The process of writing an essay on American literature should begin with the creation of an outline. The structure lists the essential points you want to cover in the paper and provides you with a framework you will use to write it.
The finished result should adhere to the initial list. However, you can modify it if you find new matters you want to discuss.
Without a clear outline, your American literature essay may appear weak and disconnected. A work that has one will appear more interesting and convincing, even if it contains the same ideas.
When writing an outline for an essay, you should first list all of the ideas that come to your mind when thinking of the topic.
They do not necessarily have to be contained solely within the work. For example, you can research the author’s life and identify a connection between his ideas and romanticism.
Then, you will reduce the number of ideas by folding some of them into other, related ones as lesser mentions. Lastly, organize the order in which you will cover the topics so that it follows a logical progression.
Here are some tips for your outline creation:
Always include an introduction and conclusion into your outline. They are critical elements for a literature essay.
When writing critical essays on American literature, try to associate each major point with an external piece of evidence.
Try to choose your themes so that they are connected. This will make it easier to maintain a progression between different topics.
Choose your titles and subtitles so that they are clear and concise.
To find American literature research paper ideas and American literature topics as well as samples that illustrate the process of outline creation, visit IvyPanda.
Summary This review focuses on Jeni Mumford’s book, Life Coaching for Dummies, whose main purpose is to enable readers to find their own life coaches from within or by working with professional coaches in achieving the goals that they have set in life. Unlike most popular books on life coaching, this particular one downplays the […]
The first part of the novel Passing by Larsen explores how the Irene and Clare, who were childhood friends, reunite. It is from their skin color and behaviors that Larsen comes up with the title Passing. The title is symbolic since later in the book the two ladies try to pass as Americans and African […]
Introduction Desiree’s Baby, authored by Kate Chopin, is a bittersweet short story with an ironic ending. The plot centers on Armand, a wealthy landowner in Louisiana falls for and marries Desiree, a woman of unknown heritage. Later, the couple bears a son with a black skin color, which, according to Armand, comes from Desiree. However, […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1844) is often discussed by many critics and readers as one of the most mysterious and ‘dark’ poems of the 19th century because of its rich gloomy symbolism. “The Raven” is the poetic narrative which represents the sad story of the young man who spends his days in despair because […]
Fae Myenne Ng is an author of a brilliant and deep story called “Bone”, which contains a variety of levels and can be interpreted from the points of view of different perspectives. The writer expands some of the sentences of her writing by adding symbolic meaning to some of the concepts. This technique makes her […]
People have always tried to find the meaning in their life and understand what death is. The novel White Noise by Don Delillo dwells upon these eternal issues. The author explores the ways people see death, and it is clear that those are approaches apparent in society. It is necessary to note that ideas concerning […]
The Proposal Specific area This research work will focus on the effect of war on soldiers, as presented in Tim O’Brien’s book, ”The Things They Carried’. The book talks about what it takes to be a soldier and how the soldiers are affected when they go to war (O’Brien 56). In some of the cases, […]
Introduction: Across the Generation Gap The misunderstanding between the representatives of different generations is, perhaps, the oldest conflict that will most likely never go away. In her novel The Joy Luck Club, Tan touches upon the issue of generation gap and the following culture clash. Thesis statement. With a careful choice of stylistic devices and […]
Describing the source The short story, “The Lesson,” by Tony Bambara is one of the many stories the author created about children growing in neighborhoods. The story was published in the year 1972. The short story reflects on the comprehension of fiscal inequity in American society during the 1960s through the observations of a young […]
The book “Crossing into America: The New Literature of Immigration” treats the United States as a country of immigrants. This text manages to capture diverse voices and ideas from different poets, authors, and writers. The authors present the best ideas and discussions to understand the issue of immigration. The immigration reforms of the 1960s made […]
The issue of racial inequality and prejudices has been one of the most bothering and important problems of the modern world for centuries. It has touched millions of destinies of people with different backgrounds and of various races and cultures. Over time most of the prejudices and judgments towards the people of color have been […]
Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club illustrates the experiences of Chinese families, especially the conflict between mothers and daughters. The screen adaption of this literary work also enables the viewers to understand the nature of this conflict. This paper is aimed at comparing and contrasting the novel and its film adaptation. One should focus […]
Allen Ginsberg addresses some of the most urgent issues existing in contemporary society. The poem “Howl” was written in the middle of the 20th century, but people have not come up with effective solutions to eliminate drugs, crime, and violence so far. The poet reveals the darkest side of the world of consumers. His work […]
