American Literature Essay Examples - Free Research Paper Topics on StudyDriver.com

Maxine Clair’s ‘Cherry Bomb’

In the story, “Cherry Bomb,” Maxine Clair writes about her contingencies with her cousins over the summer afore their fifth-grade year in school. She utilizes her past in the story to show how callow she was during her adolescent years. Throughout her story, Clair expresses the point of view and figurative language to characterize her memories as childish. Maxine uses point of view in many ways throughout the passage to exploit the immaturity and naivete of the little girl. Over […]

Slavery in a Book Uncle Tom’s Cabin

During the 1800s, slaves were a big deal. Everybody had them. Slaves would get bought, sold, beaten, killed, every bad thing you can imagine happened to them. Though one woman, believed that what was happening to them was wrong. So, she decided to do something about it. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a book, starring a slave. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is the name, and I’m here to tell you about it. Uncle Tom was a slave during the 1800s, in which […]

Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez

In Richard Rodriguez’s book, “Hunger of Memory,” he contemplates on why language is the key to understanding the tribulation of immigration. The language pace that he goes upon while describing his childhood in the first chapter of the book (titled: Aria) tells that this portion of the book will be his immediate disproval of how much the sanctity of language has been abused. He begins by saying that there is no child that can be taught their mother tongue in […]

“The most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell

“Kidnapping is commonly defined as the taking of a person against his or her will, or restricting that person to a confined place” (“Kidnapping”). In the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, Sanger Rainsford, the protagonist, fell off of his yacht and ended up on Ship-Trap island. Soon after he arrives on the island he realized that General Zaroff, the owner of the island, is an inhumane hunter because he hunts animals that Rainsford wouldn’t dare hunt. […]

About Story Two Kinds

The short story “Two Kinds” was written by Amy Tan the daughter of Chinese immigrants who was born in Oakland and raised in California. The short story setting is in China, and the narrative is part of the novel ‘The Joy Luck Club.’ In the story, the character June comes into conflict with her mother Suyuan after the later tries to make June a child prodigy. June is forced by her mother to take up piano lessons, but she performs […]

The Lady or the Tiger

The Lady or the Tiger The lady or the tiger is a story of a semi-barbaric king who has come up with a unique way of punishing criminals (Stockton, 1882). Criminals are brought in an arena which has two doors where they have to choose their fate. In one of the doors there is a tiger ready to devour whoever opens, on the other door is a beautiful woman who is given to the prisoner for marriage. The princess is […]

What is the Theme of “The Outsiders”?

The story happens in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. It is around two packs or social classes named the ‘greasers’ and the ‘socs’. The greasers are the helpless ones who live on the east part of town and the socs are the rich ones living on the west part of town. The socs appreciate going toward the east side to thrash greasers. The primary person is Ponyboy Curtis, a vagrant living with his two more seasoned siblings. One evening, after a […]

Memories in Maxine Hong Kingston’s “Woman Warrior”

It is important to acknowledge that the past and the present can coexist in a single work to remarkable effect. In Maxine Hong Kingston’s “Woman Warrior”, memories are so closely associated with the present and with legends that it becomes difficult to distinguish reality from fiction; indeed, the subtitle of Kingston’s work is “Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts”, implying that the author did not intend for one to make such distinctions. Kingston does this in order to suspend the […]

Racism in Othello William Shakespeare

Each person who doubts that Shakespeare’s best tragedies were written from an cutting-edge way of thinking a long manner in develop of his time want notable bear in thought Othello. The easy concept of the play is so extensively identified that it’s smooth to overlook the startling boldness of Shakespeare’s preference to take Shinto’s brief story of a doomed mixed-race marriage and redesign it suitable right into a heartbreaking tragedy. In a rustic whereby few humans outdoor London have to […]

Stories Review by James Baldwin

Humanity is being classified as a human being and possessing qualities that are considered human. The authors Flannery O’ Conner and James Baldwin show how the characters possess certain traits. Baldwin writes about the problems of inequality and how African Americans were treated. This brought on the civil rights movement. Baldwin’s writing emphasizes that during that time period, African Americans were treated as if they did not possess the characteristics of humanity. The white Americans were respected more because they […]

The Definition of Nature in “To Build a Fire”

Jack London’s brief tale, “To Build a Fire,” is the unfortunate story of a man who chooses to travel alone through the unfriendly climate of the Yukon in sub-liberating temperatures and succumbs to the tenacious and unforgiving force of nature. During his excursion, the man considers going all in as he falls through the ice into the water of a natural aquifer (London 122). In view of the seriousness of the chilly, nearly “107 degrees underneath [the] edge of freezing […]

Little Red Riding Hood

The three stories are of a young woman who is sent to make a delivery to her old grandmother by her able mother. The little girl is sent out with directions not to divert on the way but rather make a direct journey to granny’s place. In the woods, she meets up with an evil wolf which cunningly asks where she is going. Innocently, the girl replies telling the wolf that she is sent by the mother to take a […]

Dante’s Vita Nuova: who is the Teacher and who is the Student?

