... British missionary and some villagers were kept in a prison of sorts for lesser crimes they had committed. Another meaning that could be taken from this book is that the main theme was to stress the progress of imperialism. Imperialism is the process in which a larger nation moves in and takes control ... their own religion and government to the natives and more and more people are begging to essentially sell out into this new culture. Throughout the book many people were thrown into jail or killed for breaking British laws. Once when a member of the Christians demasked and killed and e...

• Word Count: 1364
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... first, but when Nettie's husband starts abusing her, she leaves to become a missionary in Africa and find her roots. In the beginning of the book Celie is telling the story through her diary entries, and later Celie and Nettie are writing letters to each other, so it is like two stories ... views life from what you have read); Give examples from the novel (e.g., is life fun, is she morbid or optimistic, etc.?) The author of this book looks at life optimistically. She never lets Celie lose hope of her sister coming home, and when Corrine (Nettie's friend who she went to Africa with) ... ...

• Word Count: 1071
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... as a just man than as an unjust man. Here, Socrates presents two new descriptions of a just and unjust man to replace the original images set forth in Book II. Socrates goes on to propose that every human lives with three animals inside him: a many headed beast, a lion, and a human being. Each of these ... human soul that need to work together in order to achieve peace. Perhaps with the argument of the tyrannical man, presented in the early part of Book IX, this makes the most sense. It is obvious that a tyrannical man has uncontrollable desires that can never be satisfied. Being unable...

• Word Count: 877
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... story that explains African colonization from the eyes of an African himself. African colonization had many major affects on Africa and its people. Achebe wrote this book to get across the perspective of the African people and how they felt about colonization. The African colonization Affected the people's culture and lifestyle. In ... in the end, but the title does tell you that things do take a turn for the worst. A few examples of the downhill spiral the book takes, would be Okonwo kills Ikemefuna, the boy that comes to live with him and his family. Another instance would be when Okonw...

• Word Count: 1332
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... is also a documentary. It is a historical account of slavery and of antebellum southern plantation culture, it is also written as a maturation narrative. The book is also a conversion narrative, in the sense that he went from slavery to freedom. The reader is supposed to read this as a confession, it ... is written as if it is spoken testimony, and it is signifying that it is not just speaking but listening. The book is stating that slavery was a system, an institution of rank exploitation. It is a sense of double self elapsed in time, past and present. The selection ... has no less val...

• Word Count: 322
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... a German photographer possessed these eyes and mind. Jane Fulton Alt was able to capture the beauty of smoke and fire in her photo book, The Burn. She opened the different side of fire and how it symbolizes the stages of life and what makes life. The ... book encompasses the cycle of life and the spectrum of emotions a person possess. Incidentally, the photo book tells more about German history and its culture than expected of a book of life. The book is divided into three parts by poems the photographer wrote. The first ... section is "Smoke" - the beginning of the book and the beginn...

• Word Count: 1087
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... about the evils of slavery, the autobiography is an account of a woman's life, what the author calls her adventures. As mentioned above, the book was written to illustrate the depravity of slavery to people living in the North. It is striking to see how humbly the author has used her ... . She has used fake names and concealed the names of places so as not to offend any person, black or white. As you read the book, the author can definitely be identified as a truthful person, and becomes easy to see why the author places so much emphasis on her secrecy. ... a life of constant ridicule is...

• Word Count: 1193
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... known as "Musikavanhu-(Shona) "Umkulunkulu- (Ndebele) "Mulungu-(chewa). These names mean Creator of Mankind, Supreme Being and Ultimate Being respectively. In a book African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society edited by Jacob K. Olupona, Vincent Mulago speaks of the same thing and says, The Supreme Being, God is ... They deserve cohabitation with kith and kin as guardian spirits. Through this approach they offered different kinds of prayers to God. In his book Prayer In The Religious Traditions Of Africa, Aylward Shorter writes, This praise-poem is addressed to Mwari, God of th...