Recitatif is one of Morrison’s stories (Goldstein-Shirley, 1996). The story narrates the experiences caused by racism. Morrison wrote this book to express her political views against racism through fictional writing. The place of the story is at St. Bonaventure, that is a children’s home. The story took place around 1960, when racial discrimination held its […]
During her research as a writer, Denise Kiernan came across a black and white photograph that captured her attention. In the photo is a group of smartly dressed women working in a factory setting. The women are working on a secret uranium enrichment program for the government during World War II. The most interesting thing […]
Situation Analysis This paper’s audience is my instructor and classmates. They are the ones to read this work before any other person does. My instructor expects an essay that analyses the main rhetorical devices in the article. He also expects it to convince my classmates about the effectiveness of rhetorical devices. This topic is very […]
Broad themes presented in The Octopus There can be only a few doubts that, throughout the entirety of Norris’s novel The Octopus, the theme of the West dominates. Having been a romantically minded individual, Presley used to think of the West, as such that evokes the images of “infinite, illimitable, stretching out there under the […]
Tim O’Brien conveys various messages concerning the experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War through storytelling. He brings out the aspect of emotional burdens that the soldiers draw from the war. Soldiers who survive the war bear confusion, grief, and guilt. Confusion and grief engulf Norman Bowker that he drives pointlessly around his hometown lake […]
August Wilson, the author of the “social realist” drama Fences, gives audiences a glimpse into the life of an African American family trying to gain respect and respectability (Kushner). They are trying to accomplish this at a time when segregation was still nearly universal. The fences that appear in the title, and often throughout the […]
Short stories are a common form of fiction in American Literature. The prose writing that is usually employed in short stories depends on how the author organizes and presents his/her work of literature. The length of short stories is not relevant to their quality. The American literature portfolio features some renowned masters of this craft. […]
Introduction The world of literature is represented by the numerous genres and styles. Each period in literature reflects the moods of people as well as the social and historic challenges of that time. The works of Walt Whitman embody the spirit of the social changes, love of labor and freedom, which reflect the moods of […]
Creativity is often related to freedom in every meaning of its word, starting with the space to create, and up to the need for the “room for imagination,” which, basically, every artist needs to come up with an original and exciting idea. Creativity and oppression, on the contrary, are rarely related to each other; indeed, […]
Introduction The late 19th Century heralded an unprecedented wave of oppression for the Black Americans and thus they had to come up with ways of countering it, albeit silently. They could not voice their concerns honestly or without fear, and thus they had to mask their feelings and pretend that they were all right. In […]
Book Summary In the introductory section of the book, Beatriz Dujovne discusses the history of tango which is now regarded as the most popular dances in the history of the twentieth century. The author challenges the historical myth according to which tango was created by people who could represent the criminal world or the lower […]
Introduction The story under analysis is The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud, one of the most famous American Jewish authors of modern literature whose stories “possess uncommon staying power” (Bluestone 403) as they are still actual. The story comes from the collection of 13 short novels.”‘The Magic Barrel’ is the title story of a collection […]
Poets are known for their outstanding poetic styles as well as their core concerns in the society. As one specializes in poetry, chances are that as a poet he or she will evaluate the various available styles and finally settle on the one they consider the best. The same poet will also tend to be […]
James Baldwin is one of the greatest writers of the Civil Rights era. His words are like beautiful lyrics that attract readers from all walks of life. He knows how to choose the right words to describe a complex problem. He paints an image with a few strokes, and he does not need to write […]
In the modern globalizing world everything becomes bigger, moves closer together. The life, information and knowledge become more available, things that were out of reach before are now easy to get. Everything moves faster. Globalization in the political, economic, and cultural spheres of our life has created a massive impact and influenced the whole idea […]
Introduction Written by the American author Anne Tyler, the short story “Teenage Wasteland” depicts how an education and social system destroys rather than saving children in their adolescent phase of human development. While the choices of Donny are depicted as an example of the wrong choices that most adolescents make, the role of parents, teachers […]
Nowadays, it is not a difficult task to find a literary source that may capture the reader’s attention in several seconds. However, the worth and quality of such sources cannot be checked and proved the same easy way. Recently, I got a chance to read a book by Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: […]
