Paper Samples on Literature

Obsession and guilt are often the cause of fatal outcomes. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” portrays two men who commit murders motivated only by an overwhelming obsession. Although they have their own personalities, the stories …

W. H. Auden wrote “Musee de Beaux Arts”, a poem about human suffering. The speaker is observing the painting. Auden makes use of this work to demonstrate how egocentric many people are about the world. Renaissance painter, Bruegel, painted the …

Judith Ortiz Cofer’s Volar’ and Amy Tan’s A Pair of Tickets’ both use symbolism to show the emotions and lives of young girls from different cultural backgrounds. Both stories are about childhood, home, and family. They manage their lives despite …

Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter starts with a chapter that shows a lonely rosebush standing before a grimy prison. It is there to represent “some sweet and moral blossom” or “relieve the darkness of a tale involving human weakness and …

Rhonda Stanford’s book Maps and Memory in Early Modern England. The Sense of Place is a discussion of the importance of maps in early-modern English literature. She explores the ways in which mapping metaphors are more than “merely another trope …

The author of Mississippi Trial, 1955, Chris Crowe tells the story of Hiram, a boy who returns to Greenwood, Mississippi, to visit his Grandfather. As he reminisces and tries to go back in time, he finds that much has changed …

The novel opens in Milagro with John Nichol and his Milagro neighbors speculating as to the motives for Joe Mondragon who started illegally propagating an anarid beanfield via an irrigation system. Meanwhile, the rest of town suffered drought. The Milagro …

Seamus Hayne was an Irish poet. He is widely recognized as one the great poets in 20th-century Ireland. Heaney once said that he was someone who “emerged” from a secret, buried life and entered education. Heaney was one of several …

Supernatural elements can be used in stories to intrigue and thrill readers. Shakespeare integrates ghosts, apparitions, and other supernatural elements into his plays in order to not only delight his readers, but also to further the story’s progress. Shakespeare may …