Protagonist Literature Reviews Samples For Students

Introduction

Man is no match to the extreme cold, especially when he travels alone. His skills on how to build a fire are not enough to assure his survival against the harsh weather. It takes more than skills and fitness to conquer the challenges of life. In the succeeding paragraphs, the experiences of the protagonist in To Build a Fire are discussed. Jack London, through this story, is emphasizing the qualities that a man should have to survive the difficulties he encounters in life. His use of the extreme cold as the setting and only the man and the dog as the characters ...

Whose story would you tell? Around whose basic point-of-view would you build the screen play? How will you resolve the story?
I would choose to write the screen play from the point of view of the journalists who are conducting the sting operation. It would portray the various attempts of the media to establish a connection between the regulatory authorities and the drug dealers and through this point of view the film would expose the regulatory system of Ireland, that the Government and the Police’s involvement in such dealings. It would be similar to an investigation where the ...

In Samuel Beckett’s Company, he uses variations of the word “devise,” “deviser,” “device,” and “devising.” In this paper the use of these words, which are used by Beckett with some frequency will be analyzed. The words will be analyzed as per their meaning, and in how “meaning” fit the contextual elements of Beckett’s text. The paper will be argued from an etymological perspective, to investigate whether words have different forms of meaning, and how Becket may be playing with the meaning of words. Although Beckett bombards the text with formations of the word “devise” in a seemingly absurdist ...

Question 1

In the poem, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by the renowned poet Randal Jarrell, the poet tells about an unnamed gunner serving in war for his nation. The poem is one of the works about war and its horror. The protagonist of the poem is a gunner serving in the war. He was forcefully made to come to war by the government, disturbing his satisfied life.
Three characteristics of the protagonist are discussed as follows. First of all, the protagonist is not much of a patriot. The protagonist is not in the war on his own will, or ...

The Relationship of Beauty and Death in Yukio Mishima’s “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”

Introduction
The novel written by Yukio Mishima represents a true incident happened in Japan in 1950, when a boy set fire to one of the most beautiful and well-known Zen temples. This event caused shock among the public and raised serious and controversial questions regarding the cultural and social issues in the country. In the trial, the boy claimed: “I hate myself, my evil, ugly, and stammering self”. In the result, it was concluded that the boy has burnt down the temple due to self-hate and obsession with everything beautiful. He could not help to remain calm when he ...

Hunger, a popular novel by Knut Hamsun, is indeed unwittingly about hunger. What made it controversial were the idiosyncrasies, thoughts that are often one-sided, and the abandonment and depreciation of the author on some of the basic ideologies that other authors in his era so loved, among others. There are simply a lot of things about Hamsun’s Hunger that one cannot afford to miss, not just because of its peculiarity or extraordinary characteristics, if not weird at all, but also because of the moving and entertaining features.
Perhaps from some readers’ point of view, the story in itself can ...

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses diverse literary applications to develop her message to the readership. Her narration becomes memorable because of the level of involvement she makes with her readers. For example, she uses such literary elements as character, plot and style to deliver her message.
Gillman’s story is extremely insightful in its narration of patriarchal societies. The story tells about a woman who suffers from depression after the birth of her child. Her husband then secludes her in a summerhouse. The house is rented but has pathetic conditions that further worsen the treatment of the ...

Raymond Carver: Cathedral

“Cathedral” tells the story of a man whose insecurity leaves him blind to the world and who further seeks to blind himself from his own feelings by desensitizing himself with drugs and alcohol. The protagonist shows an excruciating lack of connection with his wife, whom he never refers to by name, and always in the third person. Yet, he cares for her, for he feels vulnerable and insecure when confronted with his wife’s friendship with an old blind friend of hers, a spiritual closeness that leaves him unsure as to where he himself fits in her life. In his description ...

Two Kinds is a short story by Amy Tan in the book The Joy Luck Club. Tan writes about the intricacy of a daughter and mother relationship who migrated from China to America. The short story is about a Chinese-American girl named Jing-mei. Jing-mei lived in American and her mother believed that, as long as one lives in America, he/she can be anything she could ever wish to be and therefore, she was working hard to find her daughter’s talent. Jing-mei’s mother constantly tests her daughter for any talent, but any time she tries, no talent is found. The lack ...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper was published in 1892. The story introduces a candid female protagonist who’s isolation from society, and from her writing, drives her insane. Written from a first person perspective, the story allows the reader to become personally involved with the narrator. Gilman uses symbolism throughout the story, two examples of which are the wallpaper and the wallpaper pattern. The story reveals interesting clues about how mental illness was treated at the time, and how women in particular were repressed by society. Through the use of a first person narrator and symbolism, Gilman ...

