Samuel Longfellow Essays

  • Selfish Decisions in “Wreck of the Hesperus”

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hesperus" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow explains how uncivil acts can dramatically change anything. This story describes a prideful man who made a selfish decision to not listen to a sailor's gesticulation and go out to sea during a ineluctable hurricane off Herman's Woe. The skipper takes his daughter with him and because of his bad decision they both died when their ship "The Hesperus" crashes into the rocks and sinks. In "Wreck of the Hesperus" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow suggests that pride, betrayal

  • Contemporary Fiction in Gary D. Schmidt's Book on Trouble

    1253 Words  | 3 Pages

    Trouble Expository Essay A lighthouse’s piercing beam of light shines over the murky land, providing respite—albeit brief—from the harsh battering of the neighboring terrain. Trouble, by Gary D. Schmidt, wraps this picture eloquently in the form of a compelling and captivating contemporary fiction book. Trouble primarily centers around a boy named Henry Smith, who never really understood the formidable potential of the omnipotent entity Trouble in his safe and idyllic life. Henry had always fallen

  • Nathaniel Hawthorn

    1070 Words  | 3 Pages

    his widowed mother Elizabeth - and for the rest of her life they relied on each other for emotional solace. Later he wrote to his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "I have locked myself in a dungeon and I can't find the key to get out." Hawthorne was educated at the Bowdoin College in Maine (1821-24). In the school among his friends were Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, who became the 14th president of the U.S. Between the years 1825 and 1836 Hawthorne worked as a writer and contributor to periodicals

  • The Value of Roots

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    attempt was prominent in was literature. Two poets specifically sought to find a national mythology by examining what American's value and why it is necessary to pass it on through tradition. The poems by John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are a call for preserving the roots found in the land of America and in the heart of an American. Longfellow's "Hiawatha" presents the image of an Indian chant about the traditions, history and beauty inherent in nature. The narrator explains

  • An Analysis Of The Indomitable Spirit Of Man In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “One of the real American Poets of yesterday” (Montiero, Preface), Longfellow elaborates on man’s perpetual struggle with life and nature in his poetry. In “A Psalm of Life,” “The Village Blacksmith,” and “The Rainy Day,” Longfellow explores many facets of man’s unyielding will. Born into a prominent family on February 27, 1807, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow grew up in the bustling town of Portland, Maine. His parents Stephen and Zilpah Longfellow provided a strong, but

  • Symbol and Allegory

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    from his sermons and his mother’s encouragement for E.E. to keep a diary starting at age five started to shape his craft at an early age (Revisited 11). Rebecca aspired for her son to be the next Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (the Cummings family lived across the street from the Longfellow home before E.E. was born) (Dreams 19). Edward Estlin was also a cubist painter in addition to being a poet. During World War I, E.E. Cummings was an ambulance driver in France and was imprisoned under the pretense

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Optimism in Poetry

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    with a manly heart.” This is a saying Longfellow read in Germany where his wife died. The words gave him hope for the future. It inspired him to want to write a series of psalms. The first one, “A Psalm of Life” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is an uplifting poem that compels us to feel hope for the future. After reading it the first time it had a powerful effect on me. Surprisingly, he wrote this poem few months after his first wife died. Longfellow took his wife’s death and interpreted

  • Longfellow

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    Whitman described Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as the “universal poet of young people” (Kunitz 10). He is the “poet of the sympathetic gestures” whose poetry was a “universal pastime and delight” (Kinsella 256). During the early 1800s, the literary movement Romanticism became popular in literature. It emphasized passion over reason, imagination over logic, human feelings and individual freedom. Economic and social reform were emphasized and writers, like Longfellow, would base their writings off of

  • Essay on the Use of Chiaroscuro in The Scarlet Letter

    748 Words  | 2 Pages

    his talent, and they helped pay his way to Bowdoin College.  Hawthorne and his classmates became the most prominent people in America at that time.  He had many strong ties with important people from attending Bowdoin, such as:  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce.  In 1828, his first novel, Fanshawe was anonymously published at his own expense.  In 1842, he befriended Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, and married Sophia Peabody, an active

  • Longfellow's Unique American Hero in Evangeline

    1537 Words  | 4 Pages

    contribution of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is largely neglected. Longfellow's portrayal of the American Adam is set apart in that he does not praise this character as a role model for others. The concept of the American Adam is seen in a different light through the depiction of Basil in the narrative poem Evangeline. Evangeline is the tale of an Acadian woman's journey to find her lost lover after her people are exiled from their native Nova Scotia. Longfellow describes the state