War has always been a great tragedy for all people. It has been the constant companion of humanity. However, this accompaniment was not joyful. Million of deaths, destroyed cities and countries are just some of the disasters which war brings. However, each meaningful event in the history of humanity gives a great motivation for the […]
Reading Summary The chapters from 12 to 20 in the book “The Martyred” by Richard Kim are connected by one general topic – the concept of truth. Each character of the story has his own position and tries to define the truth taking into consideration personal concerns and ideas. The narrator of the story, Captain […]
Reading Summary “The Martyred” is the novel written by Richard Kim about the Korean War and its consequences on the religious life. The first eleventh chapters of the story introduce the main character, Captain Lee, and describe his relations with his friend, Park, the ways of how they achieve the current military positions, and the […]
The theme of love is probably one of the most indefinable and elusive topics around the whole world. People are free to have their own understanding of love, consider their own experiences to give a kind of explanation of love, and use their own ideas to share their expectations from love. In 1981, Raymond Carver, […]
The Fat Girl is a short story created by American writer Andre Dubus in 1995. On the one hand, it is an ordinary story about a girl, Louise, who has problems with her weight, and who cannot find the necessary portion of understanding with her parents and friends. On the other hand, The Fat Girl […]
Introduction In her narrative “Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl,” Harriet Jacobs attempts to describe the role of ‘the home’ in the lives of black slaves, their children and white masters in the American South. While it is evident that the major themes are slavery, gender inequality, and domesticity, it is imperative to […]
Flannery O’Connor came from a very religious Catholic family, and this factor has influenced her career as a writer and her works. The books by Flannery O’Connor are designed to explore various dimensions of faith and religion, a different understanding of sin and virtue, and the impacts religiousness or atheism can make on people. “Wise […]
The book, A Boy No More, by Harry Mazer, is about a young man called Adam Pelko who has to live with the trauma of the Pearl Harbor attack, where he lost his father in the US Arizona ship. Upon relocation to San Diego, alongside his sister and mother, the young man is faced with […]
Introduction Nisa: The life and words of a! Kung woman is a novel about a! A Kung woman that the author uses to conduct her research about the people of northwest Botswana in Africa. As the story begins, the author gives the audience an overview of her research and her expectations. She describes the people […]
The ‘Wilderness Boy’ is a historical book wrote to bring into picture the consequences of the Revolution. It takes place in the eighteenth century specifically during colonial North America. Margery tries to bring out the conflicts a young boy faces when he is forced into adulthood that has wars all over at only the age […]
Introduction Written by Ray Bradbury as a fictitious masterpiece novel, Fahrenheit 451 underscores pertinent censorship issues in the contemporary United States of America. Apparently, the censorship issues that bedeviled the American society of the 1950s are the same elements tormenting the 21st Century society. In the novel, firefighters have only one responsibility, viz. to start […]
The book called “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall” by Fadiman explores the views upon the illness and its nature from the anthropologic point of view comparing various healing techniques practiced by the professionals of Western Medicine and the shamans of the Hmong people from Laos living in the USA. In the story of […]
The story is about four children. These are Vanessa, Buzz, Jane, and Carter. They are shipwrecked on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. This starts after a 5-day boat expedition in Hawaii is foiled by an unexpected storm. The new stepsiblings are caught in the middle of the storm as they try to abandon […]
Account for Huck’s ability to lye his way out of scrapes Huckleberry Finn is an interesting character who is shown to be witty and smart. Even though he has had a hard time in his childhood, he has still learned a few things on the way. A particular “talent” that he has is to lie […]
Walter Whitman was an American poet and journalist. He is remembered for his free verse style of poetry, humanist principles, and opposition to slavery, and big political concerns. Most of his poems are based on humanitarian themes and issues affecting humanity. The poem 1861 is no exception. In the poem, he uses an omnipresent speaker […]
Introduction Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us is the book devoted to the research of the drivers of human behavior and motivation. Daniel H. Pink, the author of the book, presents the results of his own research on the topic and explains his self-determination theory (SDT). The ideas introduced in his book are […]
Published in 1973, ‘Everyday Use’ is a repeatedly anthologized short story which is studied and appreciated on a wide scale. This short story is written by Alice Walker, which got published in her short story collection – ‘In Love and Trouble.’ The story revolves around three core characters and their perspective on family heritage. This […]
In American culture, the color red symbolizes faithfulness and a medium of communication. In the short story, ‘The Red Convertible’ by writer Louise Erdrich, the red color is associated with the bond of brotherhood through a red Oldsmobile that they had bought together in their youth. The story revolves around the relationship of the two […]
