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

85147 total results

Two Ways of Interpretation of the Story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (3449 words, 10 pages)

Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper is a twofold story, able to be interpreted via two different sectors of criticism and allowing for interpretations in both forms the first is the purely new critical perspective, and while one can draw much using this form of analysis, analyzing the story in ... Read More

A Key Quote Analysis: The Relationship of Marjorie and Nick in Hemingway’s the End of Something (903 words, 3 pages)

Key Quote Analysis RewriteIn Hemingways The End of Something, near the end of the piece, Marjorie and Nick are having a climactic argument about their relationship, and just as Nick admits their love isnt fun anymore, this passage occursHe was afraid to look at Marjorie. Then he looked at her. ... Read More

An Analysis of How the Story Treats the American Dream in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (621 words, 2 pages)

Gatsby and the American DreamOften what gives a classic literary tale the title of Great American Novel is the quality and nuance in the writing, and for a book as short as Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby to be called that, it must have both in measures. I took quite a ... Read More

An Examination of Cecilia’s First Person Perspective in the Novel The Love of the Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald (800 words, 3 pages)

Or, The Love of the Last Tycoon (1941), if preferred. Either way, the book, though otherwise a quality piece of literature given its unfinished state, has issues concerning its strange jumps in narrative perspective.The book has a strange tendency to leap between a third person omniscient narrator and first person ... Read More

How to Live Life as Shown in the Walden Experiment by Henry David Thoreau (654 words, 3 pages)

A Major Theme of WaldenFor Henry David Thoreau, nature is much more than just the great outdoors. At the time, Thoreau was thought of as an extremist, and to some extent he still is. He interpreted nature differently from anyone else that came before him. During Thoreaus lifetime the industrialism ... Read More

A Review of the Play The Great God Brown by Eugene O’Neill (927 words, 3 pages)

Of all the assignments in all the classes in all the universities in all the world, the last one with which I expected to find myself experiencing very real enjoyment was the reading of a modernist play. Where the pursuit of modernism in various other media, painting, music, even poetry, ... Read More

An Analysis of Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (788 words, 3 pages)

Hemingway was well known for his elegantly simple and easy to understand writing style that allowed for total transparency and submersion into the stories he told, but perhaps part of what put him at odds with the likes of Fitzgerald is the way the supposed "mentor" preferred to write. It ... Read More

Stephen Crane’s The Monster: Henry as the Monster (696 words, 2 pages)

In Stephen Cranes The Monster, just after we discover Henry Johnsons escape, we are greeted to a party scene wherein a group of children are witness to what is implied to be Henry himself in section XVI, paragraph five, this occursHearing a noise behind her at the window, one little ... Read More

An Analysis of the Short Story The Man in the Black Suit by Stephen King (983 words, 3 pages)

I believe that The man in the Black Suit could be considered a horror story because it goes through the experience of nine year old who is already alone in an area he doesnt know and has just woken up to, and now is confronted by possibly, the devil himself ... Read More

The Experience That Allowed Me to Grow to Love the Sport of Triathlon (1245 words, 3 pages)

I have been told that I have a very strong work ethic. When I put my mind to a task, I am able to achieve my goal, and usually rise above whatever obstacle had been impeding my path to success. This work ethic can be attributed to when I discovered ... Read More

Atlas and the Box of Crayons in The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Billie Letts (1730 words, 5 pages)

Before Atlas Carried the World on His Shoulders, He Practiced With a Giant Box of CrayonsWe could all learn a lot from crayonsSome are sharp, some are pretty,Some are dull, some have weird names,All are different colors...But they all exist nicely in the same box.What exactly does this statement mean? ... Read More

An Analysis of the Contained Characters and Settings Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (938 words, 3 pages)

Contained by Dani Navarro Pd 8Containers are used to store things, they organize and help maintain cleanliness they are used to keep things under control and limit the expansion of them. In John Steinbecks book, Of Mice and Men, the characters and settings are contained. Curleys wife, Crooks and the ... Read More

An Analysis of the Character of the Protagonist in The Salvation of Me (342 words, 1 pages)

In The Salvation of Me, the protagonist has characteristics of a wide variety that make him the typical teenage individual who lived life on his own, but not entirely carelessly. He tends to focus more on Chester, his close friend, rather than himself, but I felt that that gave the ... Read More

A Review of Derek Sivers’ Non Fiction Autobiography Anything You Want (1899 words, 8 pages)

A review of Derek Sivers nonfiction autobiography, Anything You WantAnything You Want is an examination of the growth of the authors private business, CD Baby, and how his unique, disorganized approach to business and customer-first orientation allowed his business to flourish despite lacking traditional business values. Overall, I felt this ... Read More

The Short Happy Dreams of Wales and Macomber From Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway (1385 words, 4 pages)

The Short Happy Dreams of Wales and MacomberAmerica the Land of Opportunity, or so it was. Of Individualism, certainly, and perhaps more so of Materialism as of late, but of Opportunity? One wonders. Misery? Maybe not now, but when we consider the unemployment rate and the state of American politics ... Read More

