As a reader, Taylor, the protagonist of The Bean Trees is important in drawing my interest because she narrates much of the story and most of the ideas have been seen through her eyes and point of view. She undergoes major changes in her life and develops herself throughout the story, which enriches the novel. Taylor's loves and cares for people also have a strong impact on other characters, which helps them ... develop and improve themselves. This affects the readers by drawing their attention into this novel and makes this remarkable book even more interesting. Taylor born and raised in rur...

• Word Count: 689
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... , a circle, or children are a few examples that writers most commonly use. Barbra Kingsolver wrote the book The Bean Trees and uses many symbols for life. She not only uses symbols throughout her book, but also throughout each chapter. In chapter 8, titled "The Miracle of Dog Doo Park", she brings life out of many unexpected places, including places that resemble hell itself. Many symbols are also used in this ... book also for death. Dog Doo Park is one of them. The main character, Taylor Greer goes on many adventures and comes across death-like places filled with life. She goes to Dog ...

• Word Count: 1076
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... living creature that moves on the ground."(Genesis 1:28) In the second account, man was created to be the servant of the earth, and the other living creatures were created to be his companions. Creation account one, lists things God created, followed by an explanation of the Sabbath (Genesis 1: 1-31). The second story is a moral tale that identifies the forbidden trees, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and ... Evil and the Tree of Life (Genesis 2: 15-17). In ancient times, there was no written language in existence. This means there ... Genesis and that texts from these different autho...

• Word Count: 525
• Approx Pages: 2
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... of varnish and incense, and my fatigue after a night without sleep--was making hard for me to see or think straight" (17). This is a representation of how distracted he is, focusing on meaningless situations and unimportant stuff. This quotes tells the readers that Meursault is hiding from the truth. His mind is set up to think that life is so meaningless that he ... of existing without living, symbolizing Meursault's need to find a reason to enjoy the little things in life. In the story the main character tells the reader about how he's living life day by day and not really connecting ...

• Word Count: 1054
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... at 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 going ... Nettie also never lets Celie lose hope of one day leaving the farm and going off to live in her own house. Some of the things she deals with in the book are morbid and tragic. However, the characters never lose hope and never stay sad for very long; they are always laughing and telling jokes...

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

... and bring us a copy of the time -lapse film.There would be arrangements so the film could be seen in one cotinious run.The arrangement was that the film would start at midnight on New Year's Eve and continue day and night until midnight of December 31.The Earth history would be extended from the Precambrian time up to the present. So the film started. During January ,February ... and March ,there were shapes of land masses and oceans .In April there will be the presence of single-celled living organisms and by the end of the month,it will be noticed that some of these ... organisms hav...

• Word Count: 256
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... that Spencer Fort is going to make his life worth something and that he will be able to look back at his life and smile in the end. The beginning of the song talks about a man up on the moon smiling down at Spencer. The man represents what Spencer wants to accomplish: Being able to look back at his life and smile down on it ... along the way. The piano plays throughout the entire song demonstrating the consistency in his life. As the drums and guitar gets added into the song it is a parallel to all the different anxieties Spencer is experiencing in his life. Based on the instrument choi...

• Word Count: 783
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... is reconciliation, meaning a change from bad to good. This symbolizes that the Mariner has finally come to realize the natural life as well as the rest of his surrounding. The Mariner is alienated from the natural world because of the shooting of the albatros. He didn't have any premeditated thoughts about killing the bird. The Mariner just acted on impulse and didn't even consider what may arise from ... is cursed with a bad omen from the killing of the albatros. The moral significace of the Mariner's contrast response to living things were on two different levels. On one level the Mari...

