Literary Critique Essays

  • Literary Critique - Midnight For Charlie Bone

    1011 Words  | 3 Pages

    Literary Criticism Nimmo, Jenny. Midnight for Charlie Bone. New York, New York City: Orchard Books. 2003. 401 pages. Midnight for Charlie Bone is a story about a school for prodigy children who each have a special magic skill. Charlie Bone has no idea that he has a special power, until he finds out he can see and hear people talking in photographs. Although he wants to use his power for the good, his classmate Lucretia Yewbeam does not. She has the power to brainwash people

  • Yaeger’s Critique of Chopin’s The Awakening

    992 Words  | 2 Pages

    Yaeger’s Critique of Chopin’s The Awakening In “‘A Language Which Nobody Understood’: Emancipatory Strategies in The Awakening,” Patricia Yaeger questions the feminist assumption that Edna Pontellier’s adulterous behavior represent a radical challenge to patriarchal values. Using a deconstructionist method, Yaeger argues that in the novel adultery functions not as a disrupting agent of, but, rather, as a counterweight to the institution of marriage, reinforcing the very idea it purports to

  • Analysis of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts. The passage from pages 37-38 effectively demonstrates the concept of history, as it foregrounds elements important to this issue. Rushdie, challenges the conventional modes of history through his self reflective narrative structure

  • Wolff’s Critique of Chopin’s The Awakening

    1174 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wolff’s Critique of Chopin’s The Awakening The critical case study to the novel establishes a definition of a type of critical response, and then gives as close an example that fits that mode of criticism—BORING! First, the book has these forms of criticism laid out contiguously, as if they occurred only spatially and not temporally. This flattened and skewed representation of critical approaches, taking an argument out of its context (an academic debate) and uses it as if it were a pedagogical

  • Critiques of Frederick Douglass' Work, from The Narrative to the North Star

    1932 Words  | 4 Pages

    Critiques of Frederick Douglass' Work, from The Narrative to the North Star "Right is of no sex-Truth is of no color-God is the Father of us all, And all we are brethren." A brief biography of Frederick Douglass Some historical criticisms of Douglass' Narrative New criticisms of Douglass' work Frederick Douglass Links See the First edition of The North Star, Douglass's newspaper A brief biography of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was born into the institution of slavery in

  • Critiques of Ernest Hemingway's Novel, Death in the Afternoon

    1447 Words  | 3 Pages

    Critiques of Ernest Hemingway's Novel, Death in the Afternoon Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon shows a new side of Hemingway's writing which initially disappointed the critics. Published in 1932, Death in the Afternoon was not the expected fictional novel, but instead was more of a nonfiction description of bullfighting and Spanish culture in the 1920's and 1930's. In Curtis Patterson's words, "It is a tripartite work: bullfighting in Spain, plus semi-autobiographical details of

  • Critique of Christmas Time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

    2825 Words  | 6 Pages

    Critique of Christmas Time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol An audience member's gleeful first-hand account of Charles Dickens's public reading of "A Christmas Carol" unwittingly exposes an often overlooked contradiction in the story's climax: "Finally, there is Scrooge, no longer a miser, but a human being, screaming at the 'conversational' boy in Sunday clothes, to buy him the prize turkey 'that never could have stood upon his legs, that bird'" (96). Perhaps he is no longer a miser but

  • LINDA TRIPP: "I’m you. . . I’m just like you." Really Linda? I don’t think so!

    3747 Words  | 8 Pages

    important factor in answering this question is the audience’s reaction to Tripp’s behavior along with an analyzation and critique of her actions. "Psychological criticism" is the method that will be used to evaluate Linda Tripp. This "attempts to analyze the effects of the rhetorician’s character, intelligence, and sincerity as perceived by the audience." (Campbell, Critiques of Contemporary Rhetoric. 1972, pg. 29) One must look at how Tripp portrays her image to the audience, how Tripp attempts

  • Political Critique of Race Relations in Alice Walker's Color Purple

    2167 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Color Purple as Political Critique of Race Relations If the integrated family of Doris Baines and her adopted African grandson exposes the missionary pattern of integration in Africa as one based on a false kinship that in fact denies the legitimacy of kinship bonds across racial lines, the relationship between Miss Sophia and her white charge, Miss Eleanor Jane, serves an analogous function for the American South. Sophia, of course, joins the mayor's household as a maid under

  • Critique Of "death Of The Author"

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    Critique of "Death of the Author" The title to the story "The Death of an Author," by Roland Barthes, suggests this story may be a fictional novel about the story of an author's death. Perhaps one might pick it up, and skim the foreword in hopes that beneath the cover of this book there would be a mystery, a story of detectives, eye- witnesses, clues, and a puzzle for the reader to solve. Before I read this story, the title "The Death of an Author" brought to my imagination the biography of a writer

