American Literature Essays Examples For College & High School Students in PDF

85147 total results

A Character Analysis of Maggie in Recitatif by Toni Morrison (542 words, 2 pages)

Maggie the Outsider In the story "Recitatif" by Toni Morrison I believe that Maggie isthe most important character. She brought the two main characters, Twylaand Roberta, together. Maggie also represents the two main charactersmother's. Maggie is also the last person we are left thinking about at theend of the story. ... Read More

The Role of Women in the Play Trifles by Susan Glaspell (1264 words, 5 pages)

The Game of Observation Trifles by Susan Glaspell is a one act play written in 1916 about a murder in a farmhouse. The victim is John Wright and it is implied that his wife, Minnie, is the murderer since she is being held in prison. The real focus of the ... Read More

A Desire to Fit In and Be Accepted in Gloria Naylor’s Short Story The Two From Her Book The Women of Brewster Place (873 words, 4 pages)

Everyone wants to be accepted by others for who they are. No one wants to feel excluded by a group or society as a whole for something out of their control. There have been entire groups of people in the past that have been left feeling hurt because society simply ... Read More

The Theme of Social Equality in the Short Story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (846 words, 4 pages)

Social equality seems desirable in theory. If everyone was the same, they would be treated the same, paid the same amount for the same type of work and so on. When put into practice however, social equality can get very ugly. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. wrote a short story, Harrison Bergeron ... Read More

The Character of Abigail Williams From Arthur Miller’s Play The Crucible (1389 words, 4 pages)

To start with, The Crucible is a drama, or a play, written by Arthur Miller. The crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Throughout this play, people are charged for witchcraft in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Back then, people were accused of witchcraft for anything they did, ... Read More

Taking History PersonalAnawake Fourkiller in Pigs in Heaven and Molly Ayer in Orphan Train are in many ways very similar yet in many ways very different. They both come from a life where they or someone they love have been uprooted and in many ways this shapes their actions as ... Read More

The Expectations of Women in Girl and Fun Home by Jamaica Kincaid (487 words, 3 pages)

Expectations of WomenThere has always been an enormous amount of pressure for both sexes to fit into their gender roles from society. These rules and expectations prevent people from being individualistic and expressing themselves truthfully. The short story, Girl by Jamaica Kincaid and the graphic memoir, Fun Home tell two ... Read More

The Effects of Recession in Gone Girl, a Novel by Gillian Flynn (1156 words, 4 pages)

Gone Girl The Aftermath of the RecessionGothic novels must exhibit a society in decay. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is a gothic novel because of its elements of setting, characterization, and social institutions. Through these features of decay, the effects of the recession in Carthage, Missouri are revealed. The recession ... Read More

Ernest Hemingway Mirrors His Life in The Sun Also Rises (342 words, 2 pages)

The Author Also RisesIt is not uncommon for the values and experiences of an author to make way into the work they are writing. This is shown in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, a 1926 American fiction novella. Although the work may be considerably brief, the life experiences ... Read More

An Analysis of Tone in Snow Crash, a Novel by Neal Stephenson (1139 words, 3 pages)

Utilizing a three-page extract from Neal Stephensons Snow Crash, analyse how Stephenson creates tone within the text. In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson expresses a futuristic setting placed right now in the near future, but we can still see the present in it. He portrays to the reader the several atmospheres ... Read More

Dealing with the Concept of Forgiveness on Unforgivable Issues in Cutting for Stone, a Novel by Abraham Verghese (1222 words, 4 pages)

Fates of RedemptionForgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness. In the novel Cutting for Stone, written by Abraham Verghese, the characters came across many conflicts as ... Read More

The Trials of Ray Smith and Randle McMurphy in The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (2390 words, 8 pages)

Jack Kerouacs The Dharma Bums and Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest are both celebrated Beat generation novels that were underappreciated at the time they were published. In both of these novels the manifestation of mainstream American culture presents itself in the characters that symbolize oppression and its ... Read More

Analytical Essay 1The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story about the life of a youthful couple named Jane and John, following the birth of their child. John was a physician who believed his wife should start rest cure, now known as bed rest. He took her to spend a summer ... Read More

The Consequences of the Bad Choices of Aunt Raylene in Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (926 words, 3 pages)

Our lives are made by the choices we make. Like James Baldwin once said, People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply by the lives they lead. Peoples actions are their own and each of ... Read More

A Biography of William Inge a Playwright (533 words, 2 pages)

William Inge is the playwright of Picnic. He was born on May 3rd, 1913 in a town called Independence, Kansas. This can show why his play Picnic takes place in Kansas for his living there. Lucky for him, he was in a boy scout troop that took him and his ... Read More

The Conflict and Rebellion in The Sun Also Rises, a Novel by Ernest Hemingway (2333 words, 7 pages)

