... Edith Eaton's short fiction. Her themes are of utmost importance: racial insensitivity, the human costs of bureaucratic and discriminatory laws and the humanity of the Chinese. The creation of rounded characters is a secondary concern. Lae Choo, A Character in the story, is little more than maternity personified, maternity victimized by racial prejudice. The very portrayal of a Chinese woman in the maternal ... toward national unification, his own tenets of American realism have for years served to exclude from the canon those writers who were greatly interested in creating "true" repre...

• Word Count: 2633
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... language, rather than tone or layout, is his strongest weapon. Closing Time's dialogue is undoubtedly the snappiest of the three, and by using characters the reader is already familiar with from Catch-22 the book gains a sentimental resonance, creating empathy towards the central cast. But whereas Vonnegut ... cannot control what goes on around us, however hard we try. Heller once wrote about Closing Time; "In all my novels the central characters are extremely perplexed and at odds with their surroundings, and their surroundings do constitute America. I do not think you can understand Am...

• Word Count: 4213
• Approx Pages: 17

... of the "contemporary Spanish American novel": there were Uruguayan, Ecuadorian, Mexican or Venezuelan novels. However, during this decade, a literary explosion of Latin American literature took place named "The Boom." El Boom "was simply the discovery of a new literary language in which to express Latin American reality with, for the first time, complete authenticity1." This genre of literature has become ... Prize, which was awarded to five Latin American writers throughout the 1960s, encouraged the development of an eager reading public.6 These factors provided for a situation favorab...

• Word Count: 2611
• Approx Pages: 10

... the unusual structure of the book, "The novel unfolds backward, the way a dying person might remember her life (Zappe 4)." Stavans describes the work, "The entire volume is a gathering of memories, a literary attempt to make sense of the past (Stavans "Daughters" 9)." It is in this way in which the reader is led on a journey through confusion, unrest, turmoil, uncertainty, and, finally, blissfully ... cultural abandonment." Indeed, there is another facet to the language being used. "A second leitmotif also colors the plot - her indomitable need to describe, in literary terms, her feelings...

• Word Count: 2799
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... forms and other convention of the classical tradition. The romantic writers replaced the static universal types of classical 18th century literature with more complex, idiosyncratic characters and a great deal of drama, fiction and poetry. The 18th and 19th century is characterized by the libertarian and abolitionist movements. They were ... States. The central interest of the romantic movement is the concern with nature and the natural surroundings. This tradition is absorbed in the literary movement of transcendentalism that is expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. ...

• Word Count: 3041
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... 't even remotely think it would be published in America. I mean, outside of America the common feeling is that America is a very insular market. That it has a small group of intellectuals, literary people, but very small, and the rest of the country's basically not interested in anything else that goes on in the world...So I was completely astounded to how open it ... 's like a lot of things happen on the borders of these communities that actually have nothing to do with each other but intersect at certain points." Ms. Roy empathizes with her characters as someone who has "been completely...

• Word Count: 2800
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

... keep the audience coming back and, of course, square jawed heroes the likes of Flash Gordon, Bulldog Drummond and Superman, all of whom became the inspiration for immensely successful radio characters who were essentially exactly the same with a different name. Except for Superman, of course, who was then, and always will be, Superman, and astoundingly popular regardless of the medium he ... by women, aimed at women and aired during the day when only the "housewives" would be home. As a result, the heroines of these soap operas were presented as much stronger characters than in the adve...

• Word Count: 4411
• Approx Pages: 18
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the religious significance of nature. The essay "Civil Disobedience" is his most famous social protest. Walden, a study of Thoreau's experiment in living close to nature, is chiefly responsible for his literary reputation. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817. Unlike most leading writers of his time, Thoreau came from a family that was neither wealthy nor distinguished. His father ... that most historian have only attempted to do. He uplifted them by showing the reader the figures as common people with outstanding character, rather than as outstanding people with...

• Word Count: 3135
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School