Introduction Self-transformation and self-reflection are critical parts of heroic journeys in literature. Often, heroes fail to succeed, but their experiences provide philosophical insights into the essence of personal reflection journeys. In this paper, I explore “Wild,” a hiking memoir of Cheryl Strayed, as she embarks on a 1,100-mile journey through the Pacific Crest trail “to […]
Max Adeler’s short story “A Desperate Adventure” dwells upon an important issue concerning the life and death. Notably, the author is famous for his “mental pictures” of men and women who make the reader laugh or cry (“Max Adeler’s Return” 7). The story in question contains both components as it seems very sad at the […]
Talking about the relationships between Americans and the Natives has never been easy, mostly because of the notorious historic events that took place during the colonization of America, and the following misunderstandings between the Native Americans and the descendants of the colonists that took place afterward. There is no need to remind of the conditions […]
Introduction Fight Club brings into perspective many issues that affect contemporary society. Themes such as consumerism, materialism, fatherliness, capitalism, rebellion, and conformity dominate the setting of the play. This study focuses on the issue of capitalism that is exhibited through the power struggle in the novel. The narrator highlights the issue of capitalism as the […]
The differences in women and men’s perceptions of themselves and each other are discussed in Susan Glaspell’s one-act play “Trifles” (1916) where the author focuses on the problem with references to the aspects of gender. The social opposition of women and men is represented in the play with the help of describing the differences in […]
Introduction The similarity between a beast and a human being is striking. Despite centuries of progress and the ability to think abstractly, there is still a remnant of the beast within every single person. The essence of being human is, therefore, not to get rid of it entirely, but to be able to control it […]
Mark Salzman’s book Iron and Silk, discusses the experiences he faced in China as a teacher. It is necessary to note that he had learned a lot about Chinese culture before he went to that country. However, Salzman had realized that the Chinese culture was different from that of his home country only after he […]
Percival Everett is a unique writer. He differentiates himself from the other African-American writers by focusing his work on commercialization of literary culture. The book challenges the shibboleths of American culture and literature. It calls for an alternative to the commercialization of literary literature. The novel is funny. It engages readers through its playful jokes […]
Introduction The book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien reflects on the relationship between Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who is in Vietnam and a lady referred to as Martha from New Jersey. This reflective treatise explores the setting and situation in the book “The Things They Carried” about the main characters. Also, the paper identifies […]
Leslie Morgan Steiner speaks about her book Crazy Love, and her personal story of being a battered wife in a TED talk lasting 15 minutes and 57 seconds. She discusses the way that women feel trapped by abusive relationships, and fearful of leaving. She makes a very strong case that women who do leave actually […]
Introduction Toni Morrison tells a story of coming home. Her protagonist and his sister have to make a long trip to their home as well as to their selves. Frank had loads of terrifying experiences during the war and in his postwar life. His sister, Cee, almost died, and this experience also made her reconsider […]
William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily explores the experiences of a woman who cannot adjust to the evolving social and cultural environment. The author focuses on the life of Emily Grierson who once belonged to the Southern aristocracy; however, she is forced to adjust to the changes that American society underwent. More importantly, […]
“Mending Wall” is the opening poem in Robert Frost’s collection of poems North of Boston (Frost 11-13). The collection was first published in 1914 when the poet was forty years old, revealing two decades of development of poetic elegance (Wallace 2). Unlike the other poems in the book, “Mending Wall” playfully presents the mind of […]
Dialogue is a very powerful force. Socrates, the Ancient Greek philosopher, knew the power of dialogue when he described it as a tool for uncovering the truth. Discussions and debates lead us to change our beliefs and questioning our deeply held assumptions. In her novel Song of the Hummingbird, Limon provides the reader with an […]
Introduction Percival Everett’s book Erasure is one of the eye-opening literary works as it shed light on stereotypes and true experiences of African American people whose lives can be very different. The novel is a story of an African American writer, Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison whose intellectual works are rejected by publishers who say that the […]
Attitude is the feeling that the persona has towards the subject matter, especially as revealed through the tone he or she uses to talk about the subject matter. It may be negative or positive depending on the message or the nature of the topic the persona wishes to address. However, the words negative and positive […]
In the poem If I close my eyes, Nancy Levin (2011) explores various issues that are related to people’s experiences and their worldviews. In particular, the author focuses on the complexity of human memory which is often unreliable. This is one of the questions that are of great interest to this poet because she wants […]
