Essays on Protagonist

This paper proposes to delineate the characteristics of Holden Caulfield, the adolescent protagonist hero of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and illuminate the reasons as to why this prototype of brooding adolescence, displaying a rather uber-cool style of disaffection, disenchantment and disillusionment became an indispensable figure of interest, in literary circles as well as popular culture. The paper seeks to take issue with the wider dimensions attached to the ‘incapacitation and debilitation’ Holden is often accused of and address Salinger’s vision behind etching Caulfield precisely the way he is. The paper also wishes to foreground Continue reading...

RESEARCH PAPER

- What is your thesis?
(This statement should be only one sentence long and must have three things in it: the name of the primary source author(s), the name of the primary source/story or stories, and the main idea that you are trying to prove. If possible, you may also provide a plan of development and list your 3-4 major points.)
The paper tries to analyze whether the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story, Young Goodman Brown, is a hero or a dupe. It will show how Brown’s weaknesses, including conceit, leads to his demise. The analysis Continue reading...

Love is an intrinsic sense of affection between two people. There are different types of love; relationships and affairs love. Relational love involves the affection between people who are related by either blood or culture. On the extreme end, affairs love involves two people from the opposite sex who have affection towards one another. Freud’s argue that; love is not what is given but shared. It is what the man gives to the woman and gets in return. He believes that a woman should be submissive in love affairs. A woman is believed is believed to be the Continue reading...

Literature gives a reflection of the society we live in, authors are able to get their ideas from the issue that face the society and organize these ideas to come up with plays, novels, poems and even songs. Once one can connect what an author presents to the contemporary society, it is very easy to understand the themes and the ideas that the author reflects.
1. Compare and contrast the depiction of female characters in Oedipus Rex, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Glass Menagerie. What does each author suggest about the role of women in his society Continue reading...

- Characterization: Characterization is defined as a literary device that the writer uses to highlight and explain step by step a character’s details in a story.
- Flat character: A flat character in a work of fiction is a character with little development. The character does not change or undergo significant change as the story progresses.
- Round Character: A round character is a term coined by E. M. Foster. It is opposite to a flat character, and is defined as a complex character that changes and is developed by the writer during the course of the story.
- Continue reading...

English

Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart can be described as a short story that hovers around the theme of crime and murder, and the short movie also justifies the duration of the story. The movie is more of a narrative; the protagonist is seen continuously describing his mind and moves directly to the camera. The movie can be categorized as being quantitative because of the attitude of the protagonist right through the movie. He says that he has no personal hatred for the old man, but it’s his vulture’s eyes that seem to make him go cold inside. Continue reading...

When a person reads a lot, favorite writers and characters become a small family. Moreover, a person gets to know author’s style. Hence, in future, it will be easy for the reader to recognize the author. For this assignment, I had to compare two short stories of Stewart Edward White: The girl who got rattled and The two cartridges. In this comparison essay, I will suggest that the both short stories have a lot in common not only in the style of writing but in protagonists’ characters and actions.

The protagonist of both stories is Alfred. In the first story, Alfred is described as

“He was a little man, and he was bashful.” ( Continue reading...

Lusus Naturae or the freak of nature was a story written by Margaret Atwood. It was a dark, scary, and at times, evil story about how a young half-human and half-monster female, which was also the protagonist in the story, was being treated by the people around her. She was so unwanted to the point that her parents just wanted her to die. She was described in the story as someone who has red fingernails, yellow eyes, and thick hair everywhere in the body . The protagonist in the story once said that “our family has always been respected, and Continue reading...

Introduction

Man is no match to the extreme cold, especially when he travels alone. His skills on how to build a fire are not enough to assure his survival against the harsh weather. It takes more than skills and fitness to conquer the challenges of life. In the succeeding paragraphs, the experiences of the protagonist in To Build a Fire are discussed. Jack London, through this story, is emphasizing the qualities that a man should have to survive the difficulties he encounters in life. His use of the extreme cold as the setting and only the man and the dog Continue reading...

