“Exploding Enforced Gender Roles via Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Though usually viewed as a violent play about turbulent marriages, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? should be regarded as an early feminist text. Bonnie Finkelstein writes that the 1962 play portrays and analyzes the damaging effects of traditional, stereotypical gender roles, [...]

Like many of his comedies, William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing involves young couples getting together, or trying to get together, and ends with the happy lovers getting married.  On the surface this appears to be a rather fairy-tale like ending, and both sets of lovers in this play, Claudio with Hero and Beatrice with [...]

Introduction The nature of Montresor’s revenge in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is controversial; critics disagree upon several applicable questions. Is Montresor’s revenge a success or a failure? Is Montresor remorseful about murdering Fortunato? What is Fortunato’s insult and Montresor’s murder motive? The ambiguity of Montresor’s revenge has prompted numerous conflicting responses to [...]

Contrasting in tone, style, and content, Grigorij Machtet’s depictions of American rural life in the mid-late 1870’s, “The Prairie and the Pioneers” and “Frey’s Community,” nonetheless share some common themes with Maxim Gorky’s portrait of American urban life in the beginning of the twentieth century, “City of the Yellow Devil.” While similarly disparaging the actions [...]

It is generally agreed upon that postmodernism has no single or easily-identified definition. It is more of an idea or concept rather than a specific term. As a result it has become easier to define ‘postmodernism’ through examples rather than words. Considering this fact, between class discussions, personal observations and opinion, I have come to [...]

“As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to the direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He [...]

Until the late 1990s, there were thousands of books about American Indians, a considerable body of literature on national parks, but almost nothing linking the two.  Two monumental works on government Indian policy, Federal Indian Law by Felix Cohen and The Great Father by Francis Prucha, contain one passing reference to national parks between them. [...]

Of all the works of literature read in regard to the social issues of the 1930s, Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps proves the most artistic. Her compilation of short stories calls attention to the conflicts of women in the era with both honesty and grace. McCarthy tackles prevailing issues of marriage, intellectualism, and the [...]

Family Values consist of positive qualities, and negative qualities from which come values. Parents teach values so that their children will live within limits of conscience. Understanding the difference between right and wrong, and living by the Golden Rule is very important in living well in society. Family values are the Golden Rule of society [...]

Billy Collins was born in 1941 in New York City. He was a Professor at Lehamn College for thirty years. “He is also a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College and served a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. (libweb.com) Billy Collins is an American original, a metaphysical poet with a funny bone and [...]