Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” is the story of a Frankenstein-esque scientist attempting to remove a crimson birthmark from his wife’s otherwise pale face. This short story, filled with moral ambiguity and pseudo-alchemy, can be analyzed for its faulty ideology by taking a Deconstructive approach. A close look at this text reveals hypocritical binary oppositions, multiple … Continue reading A Deconstructive Analysis of “The Birth-Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

            The Modernist movement and the Harlem Renaissance were both times of extreme change. Both movements came out of the horrific events of WWI, and were products of the shifts that occurred, which changed how people saw literature, religion, history, and even their own identities. It’s no surprise that the literature of the period, written … Continue reading Considering the Need for Stability in Both a Modernist and Harlem Renaissance Piece: How These Characters Find a Sense of Security in Troubled Times

            In my fairly limited experience with philosophy, it seems that no other question seems to have trumped an entire discipline as much as the question: “What is the meaning of life?”. Not only does every great philosopher attempt in their own way to answer this question, but the question also appears in popular movies … Continue reading The Necessary Question

            Nella Larsen, in her novel Passing, creates an interesting and eye-opening medium through which we can analyze the complex topic of identity and self-identification. The characters in Passing all have a unique relationship to their own identities, as they are molded by the identities society wants them to have, and as they interact with … Continue reading Identity in Nella Larsen’s Passing: How the Repression of Identity Can Create Violent Effects

The Modernist movement was a response to the horrors that occurred during WWI by artists and philosophers who chased meaning after the senseless and horrible violence. The war reshaped how people perceived religion, literature, history, culture, and even their own identities. Modernist poetry was an attempt to reclaim a sense of meaning that seemed absent … Continue reading Confronting Death in Modernist Poems: Analysis of cummings’ “Buffalo Bill’s” and Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost is a poem about two neighbors who continuously repair a wall between their properties. In the poem, the speaker points out the irony in the wall being there, since it is not necessary, and the other neighbor maintains that the wall should be kept up because it is a tradition … Continue reading A New Critic’s Analysis of "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

Marxist Analysis is a way of analyzing literature through the scope of Karl Marx’s ideas about the alienation of labor, the flaws of a base economy, and ideologies that help the bourgeoisie maintain societal control over the proletariat. This analysis is useful to examine pieces of literature that make social commentary about problems with the … Continue reading A Marxist Analysis of “Harlem” by Langston Hughes

In this essay, I will be focusing on two nonbinary writers’ poetry, spoken word, essays, speeches, and music. I will explore how their works are directly affected by society’s expectation of gender that is placed on them, and how their own bravery has helped them step outside of their comfort zone to inspire other nonbinary … Continue reading Nonbinary Leadership: Ivan Coyote and Angel Haze as Powerful Nonbinary Spokespeople and Inspirations

In Chinua Achebe’s Image of Africa, Achebe introduces us to the idea of the traveler with a closed mind. The metaphor can, of course, be taken literally into meaning that a traveler who does not embrace the culture of the society they visit—a metaphor that has real value—but it should be taken deeper, into a … Continue reading The close-minded traveler: How to open your mind and understand the broader contexts

Although Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) appear to be two separate literary seafaring adventure texts, they actually both posit a meaningful point about the harmful effects of pride, greed, and ultimately the dangers of the ego. Ultimately this helps us better understand how American authors in the 19th century … Continue reading How Treasure Island and Moby-Dick Tell Different Tales of American Success