• Word Count: 523
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... truth, a lack of an emotional outlet, and the meaninglessness of life. The first theme that is in the poem "The Hollow Men" is a lack of spiritual guidance and truth. When the narrator says, "the eyes are not here"(IV.52.) the author sees the "eyes" as spiritual leaders or those whose faith is strong. With the "eyes" not being where ever the narrator is which is "Deaths twilight kingdom" (III ... emotional outlet to express ideas, opinions, and requests. The main example that the author gives the reader is when reading the quote "our dried voices- (I.5.) " Are quiet and meaningless" (I....

• Word Count: 570
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... uses symbolism to further the meaning of the story. Three symbols used by Ellison are the bingo wheel, the white beam of light, and the train. All of these symbols display the message that the black man, (the protagonist) has no control over his life. The first symbol is the bingo wheel. The bingo wheel represents God, one who has all the power. In the protagonists mind the person that spinning the bingo wheel has ... power. That person has the potential to determine his ... ...

• Word Count: 525
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... book, Pausch refers to obstacles as brick walls. He explains some of his brick walls that he had to overcome while always maintaining an optimistic tone; even through failures, which he supposed gave you great experience, Pausch remained cheery and optimistic. "The brick walls are there for a reason. The ... to where he is now. "When we're connected to others, we become better people." (Pausch, The Last Lecture) Finally, the culminating theme of this book is seizing every moment. Achieving your own dreams while helping others achieve theirs, staying optimistic when overcoming obstacles, ...

• Word Count: 935
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... It is an age old question that has stumped every mind in history: What is the meaning of life? This little book is filled not with answers to the meaning of life, but with questions. Bradley Trevor Greive, the author of the book, begins by pointing out that as a species, we are constantly contradicting our thoughts, ... get so hung up on what we don't agree on, when in fact it's our differences that make life interesting?" These are a few passages from the book that make its readers stop and think, "Why do we do that." What is life about? Often you hear that life is a journey. Some peopl...

• Word Count: 464
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... in this case, which should be what life is about. Although John shows the good he also shows the bad on quite a few occasions in this novel. One major example of this is noted in the very beginning of the book when John quotes "I hated it so much the first year they called me the Bathroom Bomber." (Pg1). This event was bad because of John's horrible attitude and ... getting involved in yet another phone marathon, a game that consists of looking in a phone book and calling a random name whilst posing for a sort of company, asking them for a money donation. "Anyway he's the one who starte...

• Word Count: 774
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... his revolting temper started. He entered Eton in 1804 and then transferred to University College Oxford in 1810. Shelley's sister, Marion Hellen attended a school for girls at Clapham near London. On a visit with his sister, he met the acquaintance of one of her school friends, 16-year old Harriet Westbrook. There was no doubt that he was not in love with Harriet ... they married in August of 1811 (Bernbaum 243). When Shelley's father found out about the elopement, he refused to help support his son. His first child was born soon after his marriage. Shelley and his wife became unhappy b...

• Word Count: 1189
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

"It was a song about the roundness of things, of the grass stems and the aspens and the sun and the days and the years." In the book When the Legends Die, by Hal Borland, the author develops Thomas Black Bull as a character by using a theme of Native American literature called the roundness of life. The roundness of life theme helps develop Thomas Black Bull as a character by showing how he lived and adding ... therefore could be connected with Thomas Black Bull's character. First, the lodge where Thomas lived was round. Since he was alone in the mountains, he had to have a means of support a...

• Word Count: 795
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... life on the ground, to live beneath the sky yet above the earth, in Baron in the Trees. What is it then, that drives them? Is it the pursuit of perfection, of utmost beauty? The wish to live independently, free from the humdrum routine of an earthbound existence? Or perhaps they are merely engaging in a quest for romance? Both of the lead characters are different from the rest; both are hermits ... eat his snails, but also over the discipline and strictness of the entire society of the time. He strives for objectivity, to distance himself from his natural world by living between earth a...

• Word Count: 1221
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... time, don't jump to conclusions quickly and consider all the possibilities. This message is conveyed through the quotes "be one traveller, long I stood and looked down as far one as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth". The poem informs the boys about decision making. You should make wise choices and you should not make decisions for the sake of it. This is a major reason why I would ... read this poem to the Dead Poets Society because many of ... the boys have made decisions that rebel against Welton and when I read ... ...