When looking into characters, both superficially and deeper, it is common to see some reflection of the authors beliefs and experiences within those characters. After all, in a fiction story, the author is the creator. These characters are not created out of nothing. The birth of the characters in the ... Read More

The Themes of Violence, Religion, and Social Status in A Good Man is Hard to Find and Parker’s Back by Flannery O’Connor (527 words, 2 pages)

Works of Flannery OConnorAfter indulging in a bit of light research on Flannery OConnor, I learned that to understand OConnors short stories is to understand the rural South that she was familiar with before 1970. She inserts her readers into the settings by capturing thought process. OConnor likes to write ... Read More

The Versions of Masculinity in The Sun Also Rises, a Novel by Ernest Hemingway (1176 words, 4 pages)

The Sun Also Rises is a modernist novel written by Ernest Hemingway, which was published in 1926 and is widely considered to be one of Hemingways most distinguished literary achievements. This piece of historical fiction is about the life of Jake Barnes after World War I. He was in love ... Read More

A Father’s Approval in Bastard Out of Carolina, a Book by Dorothy Allison (643 words, 2 pages)

If you lived with a father who abused you and belittled you, how would you respond? How would you cope if you had a father who didnt love you as much as you loved him? Would you find solace in abusing a little girl? In Bastard Out of Carolina by ... Read More

Analytical Essay 4In Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, an unsuspecting con-man named Randle McMurphy unexpectedly found his path to redemption in a mental hospital that had been torturing and oppressing its patients for too long, under the watchful eye of an evil nurse.James Baldwins short story Sonnys ... Read More

The Symbolic Objects of the Narrator’s Briefcase in The Invisible Man, a Book by Ralph Ellison (1006 words, 3 pages)

The narrators briefcase with all of its many Symbolic Objects, comes up repeatedly here, but perhaps most importantly at the beginning and end of the long nightmarish riot scene. What is Ellison doing with all of that?At the beginning of the riot, the narrator does not have his briefcase nor ... Read More

A Tragedy of a Common-Man in the Play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (968 words, 3 pages)

Willys TragedyIn the play Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller, Miller tries to show that tragedy can happen to the common man through the character of Willy Loman. Willy is in his sixties, and has been a salesman for about thirty years. Willy has been working ever since ... Read More

The Relationships Through the Characters in the Novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1199 words, 4 pages)

Relationships at the RanchIn the novella Of Mice and Men, the author John Steinbeck makes relationships through each character. The novella is in the time of the 1930s in California, at a ranch where George and Lennie have ventured for a job. When the two get to the ranch, they ... Read More

Parents and Children in the Story Two Kinds by Amy Tan (824 words, 3 pages)

Parents are supposed to have a certain connection with their children, for some it might not be such a good relationship and for others it might be an amazing relationship. Parents are supposed to be perfect citizens, role models, and sympathetic to their kids so that itll help them develop ... Read More

The Five Stage of Grief in The Raven, a Poem by Edgar Allan Poe (1108 words, 4 pages)

The Raven An analysis of the Five Stages of GriefThe Raven, a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1845, when taken literally is about the tortuous journey of a man as he experiences the five stages of grief due to the loss of his love Lenore, but when viewed ... Read More

The Nightmarish and Strange Sequence in the Factory Hospital in The Invisible Man, a Book by Ralph Ellison (1526 words, 4 pages)

I have always found the sequence in the factory hospital hard to figure out. It is obviously nightmarish and strange, but it also seems to be quite heavily weighted with ideas and symbols, making a sort of rebirth or renewal for the narrator. What do you make of all this, ... Read More

An Analysis of Art Interpretation in Ways of Seeing and The Dramatic Imagination by Robert Edmond Jones (1022 words, 3 pages)

In the books Ways of Seeing by John Berger and The Dramatic Imagination by Robert Edmond Jones, we are told about art and how we see it and how we want others to see it. Art is seen differently by other people and everyone has their own opinion and thoughts ... Read More

Character Analysis of Marian in a Visit of Charity, a Story by Eudora Welty (967 words, 3 pages)

In Eudora Welty's "A Visit of Charity," the main character, fourteen year old Marian, visits two old ladies at the Old Ladies' Home, because she is a Campfire girl trying to earn charity points. Even though this act should be one that is generous, and caring, Marian is very selfish ... Read More

An Analysis of Romance in Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill (839 words, 3 pages)

In Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill, short stories about odd romances introduce a completely different view point on what romance is for some people. In the second short story titled A Romantic Weekend, two people, who met at a party, decide to go out on a romantic weekend together. The ... Read More

An Analysis of The Grapes of Wrath, a Movie Based on a Novel by John Steinbeck (1089 words, 4 pages)

Grapes of WrathThe Movie Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad familys journey from their long time home in Oklahoma to California. After the Dust Bowl hits the MidWest, sharecroppers like the Joad family are left with no way to provide for themselves, and the owners of the ... Read More

American Literature Essay Examples