Dante’s Vita Nuova represents what could be termed as a text of High Middle Ages. The poem explores literary construction the myth of the contemporary love in the European world. In a late eleventh century, approximately two hundred before Vita Nuova was written, European culture began to experience some re-evaluation of the representation of woman and the experience of erotic longing. This essay attempt to unravel between Dante and Beatrice who is the teacher and who is the student from […]

Robert Frost – Life and Achievements

Throughout history, influential writers have been acknowledged and been credited for all of the works they have written. In American literature since the Civil War, writers such as E. E. Cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway have all become well known for their inspiring works during this time. Each and every writer throughout this period offers important aspects of American literature that individuals can learn from. One individual that really struck me as important to today, as […]

A Short Biography of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a distinguished American writer of short stories and poetry. He was a controversial literary editor as well as critic. Poe was best known for his Gothic literature and his association in the American Romantic Movement. His creation of “detective stories” influenced many authors today. Poe was a literary genius and possessed natural talents to write, even at a young age. The tragic occurrences during his childhood and early years, shaped him to be one of the […]

Mrs. Robinson’s Circumstance in Maycomb from to Kill a Mockingbird

There comes a time when desperate situations call for desperate measures. A good example is when an older woman tries to seduce a younger boy to get some sexual or physical pleasures from them since from the look of things; she is unlikeable by men within her age bracket this is basically because they are antisocial and do not conform to the ways of the society. This type of women is known as Mrs. Robinson. The title came about in […]

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10th December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, America (Sewall 321). She was a reclusive person who spent most of her life in reclusive isolation despite the fact that she was born to a prominent family (Sewall 368). She was unrecognized by her as less than a dozen of her nearly 1800 poems she had written during her lifetime were published. Emily is known as an innovative poet due to his use of […]

Nathianel Hawthorne Stereotype ‘the Angel of the House’

Nathianel Hawthorne Nathianel Hawthorne was an American writer of novels and short stories who lived between 1804 and 1864 (Hawthorne 2). Most of his writing was centered on New England featuring majorly on moral metaphors with an anti-puritan inspiration. His works were fictions with more emphasis on dark romantic (Boonyaprasop 15). In his writings, he brought out the theme of the immanent evil sin of humanity. His works were heavily loaded with moral messages and deep psychological complexity. In his […]

Poe’s Story “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Short Stories + Terror = Poe American Romanticism brought a new era to America and American literature. Within literature of the Romanticism era came the development of the gothic novel. Edger Allen Poe is one of the well-known gothic authors which arose from this era. Throughout Poe’s career he wrote many short stories following one theory which he created – that every aspect of a short story should lead to one single effect. For Poe many of his stories have […]

Helene Johnson

Sharon Goldman Hum 312 9:30 9/14/2010 “Sonnet To A Negro In Harlem” Helene Johnson Helene Johnsons is the speaker in this sonnet and describes her subject in two opposing views. The first line starts with You are disdainful and magnificent– implying that the negro race may be a bit disrespectful to their homeland by living this new life possibly in a magnificent manner, clever in the way they have been able to adapt and fit in to the new Harlem […]

Comparison of the Power of One Movie and Book

>Differences and Similarities in a Tale of Courage For many years Hollywood has been making blockbuster movies based on bestselling novels, but often these movies differ greatly from the novel . The movie The Power of One based on a book of the same name follows this trend. The Power of One tells the story of Peekay, a boy living in South Africa who dreams of becoming the welterweight champion of the world, and who tries to correct the injustice […]

“the Wild Honeysuckle”

The speaker in Philip Freneau’s Wild Honeysuckle addresses the beautiful honeysuckle flower, admiring its beauty and the environment in which he finds flowers; then he proceeds to philosophize about the nature of the little flower and how its position reflects the life of all created beings. The speaker expands his concern with just one small beautiful flower when he introduces a hint of the Garden of Eden, in which all the flowers before lapsaria would have lived forever, and although […]

American Literature Essays