods who command the fate of men, no matter their station in life. Oedipus, son of King Laios, who was abandoned by his father after having his feet nailed hearing a prophecy that he would die from his son, returns too Thebes to rule in the land which had just lost its King. He had killed an old man while on his way and manages to outwit the Sphinx with her cryptic riddles to enter the Theban walls where he is hailed King and ...

(Student’s Full Name)

What does the necklace in Guy de Maupassant’s story “The Necklace” symbolize?
The necklace symbolizes the superficiality of wealth and class. The necklace that Mathilde borrowed from Madame Forestier represented a life of wealth and social recognition that she desired for most of her life. However, when it was discovered that the necklace was made from paste was not worth more than “five hundred francs” (de Maupassant 6). This suggests that the life of wealth and status is empty, superficial, and meaningless.

What is one of the major themes of the Guy de Maupassant’s story “The Necklace”? Discuss each of these.

One of the major themes of the story is pride and the ...

Introduction

The appreciation for the literary craftsmanship of Franz Kafka cannot be understated. In fact, according to one journal article’s assessment by Berthoff, “Lovers of literature are forever indebted” to the writer’s friend Max Brod, “who ignored Kafka’s ‘last request’ to destroy all his manuscripts and proceeded to edit and publish” some of his novels (499). Also at the outset it is important to recognize that the original language Kafka wrote in was German, although he spoke in Czech. According to the same source Kafka’s office writings had been informed by – or at least and influencing ...

The tale of America’s tumultuous racial history is fraught with conflict, fear and violence, as people of color throughout America’s history have had to fight tooth and nail for what freedoms and rights they currently enjoy. To that end, the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s were some of the bravest, most courageous activists within this movement, riding interstate buses to challenge the strict segregation laws that had been put in place throughout the Southern United States. In 2011, a group of brave Americans sought to recapture that activist spirit by reenacting their ...

Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is considered to be a classic children's book that speaks to every child because of its drawings and simplicity in wording. The book tells of the story of Max, and his adventures in a jungle. It can be said that there are many different elements that make the book one that is wonderful and memorable. This is due to the depictions of the drawings that are coupled with the words, and the fact that it illicit memories of childhood for the individual reading it - whether they are an adult, or a ...

Angela Carter prominently retells the fairy tale story of Little Red Riding Hood, with more vivid and gruesome details as to the horrors of monstrosity. In The Company of Wolves, she first describes in detail the attitudes and machinations of wolves, providing examples using the concept of a werewolf compared to the anthropomorphized wolf in the original tale. Through Carter’s retelling, she envisions a tale of love that more closely resembles what could have happened in reality. Through this, the dichotomy of humanity and monstrosity is blurred when both exhibit traits that are supposedly exclusive of the other.
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Synopsis

Franny and Zoey were written as two different stories, the first being a short story about Franny, a college student dissatisfied with the pretentious American society as epitomized by her boyfriend, Lane. He even pretends he does not remember the letter he was just reading before the train arrived. The events of the story take place at a French restaurant where Lane takes Franny during their date, and the conversation that ensues is indicative of just how the two are different. Lane talks incessantly about his school work and assumes that Franny does not understand some of the words ...

The article by Maria Tatar goes on to delve deep into the complexities of the popular fairy tale, Cinderella. The author of the piece engages in tracing the history of the fairy tale. She opines that there have been many interpolations and transformations in the narrative and content of the story based on cultural difference and timeline in history of literature. To substantiate her point, Tatar cites the versions of the fairy tale popularized in Germany, Indonesia, Japan and some other countries where the stepsisters of the central female character of the fairy tale meet very grave destinies by ...

The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, is a short story that was written in order to describe the total inefficiency of medical treatment for postpartum depression in its era, and to create a greater awareness of the lack of medical understanding of the condition. As such, the storm describes the primary character’s deteriorating mental health, as she descends into madness as a result of her depression. More specifically, her description of her environment, and the personification of the wallpaper directly represents her deteriorating mental condition. As the wallpaper’s descriptions become more vivid and charactuerized, the narrator’ ...

Stephen B. Oates, the author of The Fires of Jubilee; Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion not only gives a drill of the egregious slave defection in Virginia of the Southampton County in August 1831 but also analyzes the backlashes of the Southern culture. This book is a historical narrative that details the history of the rebelled slaves, narrowed specifically to Nat Turner, who led the insurrection to eliminate the Southern white supremacy. Inclusion, Nat Turner is highly portrayed as a talented black slave who managed to marshal slaves into the bloody rebellion against their bosses. Oates vividly explains the ...