Lynd Ward developed his masterpiece in the depths of the great depression with his pictorial narrative the Wild Pilgrimage. Wild Pilgrimage is a narrative that portrays a laborer in this case referred to as a protagonist who is fleeing from the frustrations of the countryside to the city. In the narrative the countryside is far from being ideal and the laborer ends up with enemies of his own class whom he has to deal with in the city. The narrative implies individual escape and its rejection and a hint of what might be referred to as a lifestyle of Continue reading...

Whose story would you tell? Around whose basic point-of-view would you build the screen play? How will you resolve the story?
I would choose to write the screen play from the point of view of the journalists who are conducting the sting operation. It would portray the various attempts of the media to establish a connection between the regulatory authorities and the drug dealers and through this point of view the film would expose the regulatory system of Ireland, that the Government and the Police’s involvement in such dealings. It would be similar to an investigation where the Continue reading...

Literature is a powerful tool that has the ability to take readers to different worlds and different eras. Literature has a way to change readers’ perspectives and teach valuable lessons. From the beginning of time the world has known stories. As time passed stories developed into pieces of literature that have lived for thousands of years, and the most recognizable of that literature that has survived this long will continue to flourish readers’ imagination. Literature has the power to access one of the greatest forms of relaxation and stress relief; it has the power to help readers escape. Most Continue reading...

The third version is a black-and-white video capturing bits of life of the main character (whom he is performing), having as well a figure of Jesus walking behind the protagonist and performing miracles on the way. The protagonist also ends up delivering a message to the crowd from the culprit and the church.
Stylistically, the video is different from the other two as it looks more approachable and cheaper, as if made on the spot. The video was indeed made as guerrilla-type video, having different scenes shot on the spot without much preparation. It is also reminiscent of silent Continue reading...

In Samuel Beckett’s Company, he uses variations of the word “devise,” “deviser,” “device,” and “devising.” In this paper the use of these words, which are used by Beckett with some frequency will be analyzed. The words will be analyzed as per their meaning, and in how “meaning” fit the contextual elements of Beckett’s text. The paper will be argued from an etymological perspective, to investigate whether words have different forms of meaning, and how Becket may be playing with the meaning of words. Although Beckett bombards the text with formations of the word “devise” in a seemingly Continue reading...

Literary Analysis

Literary Analysis
In the societies today, there comes a point in the life of an individual when there is the loss of innocence. The loss of innocence originates from the gain f experience and knowledge by these individuals. People lose their innocence through many situations. These situations are forms of occurrences in the lives of individuals that have major impacts on their lives (Fryback, 2008). It is important to understand the facts and aspects that cause loss of innocence among the individuals. There are certain states that an individual undergoes during the process of loss of innocence. These steps Continue reading...

Film Noir means black cinema. Films that have a dark, cynical undertone or have a dark visual style are classified as films of the noir genre. The Man Who Wasn't There, a movie made by the Coen Brothers in 2001, and Tay Garnett's 1946 film The Postman Always Rings Twice are considered to be of the noir genre. Within the noir genre, The Postman Always Rings Twice is considered a classic film noir while The Man Who Wasn't There is considered a post-modern neo-noir film.
There are similarities and differences in the thematic devices used by the classic noir Continue reading...

Miss Brill is a short tale written between 188-1923 by Katherine Mansfield. The story was first published in 1920 and reprinted in the Garden Party and Other Stories. It is a story about a lonely English teacher living alone in a French town next to the Public Gardens. The novel tells us about how she spends her time waking and sitting in the on every Sunday afternoon. As the story begins, Mansfield narrates how Miss Brill chooses to wear her fur, and while in the park, she notices that it is full compared to the last Sunday. When she Continue reading...

Saving Grace is a novel written by Lee Smith and first published in 1995. It is a fictional journal of a middle aged woman named Grace Shepherd who embarks on a meandering pilgrimage with her father. Florida Grace is the daughter of Rev. Virgil Shepherd, a travelling preacher who handles snakes and performs signs and wonders. His family is forced to follow Reverend Virgil around in his travels in order to support his preaching ministry. Grace believed in Jesus, but hated Him because she was forced to travel all over in many hardships in support of His ministry. The Continue reading...