This book tackles some of the major issues that globalization has brought. It addresses issues such as the increase in global interdependence the liberalization of financial markets. The book also mentions the place of immigrant workers in the global economic cities and their contribution to the global economy. I find myself agreeing with most of […]
People have endured a lot of turmoil throughout their history. There have been many periods of the reign of inhumanity and vice. The Nazi rule was one of such inhumane periods in the history of Europe. Millions of innocent people were tortured and murdered. Bruno Bettelheim (1960) notes that many of those deaths could have […]
Summary The Jungle by Uptown Sinclair was published in the year 1906. In the book, Sinclair depicts an immigrant family that had just emigrated from Lithuania to America in pursuit of better living conditions. Before they departed their native country, they believed that many opportunities awaited them in the USA. As such, they expected their […]
Introduction The book ‘A good man is to Find’ is one among the many fictional short stories of O’Connor and was first published in the 1950s. It is regarded as a fictional story because it displays all the characteristics of this feature as it can be seen from the way characters have been depicted and […]
Introduction Written by Margret Mitchell and first released in 1936, Gone with the Wind is a diachronic and sentimental fiction novel. Mitchell mainly focuses on the lifestyle of rich and gender biases of the indigenous people of Atlanta and Georgia immediately before the Civil War in 1961, through the war, to the Reconstruction epoch that […]
Introduction Jon Krakauer, the author of the novel into the wild, explores the entire life of a young man. Krakauer explores the main character, Chris McClandess’ determination to live a life free from oppression, which underscores the theme of ultimate freedom. After graduating from the University of Emery in Atlanta, McClandess decides to pursue his […]
The Swimmer is one of the short stories written by John Cheever, where the ideas presented at the beginning reasonably kicks off, but they happen to turn into total surrealism. One of the main character who is presented as Ned happened to have been lounging more on his friends’ swimming pool where he unusually thought […]
Life is full of struggles which are inevitable to every human being. Growing up is a process in life that requires someone to make decisions and be ready to take full responsibility for all the consequences that emanate from the decisions made. Updike in the short story “A & P” uses Sammy, a teenager who […]
“Dead is so Last Year” is the third and strangest book in the “Dead” series by the writer Marlene Perez. In the book, the Giordano sisters are feeling excited that at last, they have a break from the burden of having to go to school daily (Perez, 2). It is summer, and they are alone […]
John Grogan’s international bestseller “Marley: A Dog Like No Other” is suited for children of all ages, and it tells the story of a young puppy, Marley, who quickly develops a big personality, boundless energy, and becomes the troublemaker in the homestead. Grogan describes Marley as always causing problems. Sometimes he steals food from the […]
Introduction America is one of the countries in the world that has a rich history. Recorded history traces the origin of the country to the expulsion of the Red Indians from their land by the white men from England. Recorded history is of the view that the American country was initially occupied by the native […]
Introduction Shelley’s writings have received numerous analyses from different scholars and students of this great writer. One of such works is Ode to the West Wind. People like H.B Forman have noted this poem talks in part about Shelley’s emotional background while Professor Hthe.C. Pancoast has interpreted it from the environment in which it is […]
Introduction This paper analyses family matters and power relations in Angela Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and August Wilson’s Fences. These two stories, even though they tackle different issues, relationships between and among family members and power relations, come out clearly. In comparing these two stories, the paper analyses the use of plot the […]
Various voices have contributed to the issue of American freedom and the accompanying hardships. One of such voices is Patrick Henry who uttered this famous phrase over two hundred years ago, “give me liberty or give me death” (Heerak 45). Since then, this phrase has been used in various forms of struggles including the struggle […]
Summary The Big Squeeze by Steven Greenhouse focuses on how American workers have earned less income despite their hard work (Greenhouse, 2008). In the book, the author illustrates how employers in the last three years have benefited at the expense of their workers. Equally, the author analyses several case studies to demonstrate how inappropriate tax […]
The story of Henrietta Lacks highlights the importance of ethical principles in scientific research. Moreover, it shows that modern scholars have to pay much more attention to the rights of an individual. It should be noted that the cells of this woman were used to develop an immortal cell line, and it was important for […]
The two poems look at the burdens associated with an issue of being an illegal immigrant in the country. Gary laments on how his boss treated him as an illegal Mexican in America in Mexicans begin jogging, yet he was an American citizen of the Mexican origin. In the poem he recalls how the border […]
Once upon a time, all frogs used to live a happy life in a swamp. The swamp was very marshy and therefore provided a perfect home for all of them. The frogs were so happy that they did not care about anything or anybody in their lives. Those that lived near them neither troubled them […]