Love and marriage have always been an inexhaustible topic in the literature of all nation and all times. Depiction of various shades of emotion in this context has offered the reader a great enjoyment as well as some food for thought. The short story The Story of an Hour by an American writer Kate Chopin is one of the examples of Considering the moral conventions of the her time, especially with regard to female rights and behavior, this story was definitely an unusual approach to interpreting the relationship between the sexes: the female protagonist hears about the abrupt death ...

Complete Name of the Professor

Death of a Salesman
First response:I respectfully disagree with your view that Willy Loman should be considered a protagonist in the play “Death of a Salesman” just because he and his son Biff affect each other’s character. Aristotle made numerous remarks about the definitions of drama, and laid down specific parameters about what an ‘ideal’ protagonist should be in his work “Poetics”. However, underneath the fault of his character lie his greatness, ambitions, and dreams. His inability to fulfill those dreams, as well as his tragic flaw, and most especially his desire to manifest those dreams around him were the ...

The Necklace and The Story of an Hour have numerous common elements. For example, both are nineteenth century stories and both have unhappily married women as their protagonists. However, the overriding similarity is the central theme of gender roles that emanates from both. Mathilde and Mrs Mallard are both middle-class women of their time and, as a result of this, have very little control over their lives. Rather than providing stability and affection, their husbands are repressing them and hindering their sense of identity.

In both stories, the protagonist is a young married woman. Similar again are the feelings of the ...

“The yellow Wallpaper” is a cut throat short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and it tries to reconstruct the nature of American women lives and their roles in the nineteenth century society .During the era, women were treated as mere objects and men tried as much as possible to use their skills, power and ability to dominate and limit women.

The protagonist of the story Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the narrator and she describes her life as a woman, mother, and wife. Immediately after the birth of her son, she is presented to suffer from a mental disorder described as 'post-partum depression, ...

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is best characterized by his ambition, which leads him to commit heinous murders and eventually causes him to become insane. In “Macbeth”, one of the greatest tragedies ever written, the protagonist transforms from a valiant nobleman to an insane and violent tyrant, whose downfall comes as a relief by the end of the play. The tragedy is a literary genre which tackles a serious or somber topic, and in which the protagonist has an unhappy fate, usually brought about by a major flaw in his character. In the play, Macbeth first kills Duncan to take ...

The world of literature has always intrigued one and all with the sheer quintessence of art and aesthetics. The readers from all the corners of the globe have been immersed in the aesthetic charm and affective appeal of the literary works of the literary artists who have proved their genius though their unparalleled portraiture and content that have left an immortal mark in the very innermost core of thee hearts of the avid readers. The history of literature goes on to document the works of many such stalwarts who have left the readers stirred to the core. James Joyce ...

Analysis of James Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’

Quite a few of the short stories in the Dubliners collection of James Joyce are more of his personal memories as well as various sentiments that he holds. The Sisters, The Araby, and Evelin, are all stories which are more of a characterization of his later works. The narrators of all the stories of Joyce tend to disband into the language out of which they actually evolve.
In these stories, rather than having speakers who relate themselves to the readers of the stories, the readers are actually seen being related to the language spoken by the narrators and the ...

Tragedy is among the common productions of drama. This means that some dramas take the form of tragedy, which basically means that they portray the downfall of a protagonist. Tragedy occurs as a result of some error in judgment or any other fatal error, leading to major suffering, but also important insights gained by the leading character. The main purpose of such tragedy is to elicit some emotions, fear or sympathy, in the audience. “Oedipus the King” and “Death of a Salesman” are among the most intriguing tragedies that have been produced. This paper is an analysis and comparison of the two ...

Throughout Clarice Lispector’s novella, The Hour of the Star, colors and sounds are used to convey a feeling or message. The story is a very sad story about a young misfortunate girl from North-east Brazil who is suffering from tuberculosis. The story is told through the perspective of a male writer who is struggling with the young girl’s suffering. Lispector used an array of colors and sounds to entice emotion from the reader. This use of colors and sounds were both well-developed elements in the book, and these elements will be discussed throughout this essay.
The primary sound “bang” was ...

