Growing-Up Explored in Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen The first time I read Kitchen, I knew I was experiencing something very special. Not since my initial reading of Catcher in the Rye have I witnessed such a perceptive look at the joys and pains of growing up. These coming-of-age novels capture our attention with plots that, while twisting and turning in creative, off-beat ways, remain believable. The writers of these novels tell us their stories with a subtle style more exciting than that of
Alternatives to Capitalism Explored in Thomas More's Utopia Thomas More's use of dialogue in "Utopia" is not only practical but masterly layed out as well. The text itself is divided into two parts. The first , called "Book One", describes the English society of the fifteenth century with such perfection that it shows many complex sides of the interpretted structure with such clarity and form that the reader is given the freedom for interpretation as well. This flexibility
The History of Mexican-Americans Explored Through Film The hardships that Mexican-Americans have faced started well before Reies Lopez Tijierina and Corky Gonzalaz led the Chicano movement in the sixties, and well before the Coronado Bridge was built in San Diego. It started with the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hilago. The treaty signed in 1848 by the United States and Mexico established new boarders between the two countries. This treaty forever changed the lives of Mexicans then and still today. When
Interracial Dating Explored in Save the Last Dance The movie, Save the Last Dance, goes along with all of our discussions and conversations about the visual difference between the black and white cultures and the stereotyping that Hollywood does of the two cultures. The movie shows the difference in the two cultures, according to Hollywood.you have your typical white middle-class suburban girl (Sarah) and your typical low-class black boy (Derrick). Save the Last Dance is a love story about
Justice Explored in The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne created themes in The Scarlet Letter just as significant as the obvious ideas pertaining to sin and Puritan society. Roger Chillingworth is a character through which one of these themes resonates, and a character that is often underplayed in analysis. His weakness and path of destruction of himself and others are summed up in one of Chillingworth's last sentences in the novel, to Arthur Dimmesdale: "Hadst thou sought the whole earth over
Ambiguities Explored in Heart of Darkness Literature is never interpreted in exactly the same way by two different readers. A prime example of a work of literature that is very ambiguous is Joseph Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness". The Ambiguities that exist in this book are Marlow's relationship to colonialism, Marlow's changing feelings toward Kurtz, and Marlow's lie to the Intended at the end of the story. One interpretation of Marlow's relationship to colonialism is that he does
Relationship between Fiction and Reality Explored in The Things They Carried In many respects, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried concerns the relationship between fiction and the narrator. In this novel, O'Brien himself is the main character--he is a Vietnam veteran recounting his experiences during the war, as well as a writer who is examining the mechanics behind writing stories. These two aspects of the novel are juxtaposed to produce a work of literature that comments not only
The two main themes explored in In the Attic and Stop the clocks are love and loss The two main themes explored in 'In the Attic' and 'Stop the clocks' are love and loss. Both poets express their insight into the knowledge that the world will not stop regardless of the loss of mankind. This, however, is where the similarity ends. Both writers are expressing their own personal way of dealing with losing someone close to them. On Auden's side, there is bitterness in his loss, and an almost
Relationship between Sublime and Magical Realism Explored in The Monkey From the beginning of The Monkey, a short story located within Isak Dinesen's anthology Seven Gothic Tales, the reader is taken back to a “storytime” world he or she may remember from childhood. Dinesen's 1934 example of what has been identified as the "Gothic Sublime" sets the stage for analysis of its relationship to other types of literature. What constitutes Sublime literature? More importantly, how may sublime literature
The Facade of Civilization Explored in Heart of Darkness and Heart of the Matter Heart of Darkness and The Heart of the Matter afford glimpses into the human psyche, explorations deep into human nature. In each, the frailty of the facade we call “civilization” is broken, by external forces portrayed by Conrad and internal ones by Greene. In both stories there is one who falls pray to corruption and one who is witness both submerged in forces that will not be silenced or reasoned with.