Morrison’s Beloved provides a literary account on African-American tradition that allows the author to create an intense representation and analysis of slavery in American history. At this point, Morrison implicitly criticizes historical and ritual methods based on healing and spiritual influence that shapes the basis of upbringing. From this viewpoint, the author reconstructs the conceptual […]
Introduction One of the reasons why the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman has traditionally been referred to as such that constitutes a high literary and philosophical value is that it contributed towards advocating the legitimacy of psychiatry as a newly emerged medical science. At the same time, Gilman’s story represented a […]
The story How to Write a War Story by Tim O’Brien is a definitive initiation story of a young soldier, living out of the traumas of the Vietnam War. In the story, O’Brien relates the criteria of a “true war story.” The story focuses on the features that might make a story a true war […]
Introduction Political satire has been a valid literary device for a long time. Examples of it can be found as early as the 1600s, and it is an art form that exists today. One period in which satire seemed to hit its peak was during the 1920s in America. That was a period of boom-time […]
Introduction The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, examines the concept of ‘the American dream’ in regards to contemporary people and some obstacles they face on the way toward their dreams. The novel does not focus on Jay Gatsby, the main character, only; it is full of short stories that all contribute to […]
Introduction In the literature, an ‘unreliable narrator’ often symbolizes an individual that the readers cannot fully believe or trust (Murphy 68). The reasons for not believing the narrator may vary. Such narrators could suffer from mental challenges, personal issues, have a personal bias or attachment to another character that is obviously unfair, have an underlying […]
Introduction Color symbolism plays an important role in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). The author uses various colors to accentuate different aspects of life in the United States in the 1920s. In particular, a great deal of attention is paid to representing differences in social status while emphasizing richness and prosperity with the […]
Folk beliefs in ghost existence dominated the ancient world, as well as belief in life after death and different supernatural beings. In the 21st century, cultural dynamism across the world has seen a drastic decline in the power and status of the belief in ghosts. The society is changing from a superstitious one to a […]
Introduction The traditional fairy tales have undergone a huge transition in the popular culture to adopt a more liberal approach. This has been attributed to the concepts of poaching and relevance. The popular culture has modified the traditional fairy tales to fit into their own personalized comprehension with a view of making them more relevant. […]
Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye, written by J. D. Salinger became one of his most controversial novels and a cultural phenomenon. This book is one of the most widely taught and commonly banned works of literature of all time (Benson & Salinger, 2018). There are debates on the topic of the novel’s […]
World literature consists of numerous examples when prominent writers turn to animal characters who are hardly distinguishable from human protagonists. The idea of such a trick is to convey a stronger message to the audience, as people relate to animals because they depict many human traits. Jack London is not an exception in this context, […]
Introduction The Coming of Age in Mississippi is one of the most influential pieces in African-American literature born in the period of active fighting for civil rights, against systematic racism and segregation. It was written and printed in 1968 by Anne Moody, a Black civil rights activist, as a form of autobiography.1 The story takes […]
Introduction This year, the world celebrated the 100th birth of the famous American writer, Jerome Salinger. The anniversary has given rise to the new debate around his work. However, it seems that people have been reading and discussing Salinger’s most prominent book, The Catcher in the Rye, since its first publication in 1951. The book […]
Introduction The American renaissance refers to the American literature in the 17th century era from 1840s through the Civil War period. The renaissance was characterized by efforts by American writers to develop literary works that reflect native issues such as American history, local dialect and geography. As such, the themes revolved around scientific progress, abolitionism, […]
Introduction The novel Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks highlights various themes that relate to parenthood and children upbringing. The protagonist, Chappie is a perfect teenager whose criminal mentality begins at childhood. Banks uses Chappie to highlight the theme of family institution and the effects of poor parenthood. This book review discusses Banks’ perspective […]
Every story usually has elements of form that help bring out the message that the author has in mind. These elements help shape out the story and if well presented, they effectively contribute to ease of understanding, on the part of the reader. This essay seeks to explain one element of form and its presentation […]
The high school football drama, Friday Night Lights, is a great piece of literary work. This is a great television drama, which reflects different literary characteristics, just like other literary works, such as poems, novels, short stories, paintings, plays, and others (Heffernan 1). While there are non-literary works, they tend to be formal with clear […]
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