“Cat in the Rain” by Ernest Hemingway

The title of the story “Cat in the Rain” by Ernest Hemingway carries an inner meaning besides its literal meaning of cat in the rain. Hemingway uses iceberg theory to fix a title for his story. The title has a meaning outwardly and has a deep meaning behind it. Even though, the story says the incident when a cat caught in the rain, the protagonist of the story indirectly refers to the title by confronting the element of confinement that resembles the cat. Thus, the title signifies nothing but the American Woman. “Cat in the Rain has two points of view: full omniscient ...

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What does the necklace in Guy de Maupassant’s story “The Necklace” symbolize?
The necklace symbolizes the superficiality of wealth and class. The necklace that Mathilde borrowed from Madame Forestier represented a life of wealth and social recognition that she desired for most of her life. However, when it was discovered that the necklace was made from paste was not worth more than “five hundred francs” (de Maupassant 6). This suggests that the life of wealth and status is empty, superficial, and meaningless.

What is one of the major themes of the Guy de Maupassant’s story “The Necklace”? Discuss each of these.

One of the major themes of the story is pride and the ...

In Herman Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha, there is a complex relationship between the external and the internal worlds and this is much evident in the life of the protagonist Siddhartha. The complexities in his spiritual quest arise from the teachings of Gautama Buddha, who he initially meets and speaks to and who inspires him to become an ascetic and attain nirvana and his inner self that refuses to follow the teachings of one person. When his friend Govinda becomes an ascetic, Siddhartha realizes and tells him friends that each individual experience is different and although a teacher can impart ...

An instantaneous glance at the first paragraph Rima Vallbona’s “The Secret World of Grandmamma Anacleta” reveals several literary devices that the author has utilized to depict the themes behind the story. A comprehensive analysis of the literary choices used by the author especially the vocabulary brings into light the themes behind the words.
The first theme that is brought to light is that of wealth. From the first line of the first paragraph, one thing becomes crystal clear to the reader. The story is clearly set in a rich environment or the characters in the novel are relatively ...

The book under the title ‘The mimic men’ is narrative book which has a simple structure to understand since it heavily employs the use of flashbacks and flash forwards. This makes it simple to understand what the protagonist in the novel has gone through (James, paragraph 2). The book is more of a confession and autobiography of the protagonist (Singh) who has just retired in one of the suburbs in London after spending many years in Isabella as a minister (Roberts, paragraph 2).
The book revolves around the world of Isabella, an island which has just received independence from its colonialists. ...

The interaction between science and fiction in our day and age is for everybody to see and experience. The subject is a vast one and often kept separate from formal discussions its effects on the society and how it is affected by it. A science fiction topic which gained massive popularity in the decade of the 80’s and continued through to the 90’s was the subject of virtual reality. Virtual Reality simply refers to environments generated by a means of a computer program where physical presence is simulated. Such environments can be imaginary but very often bear close resemblance to ...

Hamlet written by William Shakespeare has one of the greatest and widely recognized lines in literature, “to be or not to be”. Many have pondered over what this one line actually meant, but because it’s open to interpretation there are many perspectives. Many at times, it is assumed that this phrase contemplates suicide. The point where the protagonist uttered this line was a truly tragic moment, and he felt his life to be full of burdens and sorrows. Therefore, it is understandable if he wanted to commit suicide. Many also claim that Hamlet was pretending to be mad, so ...

Written by the American author Robert Cormier, the Chocolate War is a novel set in the Trinity High and is an account of the protagonist Jerry Renault as he takes on the revered schools cruel mob rule by the vigil notorious for giving assignments that range from the ridiculous to the absurd. This secret society uses intimidation as a way of enforcing its cultural norms on the school. The novel also gives a sizeable attention to sexuality, one of the major characteristics of young adults’ fiction following the protagonist’s sexual desires.
The novel adopts a third person point of view constantly ...

Antigone is a tragedy written by Greek playwright Sophocles in the year 442 BCE. The play carries on in a series of plays such as Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus as well as Seven Against Thebes, which tell the tale of social classes, family feuds, and civil law in ancient times. The play tells about the reversal of fortunes between people in the high social class who are forced to live very lowly lives and to suffer emotionally and physically due to the operation of the constitution. The play deals with the burial of Antigone’s brother ...