After more than two hundred years of the first publication, the heroic poem about the adventures of Beowulf is still of high interest to the public. Not only do the scholars investigate Beowulf as an example of Old English literature, but a wider audience also finds this epic poem an important representation of Scandinavian culture. What attracts them is the fact that Beowulf is the only complete surviving text dates from the 8th and the early 11th century. The poem is indeed written in Old English language, but the stories take place in Denmark and Sweden. England is not ...

A Deconstruction of the Story

Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, a married man with a daughter who is twelve years and two sons in school and lives in Yalta. Gurov has a keen interest in people who are new in the area spots a young lady Anna Sergeyevna , a young lady with an average height accompanied by a Pomeranian dog strolling on the front of the sea. The lady is a visitor in Yalta and residents only refers to her as ‘the lady with a dog’ nobody really knows her name. after a careful analysis of his approach plan to the lady, they meet at the Gardens and they are both dining when Gurov shakes ...

After evaluating all three of these excellent stories, I have determined that the winner of this fiction contest must be “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford. Telling the story of a father on the run from the law, attempting to start a new life for himself and his daughter, “Rock Springs” does a tremendous job of showcasing the unfairness of justice, and the inability for people to truly escape their sins. For its incredible command of character, its thematic richness, and the endlessly compelling prose, “Rock Springs” is the clear winner of this contest.
Ford centers “Rock Springs” around the ...

In the modern world, it is clear that each and every person has to reflect on his or her own actions and compare them with what one observes from others, be it in the real world or in the world of films and fiction. The story of Amelie, within the movie with the same title, is among the movies that really teach us a lot, and from which I find a feeling of real humanity displayed in a rather comical manner.

The story revolves around the life of Amelie Poulain - a young lady who grew up in isolation from the outside world ...

A Review of the Literature

If asked to name the “national dish of Britain,” the average person is likely to say, “there is nothing more British than fish and chips,” but he or she might be wrong as it all depends on the criteria used to determine the national dish (Castelow, 2013). If popularity is the yardstick, then fish and chips would miss the mark, since each year in the UK it is outsold by hamburgers, fried chicken, pizza, and Indian and Chinese food (Alexander, 2009). And while this is true, fish and chips still play a vital role in the economic success of ...

A Review of the Literature

If asked to name the national dish of Britain, the average person is likely to say, “fish and chips,” but he or she might be wrong. It would all depend on the criteria used to determine the national dish. If popularity is the yardstick, then fish and chips would miss the mark, since each year in the UK it is outsold by hamburgers, fried chicken, pizza, and Indian and Chinese food (Alexander, 2009, n.p.). But if cultural identity and national pride are the measure, then fish and chips is likely to win hands down (Zaino, 2013, n.p.).
Surprises of ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne is sometimes remembered for his landmark text The Scarlet Letter, but he was also a master of the short story. “Young Goodman Brown” is a short story set in the Puritan hamlet of Salem, approximately during the era in which the Salem Witch Trials were occurring (Eberwin 23). The text is an allegorical discussion of human nature, and examines the deepest nature of the human heart: Hawthorne gazes deeply into the human soul in this text, and finds human nature, as a whole, lacking integrity and goodness. “Young Goodman Brown” is a tale that sees the darkest ...

If death is really real, based upon the animistic quality of our five physical senses, then how do we know that we are truly alive and breathing, not in a dream? It has been proposed that our dependence upon our five senses is extraneous at best, and totally illusory at worst. When thinking about the quote ‘existence precedes essence’ the concept lends room for credibility that Morrie was right in suggesting that the fundamental truth of human existence rests upon happiness. In Mitch Albom’s non-fictional piece, Tuesdays with Morrie, the college professor’s life, recounted during the last ...

Introduction

Chiaroscuro is important in artistic photography. Chiaroscuro heightens the dramatic presentation of the lone subjects in painting; thereby putting the audience attention on the central icon of the photograph. Originally, chiaroscuro was a technique used in the Renaissance period and even today to create the illusion of three-dimensional perspective and volume; by the Baroque period in the 17th centuries, the level of chiaroscuro emerged as one of the components of artistic presentation enabling images to mimic the real world setting. In photography, the discourse regarding to chiaroscuro has been left out; yet, it has been ubiquitously used by many ...

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” (Cien Añosde Soledad) is a magical realist novel created by Gabriel García Márquez in 1967. This novel is referred to as the Don Quixote of Latin America because of its overwhelming popularity (Jay Corwin, 4). The novel does not have any clear and obvious philosophy that is why the perception of this novel is very individualistic. The tragic and mystique ending pushes to the idea that multiple aspects of life that are described in the novel are heavily criticized by García Márquez (Jay Corwin, 4). And one of these ...

It may well be that the courtier called lady Jang was a witch, but that remains hidden in the annals of Korean history as an unsearchable and hidden enigma. Making such a claim may not necessarily be well founded or otherwise, but what is known about the woman is that she enjoyed the graces of an emperor, and was therefore the object of much envy among her peers; a situation that would later turn into much scorn and derision, because the relationship between the two already had the underpinnings of adultery in high society. What this implies is that ...