• Word Count: 3147
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... well as smaller deities and spirits. Religion does not play a part in the lives of the Fante; religion is the lives of the Fante. In the section on religion, the book says this, that every aspect of the Fante's life is bound by their religious beliefs. There is no division, and it is made up of all the traditions of dance ... , all the local churches are Pentecostal or Evangelistic. Much like the people of Africa have adapted to the western influence, so has the western church adapted. A religious leader in the book, Nkrumah, thinks that these churches have begun to include traditional A...

• Word Count: 1369
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... also had some nice experiences too. Another thing I believe she is trying to say is they are determined. There are three main African-American women in the book who all struggle in different ways to help their family. All three have similar problems and a difficult path to walk. One woman is Lena Younger or ... end she and Walter get along again and all is well in their relationship and the whole family is thankful for this. Also in the beginning of the book Ruth might get an abortion, though once the get the new house she decides otherwise. Mama's daughter-in-law, Beneatha has, as it se...

• Word Count: 772
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... to be free there were the whites who disagreed with his beliefs because they believe that blacks are meant to be slaves in this world. Throughout this book Charles faces through unbelievable problems that he has never ever encountered in his life before. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness Marlowe, the main character, symbolizes ... been through and the only way is we all work together. The author of the book is Joseph Conrad and his writing style differs to the ones of others. I like how the author has written this book on his own beliefs and experiences because it is really hard to write on ...

• Word Count: 1164
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... essay, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness,"" Achebe contends that Joseph Conrad's portrayal of Africa, and the African people, in his book Heart of Darkness, is that of a racist. However, the points Achebe makes are weak, and he is wrong in his argument that Conrad was a racist. ... taking over just because it was fun. They too suffered hardships while on their missions. In addition, it is widely thought that Conrad wrote this book to bring the horrors of imperialism to everyone's attention. However, he could not openly voice his opinion, because he was writing mai...

• Word Count: 852
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... work on their plantations. The white man didn't treat these slaves as human beings but rather as objects or property. An example of this is found in the book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This narrative tells the story about Frederick Douglass, through the eyes of himself as a slave, as he tries to free ... would dehumanize the slaves and try to get total control. Through this process Douglass tries to show that slavery was wrong and blacks are equal to whites. This book was written to teach slaves and slave owners the importance of equality and what slavery is doing to p...

• Word Count: 1998
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... Esther. I want to smash his face in (162)." Chanda struggles with the existence of God and whether or not He's there for her throughout the book. It seems as if it's almost adversity after adversity because by this time, at 16 years old, Chanda has had four different fathers. Her real father ... accepting the fact that her mother had AIDS, Chanda knew her mother would be watching them from wherever she is. Chanda's ultimate goal at the end of the book was to raise AIDS awareness, "Mama said I should save my anger to fight injustice. Well, I know what's unjust. The ignorance about AIDS. T...

• Word Count: 980
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... of the white world. His father married an Indian woman. They then gave birth to children and they were known as half-breeds. The thesis of this book is "a man who moved easily between Cheyenne and white worlds, never gaining full acceptance into either." Halaas and Masich do a good job of ... Yes. Would they allow him to be chief? No."4 No matter what George Bent did he was never fully accepted into either race. This book entails a big part of Colorado History. It tells about the life that William Bent and his son George lived during their lives in Colorado. William ... of Bent's Fort...

• Word Count: 837
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

African History "Weep Not, Child" Over the years, Africans have come to imitate the values of those British colonial rulers that over took their land. The book is in essence about the hopes and dreams of a young boy that was affected by the outside world and how the outside world changes the values and beliefs of a person. ... Njoroge's life, his thoughts and his feelings. However, due to the length of the novel (136 pages) one only gets a superficial explanation of the historical and cultural context of the book. In addition, this novel is a book in translation, so some of the sentence and ...

• Word Count: 1124
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... 's son Absalom, kills Jarvis" son, Arthur. The two characters delineate a parallelism in the book. Paton breaks his novel in three "books," or parts. He gives each character a distinction. In Book I he describes the journey of Stephen Kumalo and likewise in Book II, he tells the journey of James Jarvis. In Book III, he describes the interrelation. The fact that they are analogous creates many ... ...