“The Coquette,” is a story of virtue, but also a story of caution. A Reverend calls upon Young Eliza Wharton. He has hopes to marry her. The reader sees through a cast of characters various representations of virtue, immoral behavior, and even what it means to be naïve. Eventually we see what it means to be coquettish may just be a young girl trying to find her way.
Eliza Warton is the young protagonist of Hannah Webster Foster’s, “The Coquette.” She has all the beauty, grace, and charm of a woman in that era. Expected to marry ...

Voltaire has been considered as a writer of the Enlightenment era, where the writers would initiate a change in the way of the present society through their writings. In his book Candide, Voltaire sought to satirize the entire theme of the way women were treated in the 1800s. While the book's main protagonist is a male, the underlining's of the book is based on a female, Cunegonde. The protagonist of the book, Candide lives at the mayor's house under the study of Doctor Pangloss. Candide falls in love with the daughter of the mayor, Cunegonde. However, when the mayor ...

The book, Year of the Elephant (1989) was written by Leila Abouzeid and is a strong reminder of the way of Moroccan women before independence. The book also goes on to explain how Moroccan independence brought about changes in the lives of women. Much like the author herself, the protagonist of the novel Zahra was born a few years before independence and hence has seen the lives of women both, before independence and after independence (in 1956).
Within the novel, the protagonist, Zahra, is divorced by her husband. The worthlessness of a woman in a marital home is described ...

Non-material notions such as courage, love, truth or faith have been debated in terms of philosophical studies, as well as became central topics of literary works of different genres. Despite the fact that lots of approaches to defining these concepts have already been developed, new ones continue to emerge. For the purposes of this assignment I would like to demonstrate how different truth can be by examples of “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics” by Wustan Hugh.Auden.

Truth can be very different. Someone may associate absolute ...

Literature: Big Two-Hearted River part I and II

‘Big Two-Hearted River’, a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway, consisting of two parts, was firstly published in 1925, in the ‘In our time’ edition, which appeared to be the first American collection of his short stories.
Simple on the surface, the plot, however, hides a complicated story of the process of healing through the contact and blending with the nature, the main motive force in the narration.

The story describes a soldier, Nick Adams, who having returned to his native place, after suffering the post-traumatic stress syndrome from the World War I, finds courage and strength to ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with a review of chapters 22-24 of the book ‘The Scarlet Letter’. Barlow (2000) refers to this book as ‘The magnum opus’ of Nathaneal. (Barlow, 2000). ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is a story of love, adultery, betrayal, faith, belief and social criticism which was published in 1850 and holds a little bit of all these elements which can attribute to it the characterization of being a romantic novel.
The historical context of the novel’s plot is the social environment of the society living and developing in the area of Puritan Salem, in Massachusetts ...

Jay Gatsby is the protagonist of the novel The Great Gatsby. He is a very wealthy man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. As narrated by Nick Carraway, Gatsby is famous for the lavish parties he throws on Saturdays but no one really knew where he came from, what he did or how he got his wealth. As the novel progresses, we soon learn that he was born James Gatz in North Dakota. He acquired his wealth through the sheer determination and also through criminal activity, as he vowed to do anything to win Daisy. Tony Buchanan, on the ...

Edgar Allan Poe is a prominent American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, whose works are popular with the readers all over the globe. The timeless themes of Poe’s stories and the struggles of his characters are indeed remain relevant nowadays. His cocktail of death, love and suffer is of an undying combination. His short stories and poems are sodden with darkness, agony, mystery and obsession of inevitable death, they thrill and excite. The Pit And The Pendulum, The Black Cat, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Fall Of The House of Usher are only a few of his ...

Analyze the relationship between the evolution of protagonist and the city of Barcelona in the novel "In Diamond Square" by Merce Rodoreda’s
In Diamond Square is an acclaimed and classic story of a woman caught up with her children in Barcelona civil war. She struggles in a convulsive period to feed her family as her husband fights the fascist. The novel is set during the Spanish civil war and the second Spanish republic. It is set in Barcelona and pictures Joe and Natalia all struggling to make end meet. It as well pictures Natalia’s conflictive life giving a blend ...

The entirety of human experience is, for proponents and advocates of the literary movement of naturalism, a result not of the individual’s choice, but of the natural circumstances of his social and biological environment. Whereas the realists advocate for the individual as the center of the conflict within the page, the naturalists construe literary conflict as emerging between man and nature. Two works that are often considered characteristic of this movement are Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”, and Jack London’s “The Law of Life”. In both works, the protagonists are pitted against their natural environments, and the ...