Camus, A. “The Guest.” Exile and the Kingdom. London: Penguin, 2006. 43-56. Print.
In 1957, Albert Camus wrote a short story The Guest, which became a part of his famous collection of stories Exile and the Kingdom. The scene is laid in French Algeria. The main characters of the story are Daru, a young Frenchman who lives in the desert mountains and works as a teacher, the old Corsican gendarme Balducci, and an Arab who has no name. One day, Daru sees Balducci and an Arab climbing up a mountain towards the school. Balducci tells Daru that he was ...

Introduction

“A Heart So White,” is a story narrated by Juan, an interpreter, and translator who lives in Madrid, Spain, with his wife, Luisa. The narrator takes the standpoint of an onlooker as he examines the institution of marriage and its secrets and betrayals. Juan begins his book by reflecting on the death of Teresa, a woman previously married to his father, Ranz. It is against this backdrop of tragedy and emotional alienation that the story begins. Marías explores the intricacies of marriage and highlights major themes such as emotional alienation and the tragedy of death. This paper explores ...

Tokubei and Ohatsu’s story is inspirational in its portrayal of the extent lovers will go to for the accomplishment of their love. However, although inspirational in nature, their actions and motivations are illogical if viewed in a sense of self-preservation. One of the bigger themes, honesty, is expressed in the story through both characters. This honesty, although oftentimes a good virtue, has become their undoing. Love preceded reason in their motivation, leading to them having thought of no other options for salvation aside from death.
Tokubei, had to face the choice of loving and marrying a woman of ...

Staring with the story of Odyssey by Homer, Lord has intervened in various circumstances. Odysseus went for a Trojan War where they left with victory. Like many other Greek warriors, Odysseus consulted a goddess who told him that he will win the war. Mysteriously Odysseus won the war of Trojan where many other warriors fell. The Trojan War was a war of treachery and in many cases the warriors didn’t have any clue of their fate. Odysseus however, through the intervention of goddess was able to survive from that Great War. At this point, the reader can observe ...

Each nation has own myth about world’s creation and team of gods, spirits or other powers that control it. Some of them can sound really weird. For example, Scandinavian myths say the world was created from the body of a dead giant. More common mythologies have show less bloody ideas with own features. They depend not only up the culture and country, but up the author. This essay will compare Greek and Roman poet’s Hesiod and Ovid points of view. These cultures had similar pantheons of Gods, which differed mostly by names, like Venus and Aphrodite. However, ...

Introduction

This book examines the issues that come about in relationships. In the book, El Tunnel, Juan Pablo Castel who is an artist by profession is attracted to the woman who came to admire some of his paintings at an art exhibit. The woman is incidentally married but Castel insists on introducing himself. She decides to disappear. Castel makes a follow up of the lady throughout the city and fails to track her on two occasions before he finally meets her. He develops interest in her despite learning that she is married to an old scholar. Castel is unable to overcome ...

The Odyssey the Greek hero and his return journey after the Trojan War. Odysseus’s Voyage covers extensively the Greek world. All the way through the adventures of Odyssey, gods play an immensely significant role, with many of the gods liking him. His whole journey filled with arguments amongst gods. This story is said to be historically accurate and exceptionally significant to the ancient Greeks. Ulysses is illustrated to be a skilled warrior, athlete, masterful, articulate and courageous. In his trial to return home, he meets numerous adventures like the one-eyed Cyclops and the furious; god Poseidon who try to ...

Young Goodman Brown and Sweat are two wonderful short stories authored by two famous American authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Zora Neale Hurston respectively. The short story by Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown, narrates the journey of Young Goodman Brown into self-scrutiny by which he loses his integrity and belief. Sweat by Hurston describes the story of a washer woman and her jobless and insecure husband. Faith provides intense alterations in the life of people. The trial times expose the intensity and genuineness of their faith. The two characters of the two stories display many similarities with respect to their religious ...

The Seventh Day. The Theme of Ambitions and Failures
Yu Hua is one of the most famous and interesting contemporary Chinese writers. His books have been awarded numerous prizes and awards. His books are interesting primarily in the way that he shows life in modern China, and at the same time reveal Yu Hua as a master of the genre. Yu Hua acts as a supervisory watcher of modern Chinese life, and that's what draws the reader. His style is very original and recognizable, and the fact that the author is a supporter of realism makes readers to perceive ...

“Hope, Healing, and the struggle” by Braverman is about the struggles of the Pakistani people against the Israeli discriminatory conditions like the wall he talks about in “A wall in Jerusalem”, (Braverman 1). Jesus’ son on the other hand tells about the lives of the addicts in the stories and how they overdose on drugs in presence of their lovers. Interestingly, they live in a life of struggle and loss of direction. Jesus’ son is a tale of the young addicts without hope, and in need of healing while living with the struggles of their lives. Johnson chose the ...

