Should books ever be banned? (Harry Potter)

Banned Books Banning books are used for shielding children from politics, profanity, religious groups, and more. In America, books are frequently banned or challenged by school boards and parents. Although the freedom of speech right should play a percentage in this act, it doesn’t. In September of 2005, A mom by the name of Laura … Read more

Showing prejudices like racism and classism in Harry Potter

J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series is among the few pieces of literature which have equally gained immense popularity, critical acclaim and success worldwide. The seven Harry Potter movies are based off of the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. The series has earned around $7.7 billion in the box office and is known as … Read more

The Many Genres of Dean Koontz

If you were to name the best selling authors of all time, who would they be? William Shakespeare would instantly come to your head, along with Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling. Well, have you ever heard of Dean Koontz? Dean Koontz has been one of the most popular authors over the past few decades, selling … Read more

In the Night Room – Peter Straub

In the Night Room is an award-winning novel written by American author Peter Straub. Straub is a well-known American author of many works of horror. Room was nearly universally acclaimed by critics as a fantastic work of horror (In the Night Room, Wikipedia). In addition to receiving critical acclaim, Room was also the recipient of … Read more

Symbolism in literature

In chapter three of How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, the author elaborates on the concept of vampirism in literature. Vampires are often associated with horror, as well as its blood-sucking, immortal, and nocturnal characteristics. Although in literature, these concepts are often a figurative symbol of many other thematic elements. … Read more

How Shakespeare’s characters are represented across different nations

Shakespeare is without doubt the author of theater the most adapted to the cinema, either in faithful transpositions of its plays or in adaptations to other settings in time and space. The first question that opens this paper is: why does the Shakespearean drama transfer so easy to the screen? A possible answer to this … Read more

Moral Boundaries In Macbeth

Ambition is in every individual’s innate nature as one constantly looks for ways to become more powerful and increase their social and economic status. In Macbeth, author William Shakespeare explores the extreme lengths one will go to achieve their ambitions against moral and societal limitations and the resulting tragic impacts on them and their surroundings. … Read more

Macbeth – moral and psychological outcome of decisions

Negative decisions in life prompt disastrous outcomes on both a moral and psychological level. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both lose their mental ground due to their uncontrolled ambition, ultimately leading to their demise. Both characters begin their quest for power differently and react uniquely to the strain of murders. However, Lady … Read more

Lady Macbeth – Masculine Nature

Shakespeare has portrayed Lady Macbeth as a woman with immense power who is more ambitious than her male counterpart – Macbeth – and is willing to do any ruthless act to achieve her desires. This is evident immediately in Act 1 Scene 5 where she first appears to her audience, revealing her dark and terrifying … Read more

Theatrical references in The Tempest, Macbeth and As You Like It

Shakespeare is well known for placing many theatrical references in his plays. They can be found in The Tempest, Macbeth, and perhaps most famously in Jaques “All the world’s a stage” speech in As You Like It. Despite this running theme, the use of this theatrical metaphor stands out much more noticeably in Hamlet. In … Read more

Female roles: Lady Macbeth, Wolf-Alice & the unnamed female in The Bloody Chamber

The most famous female role to review is Lady Macbeth; her lack of innocence is perfectly clear, due to her murderous intent, however many still debate her seductive nature. Some critics ‘depict her as seductive, luring her husband towards crime by playing the part of his ‘dearest chuck’’ This interpretation of her is appealing to … Read more

Conflict presented in ‘Macbeth’

There are many types of conflict presented in ‘Macbeth’, given that it is one of the main themes, the most notable ones being internal conflict, the conflict between the natural and unnatural and marital conflict. Shakespeare presents each of these different types of conflict dramatically through soliloquies and direct conversation and relationships throughout the play. … Read more

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (analysis)

Bakhtin wrote that, “language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated – over-populated with the intentions of others.” For Frederick Douglass, the importance of the written word over the spoken word would come to shift him from a position of public … Read more