“Nick stood up. He was all right. He looked up the track at the lights of the caboose going out of sight around a curve," are the words Ernest Hemingway’s “The Battler” begins with. From the first sentences, it becomes apparent who is the main character of "The Battler.” Moreover, Nick Adams is a protagonist of a series of Ernest Hemingway stories. For the first time “The Battler” was published in 1925 and it was a part of the collection entitled “In Our Time." In spite of being protagonist, Nick is not the only person this story is about. He is an ...

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One of the most prolific plays of the 1950’s was The Crucible. Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem Witch Trials is a book that not only transcends time but also speaks to a wide audience. In the play the protagonist John Proctor is portrayed as a tragic hero, he makes mistakes in his comfortable life but by the end of it realizes his mistakes and dies on his path to self worth. He is his own worst enemy and is torn apart by his own guilt from the acts of lechery and adultery that ...

Beowulf is an epic Greek poem based on a great hero named Beowulf. It is an epic poem because it emphasizes heroic actions of Beowulf who is the protagonist. The central character struggles between human feelings and heroic ethos in his adventures. It is a universal story of a life’s journey from adolescence to adulthood and to old age. Beowulf who is the hero in the poem grows in wisdom through pain and at the end of the epic tale, he triumphs through personal experience. In the poem, Beowulf is portrayed as the hero of the people for saving them from ...

Literature

Introduction
Application of visual effects during a stage play can add a considerable amount of realism to the whole play. There are a large number of visual effects that are used for theatrical plays. But, imagination and creativity are two vital elements in implementing these effects. Besides this, lighting effects are the common ones that are widely used to create a hover of visual realism. The other common visual effects are physical effects and pyrotechnics. In pyrotechnics, much care is taken to ensure safety over the stage, and it is mainly used in rock concerts.

During medieval times, visual effects were looked ...

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April26, 2013
Essay
Films and poetry generally offer the viewer or the reader a trip into a fantasy world which serves as an escapade from the not –so-perfect reality. But certain Russian art works try to produce the opposite effect. They aim at bringing before the viewer’s eyes, the reality that was prevalent in the Soviet Union. They prove that the official picture of a happy and contended society, projected by the soviet government is a lie and brings before the viewers eyes, all the faults that are prevalent in the system and aims at bringing a social change. There are ...

The two novels both have a history when it comes to thrillers in their time. The Haunting of Hill House, a novel by Shirley Jackson is considered a classic among many novel lovers as it captures the imagination of the reader in all possible ways. The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson is a crime novel that has captured audiences around the world. This is with the imaginative and creative form of writing that it takes. Both these authors are legends in their own right, and form the basis for some of the thrillers that are present today. One of the most noticeable ...

What would you really expect of someone who is to narrate his experiences as a slave ,teaches himself how to read and write , narrates about his passage from childhood full of ignorance to adulthood and self realization, his aborted attempt to escape, and his final successful escape attempt from slavery , followed by a short discussion of his time in the north? It is just such a man who we meet in Frederick Douglass own novel Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave .Through what he says about himself, about people around him ,the society that he lives in as , ...

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne introduces a strong theme of Puritan religious beliefs. His narrative vehicle for this is Satan who, throughout the story, destroys the protagonist’s faith. “Young Goodman Brown” is of the more well-known stories exploring 17th Century Puritanism and, even on a first read, it is clear why. Hawthorne depicts the chosen situation carefully and convincingly to the reader, not only entertaining them but also informing them as well. Certainly the element of this story that stands out the most dramatically is that of Satan and the means he adopts to manipulate the protagonist. Numerous strategies have ...

Abstract

This essay offers an expository interpretation of Joyce Carol Oates’ short story, entitled “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” It portrays the female protagonist’s urge to be accepted, admired, and thought of as beautiful, while she continues to put on a personal display of maturity and sexual attraction. Once the opportunity for her to be treated as a truly mature person presents itself, it becomes all too clear that she is far less mature than she originally presented herself to be.

Keywords: teenager, rebellion, adulthood, sexuality, seduction

Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” raises numerous unsettling issues ...

The six stories that we have read as a part of this unit are rich in terms of expression of theme and characterization. All of the authors weave images together to create powerful rhetorical arguments that entice the reader. From battlefield scenes to questions of the meaning of life, each story has a vivid collection of images that serve to bolster the ideas that the authors want to express.
The actual battlefield in which “The Field” takes place sets the tone and mood for the entire story. The three characters must hide in an underground crate to avoid the continuous ...