“The Canterbury Tales” is a story well placed in its very setting and story-telling environment. It is, in itself, an actual microcosm of the medieval world of its day. It fits well within the uncharted and creative medieval times in which it was written, adding harmony.
Shakespeare the playwright compares to Shakespeare the poet in his witty sense of realistic situational writing. As playwright and poet, both of his traits involve works of writing, which place certain characters in unusual settings, at the most unusual of times.allowing for the most extraordinary of outcomes! In Shakespeare’s plays, his poems ...

The major theme that shows up in the story is that of biculturalism and the fact that Tayo feels as though he is caught between two societies’. While he has grown up on the reservation surrounded by Native American culture. He does not feel as though he truly belongs because of his white ancestry. This is compounded due to the violent and negative history between the white man and the Native American, whose way of life and land was destroyed by the white mans greed and sense of entitlement. In biculturalism a person is stuck between the dominant culture ...

I first became aware of Bruce Lee as a child. At that time, for some reason, several of my friends and I had become interested in martial arts. Our interests included reading, watching and playing martial arts related comic books, video games, television series and movies. While I had heard of Bruce Lee, during that initial phase of interest, I did not have the chance to actually see him in action. That opportunity came a few months later during a holiday Bruce Lee movie marathon on TV. The first of his film’s that I saw was Enter the ...

The play “The Importance of being Earnest” was written by Oscar Wilde, and was first seen in a theater in 1895. The play is a comedy which uses various literary techniques to bring out various themes in the Victorian era. Irony is a major literary technique in the play in which the protagonist named Jack uses the name Earnest as an alibi whenever he wishes to escape from his reality. He has created an imaginary character in his head in which he has a younger brother by the name Earnest (Wilde 15). In his real world, he is however ...

In 1998, Robbie takes care of Gloria Weston, a young girl, although he cannot speak. Robbie is very simple, but he is good at his job and they play during the time he babysits her. The unusual thing is that the nanny is a robot and Mrs. Weston does not approve of the robot and sends him away. The mother is afraid that Robbie might do something bad to Gloria because of the fact that he is not human.
George Weston disagrees and he believes that having a robot as a babysitter is safe. He says: “His entire ‘mentality’ ...

Comic books are a part of every society in the world. They represent ideas that the young minds who read them, can understand. In essence, comic books play a huge role in depicting what the society. In many comic books, there are always the protagonists and the antagonist, while they can be seen as villains and heroes fighting for an individual cause, these characters often represent the forces of good and evil in the modern contemporary world. The essays describe America as it is seen, through examining the cultural artifact – Comic Books and American Cultural History anthology – Arguments within ...

The lecture, conducted by Dr. Dolapo Adeniji-Neil at the Adelphi University, gives us an insight into the problems experienced by internally displaced people in the contemporary world. The lecture material does not remind an excerpt from the history book about the events unfolding in a certain country, but makes the audience develop a sympathetic and respectful attitude to people who suffer from the situations that do not depend on them. Being internally displaced herself, the lecturer engages the audience into the topic with the help of real life stories that sound truly terrifying for people who do not face ...

Literature Review #1

Citation
Kane, Tim. The Changing Vampire of Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Growth of a Genre‬. McFarland and Company Inc. Publishers. 2006.Print.
Summary
The book analyzes the seventy years long history of vampire films. He divided the films in cycles, according to the transformations suffered by the vampire narrative in the course of the time. Thus, the first is the Malignant Cycle, from 193 to 1948 .This cycle includes films in which Dracula is perceived as the antagonist and the predatory function dominates the composition. In films produced during the Erotic Cycle, which comprises films produced ...

Adolescent Food Consumption

I. Adolescence and food consumption during adolescence
Adolescence is a critical period of an individual’s growth because this is a stage where most of the growth and development occurs. Most pubescents are sensitive about the food they consume, and they tend to either overeat or undereat. Adolescent eating habits may be either healthy or unhealthy depending on various reasons they may have or encounter. Despite the fact that most teenagers take unhealthy meals there are some adolescents who have good and healthy eating habits.
A. Healthy Eating Habits. In a study, researchers conducted a survey of more than ...

In the Fight Club the author Chuck Palahniuk plays with the narration and starts his book with the climax – the most intense point of the story – and only then introduces the exposition of it. So, only starting from the 19 chapter everything falls into right places. The reader finally gets to know that Tyler Durden and the narrator is one and the same person, but it leaves them with even more questions (the scene with a gun in the mouth and the scar of a kiss). We get to know that he is the one, who created fight clubs, ...