Life is full of many decisions, some small and some big. But in the end they normally reduce to only two important decisions, either of which could lead to two separate outcomes. Such decisions are so hard that years after we have made them we still wonder which was the correct choice. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s short story, ‘A Family Supper,’ the author symbolically – and often – uses the duality of the number ‘two’ to describe several things. This concept of ‘two’ describes the duality each character’s dichotomy, alluding to two possible outcomes for the story’s ending whether Continue reading...

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.
Continue reading...

Sonya, Svidrigailov, and Lebezyatnikov represent three sides of Raskolnikov. How? Which sides?

In his novel Crime and Punishment, famous Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky aimed at solving an important psychological and moral issue, in particular, to show people the failure of empty and fabled theories, as well as reveal their dangerous and destructive forces. It was the theory that became the idea of the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, who decided that a strong person had the right to ignore the laws of conscience and morality to achieve his goal.
The Raskolnikov's purpose was noble: to retrieve his relatives, in particular, mother and sister, from humiliation and death. But here again we are Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the protagonists Dorian Gray and Santiago Nazar are the central characters in these literary works. The protagonists make the stories develop as their ideology or value system are the central part of the conflict (Literary Devices). The protagonist are the main but not necessarily ideal characters. Despite the protagonists’ being unbiased and honorable or not, the changes in their characters, their suffering in the face of psychological and moral dilemmas highlighted by the author lead to the climax of the Continue reading...

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 Continue reading...

In the literary story about Gilgamesh, the other protagonist in the story is Enkidu. The protagonist in the story is a character who plays a major part in the story and enters some sort of clash due to another character in the story called the antagonist. The protagonist of a particular text is the charterer that the audience is likely to sympathize more with. Thus, Enkidu is a secondary protagonist of the story and his character almost overshadows that of the main protagonist.
One character that is descriptive of the protagonist is the fact that he defeats the adversary Continue reading...

“Othello” is one of Shakespeare’s most intense plays and reflects the Aristotelian ideas of the perfect tragedy. According to Aristotle, “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious,” (From Poetics, p.1). In addition, the tragedy has a “magnitude [that is] complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language [and] in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear,” (From Poetics, p.1). In other words, an outstanding tragedy looks at a single issue that is very important in the play and allows the reader to feel pity and fear for the hero Continue reading...

Breaking Bad is a crime drama that aired from 2008 to 2013 and received a lot of controversial feedback from the publicity. While the audience considered the show to be one of the greatest shows that ever aired on TV, the story is far beyond simple TV drama. The protagonist of the series is a middle-aged chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer. Not only that, but Walter White suffers from other circumstances that he does not know how to deal with: unemployed pregnant wife, terminally ill child and huge debts for cancer treatment. As a result of Continue reading...

Question 1

In the poem, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by the renowned poet Randal Jarrell, the poet tells about an unnamed gunner serving in war for his nation. The poem is one of the works about war and its horror. The protagonist of the poem is a gunner serving in the war. He was forcefully made to come to war by the government, disturbing his satisfied life.
Three characteristics of the protagonist are discussed as follows. First of all, the protagonist is not much of a patriot. The protagonist is not in the war on his own will, Continue reading...

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 Continue reading...

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 Continue reading...

Book Review: A Visit from Goon Squad

A Visit from Goon Squad was written by Jennifer Egan. This fiction won the National Book Critics Circle award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction last 2010 and 2011 respectively. The story revolved around Bennie Salazar. He was an executive who loves rock music. The main setting of the story occurred in New York City, USA but it also showcased California, USA as well as foreign locations like Kenya in Africa and Italy in Europe. The main theme of the story is about the lost time when main protagonists in this story were deprived of their early life and incorruptibility.
Continue reading...

The richness of art is that it allows for many approaches. O. Henry was one of the most important American writers and continually fused his culture into his woks, providing a sentimental slice of American life. However, being Russian, Boris Eichenbaum in his essay “O. Henry and the Theory of the Short Story” approaches the impact of this great writer through other means, principally through the analysis of his stories’ structure. Even though the plot of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” is a classical quest, its finale ironically turns this convention on its head. In this Continue reading...

