The year 1993 was an exceptionally good one for Ernest Gaines. Turning sixty, he married for the first time, won the MacArthur award, and published A Lesson Before Dying. Gaines had invested seven years in the writing of this novel,… Read More ›
Novel Analysis
Critical Analysis of Ernest J. Gaines’s A Gathering of Old Men
If The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman ends by signaling the beginning of a social revolution, A Gathering of Old Men brings this conflict to a logical conclusion. Set in 1979 on the Marshall Plantation, Gaines’s fifth novel focuses on… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Ernest J. Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Inspired by the strong, determined character of his Aunt Augustine Jefferson, to whom the novel is dedicated, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman draws on the tradition of the slave narrative and its creative branch, the fictional autobiography. Slave narratives… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Ernest J. Gaines’s Of Love and Dust
Of Love and Dust (1967) continues Gaines’s favorite themes, including the unequal distribution of wealth, race and caste, and the conflict between the past and change. Marcus Payne, awaiting trial for killing a man in a knife fight, is ‘‘bonded… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Ernest J. Gaines’s Catherine Carmier
Like many novels, Catherine Carmier is about change and its effects. It is a young man’s novel asking questions of place and purpose that young people in particular wrestle with: Why aren’t things the way they were? What am I… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses
Having explored the dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship in her first two novels, Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) turns to the sisterly bond in her third, The Hundred Secret Senses, published in 1995. Reviews for the new novel were… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife
In 1991, two years after her tremendous success with The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan published The Kitchen God’s Wife. Like many writers whose first books have received spectacular and widespread attention, Tan admits that she was more than a… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
With the publication of her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, in 1988, Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) became a household name. The book was a tremendous critical and commercial success from the beginning. Before the end of its… Read More ›
Analysis of Márquez’s No One Writes to the Colonel
No One Writes to the Colonel may seem unassuming, for the story line is simple and non-experimental in technique. However, its narrative exposes a corrupt town and its institutions. No One Writes to the Colonel, to date, continues to be… Read More ›
Analysis of Gabriel García Márquez’s Leaf Storm
Garcıa Márquez’s (1927-2014) first novella, Leaf Storm, was translated into English in 1972, eighteen years after it was published in Spanish and two years after the English-speaking public first read his acclaimed masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. As might… Read More ›
Analysis of Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The publication of Chronicle of a Death Foretold broke Gabriel Garcıa Marquez’s (1927-2014) self-imposed “publication strike.” (He had pledged to not publish anything for as long as Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet remained in power.) Garcıa Marquez’s period of silence started… Read More ›
Analysis of Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera
Carlos R. Rodr ́ıguez, a friend of Garcıa Marquez (1927-2014) and well-known literary critic, wrote that if One Hundred Years of Solitude had not secured the road to Stockholm for Garcıa Marquez to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, Love in… Read More ›
Analysis of Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcıa Marquez’s (1927-2014) One Hundred Years of Solitude was first published on May 30, 1967, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The cover of the first edition, which was never repeated, depicted the silhouette of a galleon floating amid trees against a… Read More ›
Analysis of Jane Hamilton’s Novels
Jane Hamilton (born July 13, 1957) achieved early success with the publication of her first novel. In 1989, The Book of Ruth received the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, the Banta Award, and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for… Read More ›
Analysis of Shirley Ann Grau’s Novels
The most obvious testimony to Shirley Ann Grau’s (July 8, 1929 – August 3, 2020) success is the Pulitzer Prize for fiction that she received in 1965 for The Keepers of the House. Significantly enough, the same novel appeared in condensed… Read More ›
Analysis of Ivan Goncharov’s Novels
Ivan Goncharov’s (1812-1891) novels mark the transition from Russian Romanticism to a much more realistic worldview. They appeared at a time when sociological criteria dominated analysis and when authors were expected to address the injustices of Russian life. The critic… Read More ›
Analysis of José Donoso’s Novels
Each of José Donoso’s (5 October 1924 – 7 December 1996) novels had its special success, and the writer’s prestige grew with each stage of his career. Despite a slow beginning (he came to the novel at age thirty three),… Read More ›
Analysis of Jean Cocteau’s Novels
Twentieth century art in many areas is indebted to Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963). His accomplishments span the artistic and literary activities of his times, the diversity unified by his vision of all art as facets… Read More ›
Analysis of Hermann Broch’s Novels
Hermann Broch must surely be counted among such other major German novelists of the twentieth century as Franz Kafka, Mann, Robert Musil, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass, alongside such other creative artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav… Read More ›
Analysis of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago
Considered by many the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century, Boris Pasternak’s (1890-1960) Doctor Zhivago is certainly the most famous fictional treatment of the defining moments of modern Russian history at the outset of the 20th century, inviting a… Read More ›
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