  • Longfellow Bridge Research Paper

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    Introduction In this lesson, we explore the history, construction, and restoration of the Longfellow Bridge that connects the cities of Boston, Massachusetts and Cambridge, Massachusetts across the Charles River. Named for a Love Poem I stood on the bridge at midnight, As the clocks were striking the hour, And the moon rose o’er the city, Behind the dark church-tower. These lines, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1845 famous poem The Bridge, describe a moment of his frequent journey across the

  • Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot as Criticism of Christianity

    2606 Words  | 6 Pages

    Waiting for Godot:  Clear Criticism of Christianity Samuel Beckett may have denied the use of Christian mythology in Waiting for Godot, but the character of Lucky proves otherwise.  We can read Lucky as a symbolic figure of Christ, and, as such, his actions in the play carry a criticism of Christianity, suggesting that the merits of Christianity have decreased to the point where they no longer help man at all. The parallels between Christ and Lucky are strong. Lucky, chained with a rope,

  • Samuel Gompers

    1219 Words  | 3 Pages

    Labor leader and advocate of legislative labor reform, Samuel Gompers was globally recognized for being a cornerstone in the sustaining legacy that is the American Federation of Labor. Gompers was born to a Jewish working class couple in London on the 27th of January in 1850. His childhood was short lived, for he was forced to mature early on. After only four years of receiving an elementary school education, Gompers was taken in and apprenticed to a shoemaker at the age of ten. He would quickly

  • Power Play in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame

    2124 Words  | 5 Pages

    Power Play in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame In a shelter devoid of sunlight and laughter, the family in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame all struggle to find their niches within their world. Central to the play physically and emotionally, Hamm has the ability to make the others revolve around him. Clov, physically the healthiest in the family, has a power that even Hamm could not define until very late in the play. Nagg and Nell, the elderly parents of Hamm, hold the power of memories. Although some characters

  • Samuel Sewall

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sewall’s Relationship with Family Samuel Sewall lived a very Puritan life in early colonial Boston. As a man who cared deeply for his religion and his family, Sewall dearly loved his family and viewed their good and poor health as God’s reward or punishment. He did not, however, simply attend to his family to satisfy what he believed was God’s will. Rising rapidly to a position of prominence in society, Sewall was blessed with money and a close relationship with his wife and children. He aided them

  • Sartre’s Existentialism in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

    1566 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sartre’s Existentialism in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot Critics often misunderstand the quintessence of Sartre’s philosophy. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his lecture “Existentialism is Humanism,” remarks that “existence precedes essence” (2), that is, man first materializes and then searches for a purpose – an essence. Samuel Beckett, through his play Waiting for Godot, affirms Sartre’s core argument. Misinterpreting Godot, critic Edith contends that it differs fundamentally from

  • Mark Twain's 'Life On The Mississippi'

    862 Words  | 2 Pages

    A onetime printer and Mississippi River boat pilot, Mark Twain became one of America's greatest authors. His 'Tom Sawyer', 'Huckleberry Finn', and 'Life on the Mississippi' rank high on any list of great American books. Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on Nov. 30, 1835, in the small town of Florida, Mo. He was the fourth of five children. His father was a hard worker but a poor provider. The family moved to Hannibal, Mo., on the Mississippi, when young Clemens was 4 years old.

  • Samuel Sewall

    1141 Words  | 3 Pages

    Samuel Sewall born in 1652 in England. He was taken as a child to Newbury, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard in 1671. He became a minister but gave up the role to take management of a printing press in Boston and entered upon a public career. He was elected in 1683 to the general court and was a member of the council. As one of the judges who tried the Salem witchcraft cases in 1692, he shared the responsibility for the conviction of nineteen persons. However, he became convinced of the error

  • The Emergence of the Political Rastafarian through Ras Samuel L Brown

    4449 Words  | 9 Pages

    Ras Political: The Emergence of the Political Rastafarian through Ras Samuel L Brown In the 1920s, Marcus Mosiah Garvey preached a rhetoric of pan-Africanism, and of a Jamaican exodus to the homeland of Africa. One young and impressionable Jamaican, Samuel Brown was touched and motivated by Garveyism, and his self-taught schooling eventually laid a great foundation for a cohesive Rastafarian sect through political action. Although Rastafarians are a typically non-political group of people, some

  • Analysis Of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    1519 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mattessich 1 John M. Mattessich Mr. Gentry A.P. English Lit 7 April 2014 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- A monumental cultural figure of America’s nineteenth century Through years of research and studies of various American literature and poetry only one name comes to mind. That of course, is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the most widely known and best-loved American poets of his time. Longfellow has not only influenced generations of readers, his writings have had a significant impact on my life