... two love struck opposites who are molded and trapped in a world of social differences. This is the basis behind William Shakespeare and Arthur Laurent's works, West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Although written hundreds of years apart, both pieces posses similar aspects, but yet have unique individuality. Heroism, young love ... , and hatred are just some of the common themes that are expressed in both pieces. West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet both have their share of tragic heroes. The characters in Romeo and Juliet are tragic heroes because they are ... . The two authors use for...

• Word Count: 697
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... characters are just gang members who aren't really main characters, but they just live on the streets and are present during the scenes. The author of "West Side Story" is Arthur Laurents. He was born on the 14th of July 1918, in New York City, NY. He was educated at Cornell University ... and worked his was up to writing and being involved in many different theatrical productions. He also wrote a few more plays in which he reunited with "West Side Story's" composer and lyricist, Bernstein and Sondheim. The stage was fairly large, and the scenery was efficient, but still quite simple. The...

• Word Count: 829
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... sea, he set sail aboard a whaling vessel. In the South Pacific, he left his ship to live with a native tribe. Melville escaped the island by finding passage on a whaling ship from Australia. As he came back to America, he immediately began writing about his adventures. Melville's first novel, Typee ... any simple answer to the problem of where evil comes from. Melville was pessimistic about the world like his other romantic writer peers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe. Shulman indicates that in Melville's novel Moby Dick, he questions traditional answers about where evil c...

• Word Count: 1160
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... not wanting to live without Maria, Tony comes out of hiding. Revealing himself to the Sharks in the process, and is shot and killed by Chino (a shark member), just at the moment Tony and Maria are reunited. Where Shakespeare used language to advance the plot and instill his play with ... energy and passion, West Side Story uses songs and chorography by Jerome Robbins. The Prologue establishes the underlying conflict of the entire story. The following song the Jet song is practically a tag onto the ... Prologue, and establishes the voice of the gang as it prepares for a rumble. Something...

• Word Count: 571
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

"The Way Up To Heaven," by Roald Dahl, is a short story about an elderly couple living in New York City. Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Foster live in a six-story house in the "Big Apple." Mrs. Foster ... ; a train, a plan, a boat, or even a theatre curtain." Mrs. Foster is about to depart on a six-week vacation to visit her only child in Paris. She fears she's going to miss her flight and continually asks her butler the time. To make matters worse, her husband likes to irritate her and make it seem like she won't make it on time ... . Almost half an hour passes by when finally Mr. Foster is ready to ta...

• Word Count: 518
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

On The Road by Jack Kerouac 1957 Sal Paradise, the narrator of the story, is miserable and fed up with his mundane life when he meets a young man named Dean Moriarty during the winter ... , Marylou and Dean split up and Dean goes to stay with Sal in New Jersey. Sal and Dean both want to travel and decide that they will eventually take a trip west together. In the spring, Sal sees Dean off to Denver and decides to follow him when he has the money. A few months later, Sal hitchhikes all the way to Denver ... travels to Louisiana and stay with a friend, Bull Lee, and his wife Jane. Bull and Jan...

• Word Count: 757
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... dark shadows. However, the crashed curves make them appear similar to running water. Even if the mountains, which are absolutely impossible to move or shift, are unable to be unaffected by Van Gogh's unstable inner-world at all, below the rolling hills of the horizon lies a small town. Such a dark and quiet small town produces many imaginations and forces the audience ... yellow, red, and blue. Different depths of colors show different feelings and perceptions. The bright yellow of moon and dark yellow of the stars symbolize hope, but they are surrounded by hazy apertures that are compo...

• Word Count: 1107
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... would have experienced the lows of the lows influencing his works of drawing and painting of urban slums. He also lived in these areas as a young boy and was influenced by european paintings when studying abroad. The medium was oil on canvas a very popular way to paint in this period. The size is 30"x 25". The current location is in Portland ... ...