  • Critique of the Movie Educating Rita

    5165 Words  | 11 Pages

    Critique of the Movie Educating Rita Director: Lewis Gilbert Screenwriter: Willy Russell Released: 1983 With Julie Walters, Michael Caine, and others Rita (Julie Walters) is a twenty-six years old hairdresser from Liverpool who has decided to get an education. Not the sort of education that would get her just a better job or more pay, but an education that would open up for her a whole new world--a liberal education. Rita wants to be a different person, and live an altogether different sort

  • Critique of Story Haircut

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reading through the whole story "Haircut" , it is not easy to believe that the death of Jim Kendall is really accidental. It is most likely that the incident is a murder. Jim Kendall is not a man who is loved by people in that small town, although some people find his jokes funny as long as they are not on them. There are many examples of those on whom Jim always makes annoying jokes such as Milt who "has got an Adams apple that looks more like a mushmelon" Julie Gregg and especially

  • A Critique of The Giver

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Critique of The Giver The purpose of this book was to show us a possible version of a "Utopia". It  was a fantasy oriented book, that was suppose to make you think about the possibilities for the future.  The setting is a supposedly perfect society where everyone is taken care of and no one is different.  The author Lois Lowry does a fine job portraying this supposedly "ideal" society. This book began with a description of sameness and release the two general principles the society

  • Heidegger's Critique of Cartesianism

    3337 Words  | 7 Pages

    has been neglected. I wish to address the question by focusing on the major aspects of Heidegger's critique of Cartesian philosophy and the modern tradition. I will first show that the strength of his criticism lies in its all-encompassing penetration of the foundations of modern philosophy, running through both the ontological and epistemological channels. Ontologically, Heidegger presents a critique of subjectivism; epistemologically, he discredits the correspondence conception of truth and its underlying

  • Critique of Hume's Analysis of Causality

    3300 Words  | 7 Pages

    Critique of Hume's Analysis of Causality Hume's analyses of human apprehension and of causality were the most penetrating up to his time and continue to have great influence. Contemporary Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri (1893-1983) has examined both and identified three underlying errors: (1) the failure to recognize that there are three stages of human intellection, and especially that the first, primordial apprehension, has quite unique characteristics; (2) the attempt to place an excessive

  • A Critique of Thank You for Smoking?

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Critique of “Thank You for Smoking…?” Peter Brimelow’s “Thank You for Smoking…?” had me interested from the title alone. This essay lists a few of the benefits that can occur from smoking. Bimelow is aware of the many dangers of smoking as he acknowledges “the Environmental Protection Agency has claimed that ‘second hand smoke’ is a significant risk for nonsmokers and the Food & Drug Administration is making noises about regulating nicotine as a drug” (The Genre of Argument 141). Brimelow’s

  • Critique of Barbara Huttman’s A Crime of Compassion

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    Critique of Barbara Huttman’s “A Crime of Compassion” Barbara Huttman’s “A Crime of Compassion” has many warrants yet the thesis is not qualified. This is a story that explains the struggles of being a nurse and having to make split-second decisions, whether they are right or wrong. Barbara was a nurse who was taking care of a cancer patient named Mac. Mac had wasted away to a 60-pound skeleton (95). When he walked into the hospital, he was a macho police officer who believed he could single-handedly

  • Comparing the Cultural and Social Critiques of Notes from Underground and Invisible Man

    2869 Words  | 6 Pages

    Cultural and Social Critiques of Notes from Underground and Invisible Man It is understanding oneself and the power structures of society that helps one gain authenticity, and ultimately….. power. Notes from Underground and Invisible Man offer a wide variety of social critiques. While some critiques are explicit within the plot, others are implicit in statements of characters and the relations between two or more characters. Many of the ideas of social critique in Notes from Underground have

  • Critique La Ventura

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    Critique La Ventura La Ventura is widely regarded as one of the greatest films to date. Michelangelo Antonioni didn’t win the Palme D’or, but it did get a Special Jury Prize during the Cannes film festival of 1960. No surprise he didn’t win the Palme D’or, but why give him an award in the first place? The reason for winning the title seemed unclear at first because the film had serious issues with breaking the rules of standardized filmmaking. For example having his actors enter the scene from

  • Analysis of Hume’s Critique of Causation

    1829 Words  | 4 Pages

    Analysis of Hume’s Critique of Causation Sometimes it is hard to be sure what conclusion to draw from a Humean analysis, and he is easy to misrepresent. This is partly because one argument he is engaged in may raise a number of related issues that he has dealt with elsewhere, and some of his points seem contradictory. My wish is to consider some of the possible readings of David Hume’s critique of causation, as it appears in Section VII of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “On Necessary