An Analysis and Interpretation of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (2255 words, 7 pages)

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is one of the most famous short stories of all time. Originally published in the New Yorker in 1948, it generated controversy due to its graphic depiction of a lottery that determines who will be stoned each year. But what kind of story provoked such ... Read More

A Comparison of the Moral Indifference, Ignorance, and Truth in How to Tell a True War Story and Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong in the Novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1143 words, 3 pages)

The Things They Carried ComparisonAlthough the two stories are within the same novel, they share very distinct qualities. While How to Tell a True War Story involves themes of moral indifference, ignorance, and the truth, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong is primarily about how anyone can be consumed by ... Read More

The Price Humans Pay for the Advancement of Technology? (1265 words, 4 pages)

Do you ever wonder what technology will be able to do in 5 years? 15 years? 50 years? Most people will argue that all of technology will benefit mankind, but in the price of progress unit, many of the authors proved otherwise. In many of the works that we studied ... Read More

How Christopher Nolan Improved the Story of Jonathan Nolan’s Novella Memento Mori in His Movie Memento (939 words, 4 pages)

Brothers Keeper How Christopher improved Jonathans StoryMemento Mori, a novella by Jonathan Nolan, depicts a mans desperate search for his wifes rapist and killer. The anterograde amnesia of a now wife-less Earl makes his search even more desperate, as he is unable to create new memories, and must rely on ... Read More

Fitzgerald’s Disbelief in the American Dream in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1040 words, 3 pages)

Fitzgeralds disbelief of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby The Jazz age of the 1920's started with an economic boom. Americans found it easy to become wealthy, and the American dream began to center around it. As more and more people tried to get rich quick, social ethics declined. ... Read More

An Analysis of the Short Story Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe (1346 words, 4 pages)

An Analysis of Poes LigeiaLigeia is placed in the early Victorian age in order to establish an easy connection with a dark atmosphere consisting of Gothic imagery, dark romance, and madness. Poe takes a stab at dark romanticism, with his play on the narrators imagination concerning Ligeias return from the ... Read More

The New Systems of Ethics in the Literary Works of David Foster Wallace (2516 words, 9 pages)

The Subjective Roots of Ethical EnterpriseThe purpose of literature appears to be constantly evolving, and it was especially changing at the time when David Foster Wallace was writing, primarily the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. Whether literature was meant to represent reality, ... Read More

A Comparison between the Government in the Hunger Games and the Giver (502 words, 2 pages)

Comparison of Evil GovernmentsThe government in The Hunger Games is fits an obvious mold of evil. It abuses the majority of its population in an obtuse way to raise up the upper class. It forces violence on innocent people and beats them into submission. There is no denial that such ... Read More

The Role of Money in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Novel by Mark Twain (870 words, 2 pages)

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain there are abundant descriptions of money and its important role in society. These references make abundantly clear the greed, corruption, and exploitation of ordinary people by the ruling class, and also by each other. The majority of people appear to be seeking ... Read More

War Stories in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (962 words, 3 pages)

For those of us who have not witnessed war, its difficult, perhaps nigh impossible, to understand the experience. In Tim Obriens The Things They Carried there are numerous short stories that deal with the soldiers experiences in Vietnam. For example, the section titled How to Tell a True War Story ... Read More

The Notion of the American Dream in the Novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (928 words, 4 pages)

The question of defining what it means to be American, and what America itself is not a simple one. American society is a blending of many cultures, beliefs, and traditions, but all of its people have hopes, dreams, and ambitions culminating into the notion of the American Dream. There have ... Read More

A Look at the Close Relationship of Mitch Albom and Morrie Schwartz in Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (537 words, 3 pages)

How would you react if you had only a year to live, and your body would gradually deteriorate in the short remainder of your life? In Tuesdays With Morrie Mitch Albom details his close friendship with his former professor, Morrie Schwartz, who suffers from ALS. Despite Morries condition, he manages ... Read More

Mise-en Scene in the Movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (397 words, 3 pages)

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (Forman, 1975) is a good film with an even more interesting mise-en-scene. I noticed many things throughout the film relating to the arrangement of scenery and stage props. For starters, RP McMurphy always wore apparel that opposed the other inmates dull white uniforms (see ... Read More

Resemblances of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in Shutter Island (1237 words, 5 pages)

One Flew Over Shutter IslandWhen I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (Forman, 1975), I was reminded of a movie I had watched a couple years earlier. The movie Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010) resembles One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (referred to as Cuckoos Nest after this) in many ... Read More

Amir’s Redemption in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (766 words, 3 pages)

In what ways does Amir seek redemption? - The Kite Runner Confused about his own life, a boy makes a decision that ruinsthe rest of his childhood and leaves him with a guilty conscience for most,if not all, of his adult life. Throughout the book The Kite Runner, writtenby Khaled ... Read More

American Literature Essay Examples