• Word Count: 684
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The Line of the Sun by Judith Ortiz Cofer, is a novel based in the 1950's through the 1960's about story-telling. All the characters introduced in the novel, have some sort of tie or connection to ... the things that happened to her were not her fault, but because she doesn't have many other skills, she is uneducated, the mother of an illegitimate child, who is scorned by her family for her behaviors. Rosa doesn't have anyone to turn to therefore she turns to the many different men in life looking for acceptance, only to be burned each ... ...

• Word Count: 1045
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... . That caused a huge disappointment and a feeling of humiliation on the ghost that slowly went away with its forsaken soul. By knowing historically that some men took advantage of the giant's image to make money over a naive middle class at the time by charging them a certain amount in order to see the statue, we can relate it to the tale and notice the ... ...

• Word Count: 368
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Graduate

... greater worth...Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation." " - David McCullough, 1776 Some things I learned about US History that I had no knowledge about before reading the book "1776,"by David McCullough were: 1. King George III was a cruel man. 2. George Washington was a reserved man. Before reading 1776, my knowledge of King George III was pretty slim, so anything read about ... 3 McCullough's Title: Dorchester Heights My title: Battling for Boston Throughout chapter 3, it effectively displays the American Colonists success in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. T...

• Word Count: 714
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... Frances, every other woman should be irrelevant to him, but he does not understand that. Frances notices particularly the way he looks at woman as they pass by, and she notifies him how much that irks her. But Michael being the man he is disregards her feelings and pours every secret he has about woman in ... talks about the variety of woman that grabs his attention and he speaks about them as if he wants them. Michael is a husband that cannot be trusted by Frances, and she is supposed to be his queen and they are supposed to have the most trust in each other. Michael tries to use his s...

• Word Count: 782
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... to laugh but also to think. His book was only the start of his career though. In 1994 he was recognized as poet of the year by the magazine "Poetry." Three years later he produced his next collection of poems called "The Best Cigarette," in which the poems became ... bestsellers in the literary world. By 2001 when Collins was 60 years old he was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held the title until 2003. He wrote the "The History ... quot;The literary world is so full of pretension, and there's such an enormous gap between how seriously poets take themselves and how widely they're ig...

• Word Count: 898
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... that Chicago was built on factories and industry, the tall buildings and the Chicago Stock Exchange were built on the backs of those factory workers, and distributors. The poem "Chicago" by Carl Sandburg introduced me to someone I had known about for years, but had never really known. The poet uses several techniques of figurative speech to bring vibrancy and familiarity to ... to his depiction. Laughing connotes happiness and joy. Laughing in the face of adversity and ridicule (wicked, crooked and brutal) describes someone with a positive outlook, that is not dragged down by his shortc...

• Word Count: 615
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

It is well-known that actions speak louder than words; I say photographs speak louder as well. In the book "How the Other Half Lives," by Jacob Riis, the author writes about the living conditions of the tenement houses. Housed in these apartments were mostly poor immigrants trying to survive. Riis, a photographer, captured the unhealthy, unclean ... . His journalism and photographs during this time period paved the way for reform and allowed others to see what the slums of New York City were like. The photojournalism presented by Riis had a major impact on the message he was trying to get acr...

• Word Count: 912
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... us how to stay strong in difficult situations and follow our dreams until they become reality. His journey was full of misery and atrocity, but by the help of others and his strong personality, he managed to accomplish his dream of becoming a doctor and helping people in need. There were ... a book to educate himself, and some found a way for him to enroll school. While these big-hearted people make me feel more human by fighting against the worlds difficulty, the inhumane genocide in Burundi that caused hundreds of thousand innocent people to die, and the consistent violation of human r...

• Word Count: 1597
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... to do this paper on. Eventually I went to the Second floor and into European Art, Section 608. There, I saw the painting "Portrait of a Young Man," by Bronzino. I was immediately drawn to the painting because even from a distance it looked very detailed and well preserved. Little did I know that the following week we were ... As I looked closer the visual texture of the painting made me want to touch the painting. Bronzino's use of space in this painting was enhanced only by its explicit detail, or in this case the lack of. Making the walls and other objects smooth and lacking detail, m...