• Word Count: 789
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

THE COLOR PURPLE Alice Walker wrote this novel from her own personal experience, growing up in the rural South as an uneducated and abused child. The goal of this book is to inspire and motivate black women to stand up for their rights. Celie, the main character, goes through an inner transformation, from being an abused wife to a confident and ... Purple is a historical novel; it never refers to any factual events. There are no dates, little sense of the passage of time, and very few mentions of characters' ages. This book deals with the harsh reality that the black community especially the...

• Word Count: 441
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... ginger, cotton and indigo, which were all craved by the Europeans. Imprisoned in these exotic product plantations were about two and a half million black slaves. Fred D"Aguiar's book "The Longest Memory" is about one man's account of being a slave in the Americas, how he was treated and how it affected him. Fred D"Aguiar shows that ... of views about slavery to the reader. Each character is corrupt or has been affected by corruption. The main characters in the book "The Longest Memory" are Whitechapel, Mr Whitechapel, Chapel, Sanders Senior, Cook, Lydia and Sanders Junior. First of all t...

• Word Count: 1254
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... but subservient. He is a leader of an African Tribe, and nobleman of African descent. Oroonoko has social class, and fancy dress. The book does have a small anti-slavery message, but there is still a negative view of slavery in her book. It is unrealistic with Oroonoko running around in nice clothes all the time. Another strange thing is the way that Oroonoko did ... extreeme treatment of the slaves and portrayes them in another extreme as a non-working, good-looking, and well-dressed slave. The book does not talk about the horrors of slavery. "Oroonoko" tries to explain how slavery wor...

• Word Count: 928
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... generations." Memmi documents this evil which is called colonialism as a advertisement to all its shortcomings. Memmi himself admits that he " did not conceive of this book as a work of protest or even as a search for solutions. It was born out of reflection on an accepted failure" (145). He wanted to ... of this system they called colonialism. It has been said that those who forget the past we be doomed to repeat it. That is why this book has gained such importance in our world literature. It is not for its grand solutions to a world problem but just a vast understanding of that very ....

• Word Count: 527
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... a very rich use of symbolism. One of the main subjects in this story is the idea of imperialism - the creating of an empire. There are two main characters in this book. Marlow, who seems to be the hero of the story, is an independent thinker, and a very capable man. Kurtz is the chief of the inner station, whose job is to ... be inferred from this, as sepulchre itself means, grave of a dead body. Brussels is the headquarters for the Company. The phrase whited sepulchre actually comes from the bible, in the book of Matthew. In a passage, Matthew describes whited sepulchres as something b...

• Word Count: 434
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Throughout his book, Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathabane describes in intricate detail how the white South Africans controlled South Africa in the 1960's and 1970's. The racial tensions in South Africa during Apartheid ... they needed to keep their books in order. He also helped them keep in touch with their families by writing and reading letters for them. The schools described in the book were also a way to keep control of blacks. While white children went to the best schools money could build, black children were sent to rundown buildings with not enough ... the time they were children. Mathabane ...

• Word Count: 1571
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

"To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout," was once said by Umberto Eco, an ... that is less than favorable. Power outages only last a few hours, so instead of watching TV, or using any other device that requires electricity, a homeowner might be required to read a book, or find an alternative source of entertainment. Other inconveniences include the inability to use various items such as air conditioning/heat and a refrigerator. It usually isn't a major problem, in these ... inconvenience for sho...

• Word Count: 1482
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... .4 People at that time had no idea what the health risks were. The government said the pesticides were safe, so the people used them. It was not until Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, written in 1967, that people started to question the use of pesticides. Author and scientist Theo Colborn questions why the effects of these toxins were not discovered earlier ... . In her book, Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story, she writes about early signs that should have given us clues to the harmful effects of ... the chemi...

• Word Count: 2382
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School