The film, A Beautiful Mind, portrays the story of John Forbes Nash Jr., an eminent mathematician. The biographical work directed by Ron Howard cinematically represents the life and ordeals of Professor Nash. His remarkable advancements in the “game theory” and marriage with his beautiful student Alicia face challenge of his ailment of schizophrenia which perturbs his life.
It becomes clear to the audience that the protagonist fulfils the DSM-IV criteria for the disease. He suffers from hallucinations and delusions right from his days in college as a student. He imagines of Agent William Parcher. He even imagines the kids Continue reading...

Organization

There have been several ways of oppression and domination in human history, the most common being slavery, colonization and class or caste system prevailing in the society. Gender oppression is another important kind(Wang). Oppression leads to tension and violence because the oppressed would definitely rise against the oppressor one day after a long period of subjugation. A lot of literature has been written following these themes of subjugation and dominance. Some of the ways in which violence and domination have operated in countries of South America, the causes and repercussions are being discussed here in this essay in Continue reading...

[Writer’s Name]

The setting is of a true story of a group of hikers on the Himalayas who came across a Sadhu, or a holy man on their way up. The group comprised Japanese, Swiss, New Zealanders, some porters and Sherpas who were very goal-oriented about their climb. They all come across the Sadhu, who was severely hypothermic and very close to death. All the group members were at different stages of their ascent and had the moral obligation of helping the Sadhu. They all did their little bit as far as it was convenient for them, but Continue reading...

Sophocles was a fifth century Greek writer whose play Oedipus Rex was exalted by Aristotle in Poetics as the perfect tragedy as it invokes both fear and pity in the audience. Aristotle explains that a tragic hero is one who is befallen by tragedy brought about primarily by factors usually outside the control of the aforementioned hero thus possessing a noble sense and attaining stature in the society. The hero he however argues is not an embodiment of righteousness but rather an ordinary man prone to the common failings of man but who stands up for his values. His Continue reading...

The play “Madame Butterfly” was written by David Henry in 1903 but was later produced in 1988. The great inspiration of this play rose from an opera directed and produced by the famous Italian actor and a song writer Mr. Giacomo Puccini. In a specific occasion, his opera “Madama Butterfly” was the source of inspiration in producing Hwang’s Madame Butterfly. The play is solely based on a true life experience. This play is borne on stereotypic racism in the early Asian community. The intricacies of male-female struggled relationship are clearly exposed as the play evolves into a complex Continue reading...

The film Fahrenheit 451, which was directed by the stalwart director François Truffaut, was made fourteen years after the novel with the same name was published. Ray Bradbury’s literary work and the film have certain conspicuous similarities as well as differences from one another. However, the basic plot of the book was maintained while making the film without too much change.
As the book was adapted into a film, certain key characters and scenes were left out in the process. Faber is one such important character which is missing from the film. The book by Bradbury portrays Continue reading...

Khaled Hosseini’s seminal literary work, The Kite Runner, has been able to reach out to the readers and critics alike owing to its quintessence. Set in the backdrop of a tumultuous Afghanistan where humanity and love is hard to find in the milieu of violence and extremism, the novel delves deep into the life of this individual, Amir. The book documents an emotional tale of his self-discovery and how his life transforms with age.
The story meanders through the journey of life of the protagonist and raises philosophical questions of conscience along with the choice and consequence of Continue reading...

Introduction

Film noir is Hollywood crime dramas style of film making as from 1940s to 1950s. These crime dramas were characterized by a chiaroscuro style of low-key black and white (Conard 12). Neo-noir on the other hand is a word used to describe the past 1970 films. These films were reminiscent of the 1940s and 1950s noir films. Unlike the noir films, neo-noir films incorporate up to date themes, visual elements or media, content and style making the neo-noir more updated.
The word noir is a French word meaning, “black film” it is documented to have first used by Nino Continue reading...