• Word Count: 508
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... less traveled, he can tell that people have had to make the same choice and they had taken that route. It has just been so long it had been overgrown. The speaker says, "Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same." (Lines 9 and 10) These quotes show that many people have been in that situation and that they ... also had to choose between the two trails. The third stanza shows how the speaker starts to question his own preference that he ... made. When the morning comes, he can see that the leaves are covering ... ...

• Word Count: 640
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... of a continuous river, a path, providing life to a new generation of foliage and nature, which arcs back towards the beginning of the stream creating a never-ending circle for the process to undoubtedly continue. Whitman's choice of the words, "onward" and "outward," can be seen as a continuing onward cycle of life or spiral outward of increasing progress as time goes on, further indicating ... life is not only an eternal process but that it compounds based off of growth made in the past. This interpretation, again, shares striking similarities to Durand's painting, in that the lifebloo...

• Word Count: 799
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... feels as though it has bettered itself but in essence is retarded by its own destructive nature. A Kingdom of Sorrowing change, in an otherwise constant environment is Harwood's motive for writing this poem. "The gull's flight aches in my shoulders. It will suffer no change, cannot offer itself to be changed, cannot suffer:" It is by this expression of emotion that Harwood ... , as she has stated she is in her twilight, and wishes inner peace for the rest of her days. Even as far back as the opening stanza of "Alter Ego" that quotes: "who stands beside me still- is a Rhetorical question ...

• Word Count: 904
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... fortune to attend to a ostentatious university like Stanford. In his speech he says, "You have to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make a difference," if someone follows their heart, instinct and interest, everything will eventually fall into place. Not everyone ... financially enough. In her report, What is a Life Worth? She states, "In valuing different lives differently-the first part of the equation-the fund follows common legal practice. Courts always grant money on the basis of a person's earning power in life. Life is way to precious t...

• Word Count: 805
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... can get out of it. The thing that I grasped the most was that the story had the gift of portraying foresight. The story started off stating that the "high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley1 from the sky and from all the rest of the world" (paragraph 1 line 1) I believe that this is giving the readers the setting. It is giving the readers the idea of how this place ... her "voice grew husky" (paragraphs 63, 68, 72, and 74). These quotes illustrates how excited she was and how most readers would get the idea of her being sexually attracted to the con man confused wi...

• Word Count: 1043
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... a period of time. The period of time beginning at the setting of the sun. In this book, there is a deeper meaning to the word. The darkness of the night represents the darkness and gloom of the souls being tormented, their ever growing realization of impending death, the loss of the human spirit, and the loss of love. The people in this story knew ... was the kind of torture that kills a person from the outside in. First attacking the body, until you look like the living dead, and then the soul, until you become the living dead. Through his whole experience Elie fought against the deaden...

• Word Count: 581
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... veterans are forced to cope with their experiences. The ending of the novel seems to accentuate this confusion as more stories dealing with the heavy topic of death are introduced and the importance of O'Brien's writing of his experiences is more defined. Particularly at the end of the book, O'Brien explains that in Vietnam, the soldiers created ways to make the people they were close to that died seem ... and metaphorical weights that soldiers carried as they trekked through Vietnam, and now the end of the story relates back to that in explaining the reason why O'Brien needs to write s...

• Word Count: 685
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... . Macbeth knew that he was going to become king, so he decided to speed up the process. He did this by killing King Duncan, and since he was next in line, he received the title of king. The last person that influenced Macbeth was his wife, Lady Macbeth. She weakened Macbeth challenging his ... causes her own death. Lady Macbeth says, "Out damned spot! Out, I say!", and "Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!". These quotes show that she has made herself paranoid by thinking about what she has done. She feels that she .....

• Word Count: 701
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School