• Word Count: 1096
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... and Jimmie were able to survive the horrible life that was dealt to them. In the course of Maggie's life, she turned into a beautiful girl, untouched by the squalor around her. Jimmie felt that his sister needed to find herself a job or she would go to the devil with her good looks. For the ... of indecency. The social life that Maggie never new drew her away from her mundane life, and away from her mother and Jimmie. Jimmie felt betrayed by his friend, and by his sister who he always thought was special. Maggie longed for a life of wealth, and to be accepted in a good social life. Up un...

• Word Count: 715
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... to care for him and left him in a series of orphanages, foster homes, and institutions. Back then, the orphanages that Jennings attended were run by nuns who used cruel punishment to discipline the children. Life in these orphanages was unbarring, brutal, strict, and Jennings was unable to do anything about ... high no matter what. Through all of the rough times, Jennings was able to push forward and be strong. Later in life Jennings proved this by adopting a child, getting married and living a happy healthy life. Another similar theme in this novel was survival. Jennings was able to sur...

• Word Count: 869
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... designer helps serve both the directors interpretation of the work and the playwright. The designer, Yoshi Tanokura, truly created a replica of the dingy streets by placing scaffoldings and a graffiti background. Upon entering the theater, the first thing that was noted was the thick fog in the room, showing the audience ... that they can barely afford anything. Along with the stage and light design that helped to create the perfect atmosphere, is the costumes designed by Amanda Walker. The costume design in this production showed the physical and emotional support to the actors through ...

• Word Count: 969
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His father was James Nathaniel and his mother was Carrie Mercer Hughes. His Grandfather was Charles Langston, an Ohio abolitionist. As a young boy he lived in Buffalo, New York, ... barriers like segregation were decreased noticeably. He wrote numerous protest poems in which he used irony to get his points across to the reader. Hughes was influenced by Jean Toomer, another black writer and poet. It seemed as though Hughes used his poetry as a way to combat against the ongoing struggle that African-Americans ... , The Weary Blu...

• Word Count: 978
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... the late 1940s and at East Oregon College in La Grande in the 1952-53 academic year." "[In 1950] Miss Martin became a naturalized American citizen. By the mid-1950s Agnes Martin was living in the art colony of Taos, New Mexico, where she joined the Ruins Gallery ... the painting to "breathe," as one observer put it. Commenting on the show for the New York Times (February 10, 1989), Michael Kimmelman found Miss Martin's latest works "austere," yet expressive of "a certain delicacy," visible in the subtle variations from line to line. "But whatever the configuration," Kimmelman ... minimal...

• Word Count: 3087
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... had dramatically improved: his brother Gansevoort had become the secretary for U.S. legation in London under the Polk Administration. Melville could now support himself solely by writing, and his first two novels were notorious successes. In August 1847 Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, and began ... to the style that had made Melville famous, but neither work expanded the author's reputation. In the summer of 1850, under the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne's, "The Scarlet Letter," Melville bought the Arrowhead farm near Pittsfield so that...

• Word Count: 2748
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography

... was promoted to Sergeant Major, the highest noncommissioned rank. Poe was then Honorably discharge in 1829 with three letters of recommendation. And in May of 1830, Poe decided to enter West Point in the hope of becoming a career commissioned officer. But Poe hated military school, deliberately missing classes, and drills; he successfully got himself kicked out of ... West Point January 1831. After his discharge Poe went to New York City, then returned to Baltimore. In 1835 he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, in Richmond and ... ...

• Word Count: 680
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... ! I was lucky and I couldn't have been any luckier.   When we finally got home I went to Toi and Tai to make sure they were okay. I then had noticed I didn't even really miss them. My mind was so focused on having fun I forgot about them. Although the summer didn't start off how I wanted it to, I had fun in New Jersey. I saw new sites ... ...

• Word Count: 767
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School