... mental state and why Hepzibah is always scowling and forlorn. In the novel Jaffrey acts like a man possessed by the spirit of the colonel. He takes on all the tell tale attributes of the founder including his greed and disregard for life. Jaffrey was second in line to inherit the family fortune after Clifford. Being second to anyone was like being ... food, or starve! And we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently, at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman." (39) Her financial tribulations can't be accounted solely to t...

• Word Count: 2986
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

... more than one metamorphoses occurring. The German scholar, Heselhause and the American, Angus, have described this interpretation of the novella as an inverted "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale (Sokel 204). The scholars examine how love fails to overcome horror and the beauty, represented as Grete, refuses to save the beast, Gregor, condemning him to death (Sokel 204. This ... ...

• Word Count: 3072
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... of the "large unknown factor" (25) of desire for the other, the recurrent energy that maintains the vital tension of life. He finds an evocative allegory in mythology, in Aristophanes' tale in the Symposium of love's origin, which speaks of a primal unity of life, later splintered by the gods into difference, incompleteness, and desire: "Man's original body having been thus cut ... ...

• Word Count: 7335
• Approx Pages: 29
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... who dreamed it into being: the politically powerful, the anarchists, bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life. This is a haunting tale of passion, privilege and biting physical labour, of men and women moved by compassion and driven by the power of dreams - sometimes even to murder. Michael Ondaatje was born in ... ...

• Word Count: 3985
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School