SYNOPSIS Volume 1 Old Mr. Dashwood of Norland Park in Sussex and his heir, his nephew Henry Dashwood, have died. Henry married twice. By his first marriage, he has a son, John. John and his four-year-old son, Henry, are in… Read More ›
Novel Analysis
Critical Analysis of Pride and Prejudice
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” [3]. So begins Jane Austen’s arguably most enduringly successful novel—one that has been translated into at least… Read More ›
Analysis of Tolkien’s The Hobbit
The origin of The Hobbit (1937) is well known. One day in the late 1920s, Tolkien was grading essays when he came across a blank page and absently wrote the sentence “In a hole in the ground there lived a… Read More ›
The Lord of the Rings Character Analysis
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Aragorn (Strider, Elessar) Aragorn is the… Read More ›
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Synopsis for The Return of the King Book 5: The War of the Ring Chapters 1–3: The Brink… Read More ›
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Synopsis The Two Towers Book 3: The Treason of Isengard Chapters 1–2: Pursuit to Rohan In a chapter entitled “The Departure of Boromir,” book 3 begins where book… Read More ›
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Lord of the Rings is the crowning achievement of Tolkien’s literary career, and the one narrative by which he is chiefly remembered and admired. In the more than 50 years since the trilogy’s initial publication, it has been republished… Read More ›
Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times
Dickens’s 10th novel, serialized weekly in Household Words (April 1–August 12, 1854), unillustrated. Published in one volume by Bradbury & Evans, 1854. This controversial book, the shortest of Dickens’s novels, takes up the issues of industrialism and education and offers… Read More ›
Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations
Dickens’s 13th novel, published in 36 weekly parts in All the Year Round (December 1, 1860–August 3, 1861), unillustrated. Published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall, 1861. A Bildungsroman narrated in the first person by its hero, Great Expectations… Read More ›
Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby
Tar Baby (1981), Morrison’s fourth novel, changes location from the geographical boundaries of the United States to the larger context of the Caribbean and Europe. In part, the novel is the story of two families, the Streets and the Childs,… Read More ›
Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Sula
Sula (1974) is Toni Morrison’s second published novel. Like The Bluest Eye, the novel is a story of two girls coming of age. As children, the two girls in question, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, function as two halves of… Read More ›
Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Like Morrison’s first two novels, The Bluest Eye and Sula, Song of Solomon (1977) is a coming of age story. Unlike her first two novels, Song of Solomon centrally is the saga of a young man. In fact, Song of… Read More ›
Analysis of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye (1970) is Toni Morrison’s first published novel. The novel takes place in the 1940s in the industrial northeast of Lorian, Ohio, and tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African-American woman who is marginalized by her… Read More ›
Analysis of James Joyce’s Stephen Hero
This is the title of the novel begun by Joyce on his 22nd birthday, February 2, 1904, shortly after the editors of Dana had rejected his essay “A Portrait of the Artist” because they deemed its contents unsuitable for their… Read More ›
Analysis of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
This is the title that Joyce gave to his first published novel, derived, as noted below, from the shorter version given to an earlier prose piece. Joyce composed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man over the course… Read More ›
Analysis of James Joyce’s Dubliners
This is the title that Joyce gave to his collection of 15 short stories written over a three-year period (1904–07). Though he finished the final story, “The Dead,” in spring of 1907, difficulties in finding a publisher and Joyce’s initial… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Cafe
Sketching the lives of a host of bizarre characters, Bailey’s Cafe (1992) focuses on issues of marginality. Each of the characters, while visiting the title setting, is in transition, having barely escaped lives of not-so-quiet desperation in hopes of regaining… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day
With Mama Day (1988) Naylor charts a different literary terrain. While her first two novels were grounded in known reality, this third novel allows Naylor to explore, and to question, the concept of reality. Set on a mystical island off… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills
While The Women of Brewster Place (1982) addressed, for the most part, the plight of black women in a poverty-stricken, and seemingly hopeless, community, Linden Hills critiques the burdens and misguided notions of a well-established, upwardly mobile black community. And… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place
Described on the cover as “a novel in seven stories,” The Women of Brewster Place chronicles the lives of seven black women as they struggle to survive in a rapidly deteriorating neighborhood. Most of the women have arrived at the… Read More ›
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