... his mind to new concepts and from then on he begins to perceive the world differently. One day, Guy and the other firemen have to burn down the book-infested house of an elderly lady who refuses to leave her house and her books, so she burns to the ground with her books making Guy realize that “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there.” (p.51) Guy sneaks two books from the lady’s home and as the time goes by, he secretly reads many books until his wife discovers his secret and turns him in. After that, G ...

... dependent on each other, and feeling a practical and emotional need for each other. The focus of his book is not on the adventure itself, but rather on the father-son relationship that springs up between Jim and Huck during their pilgrimage down the river. Huck, being the mischievous boy that he is,often showed much ignorance to others. He did not recognize the feelings of others- as many young boys his age don’t realize. The unrecognizable feeling was ignorance towards others and the way they feel. Many times Huck could be found causing trouble for others. One situation was when Tom and Huck decided to play a ...

... Europe converged on Dresden for protection (Klinkowitz 2-3). Dresden's neutrality was broken and the resulting attacks laid waste, what Vonnegut called, "the Florence of the Elbe." Kurt Vonnegut was a witness to this event and because of fate, had been spared. He wrote Slaughterhouse Five to answer the questi on that resounded through his head long after the bombs could no longer be heard. "Why me?"- a frequent question asked by survivors of war. Vonnegut was tormented by this question and through Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist in Slaughterhouse Five, he attempts to reconcile the guilt which one feels whe ...

... This slogan is taught to everyone, from the youngest to the oldest. Unhappiness, intellectual curiosity, disagreement, suffering - none of these feelings is allowed in the world which Huxley creates. At the first sign of unhappiness, Soma is prescribed. Emotions of all types are strictly controlled to provide stability and predictability within the population. Another of the panaceas for social ills is the belief that everyone would enjoy his or her work because he or she was "made" or trained for it when young. Consequently, from birth, everyone in Brave New World is slotted to belong to a specific social and ...

... on food and then force themselves to vomit. They also often use laxatives to get food out of their system. All of these young women who suffer from this problem are considered to suffer from a psychiatric disorder. While the causes are debatable, one thing that is clear is that these young women have a distorted body image. (Wolf, pp.214-216) What is extremely alarming is that the current thin ideal for women in Western society, which is unattainable for all but a very small percentage of the population, is compounding this problem. It is a very serious issue when someone's body shape is determined by genetic dispo ...

... Goodman Brown learns about evil in the towns people and how what he thought was the truth is really not. When Goodman Brown starts his voyage he knew what he was going in the woods to do, what he didn’t realize is that the same reason he went to the woods was the same reason as the towns people. When Goodman encounters Goody Cloyse in the woods he is shocked that he sees her out there “A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at night fall.”(Hawthorne 98) When he learns of her travels and of how she is acquainted with the old man he is in disbelieve that a w ...

... a strong and rewarding friendship. This friendship of course has its ups and downs, but overall proves to be an invaluable learning experience to both young men. Danny is forced to endure an awkward and possibly cruel situation for the majority of his formative years. Danny's father never speaks with him. With the exception of Talmud discussions and Danny's baseball team idea, Danny and his father never speak. This situation causes Danny a great deal of emotional pain, a pain which he is unable to comprehend his father's reasons for inflicting. His father feared, and with reason, that if something were not ...

... in hopes of impressing and eventually winning the heart of the materialistic, superficial Daisy. She is, however, completely undeserving of his worship. "Then it had been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor" (p.79). Nick realizes Gatsby's estate, parties, shirts and other seemingly "purposeless" possessions are not purposeless. Everything Gatsby does, every move he makes and every decision he conceives is for a reason. He wants to achieve his ideal, Daisy. Gatsby's "purposeless splendor" is all for the wom ...

... able to endure the misfortunes that life throws at them. Of course their progress is hampered by an unreliable truck and by the “quest for the dollar” that all migrants had. Through their journey to find work and settle down, the Joad’s encounter many calamities that test their relationship as a family and their own limits as individuals. As in real life, not everyone succeeds with his or her goals, and this story of hardship is no different. In the beginning of the book we get an early look at Steinbeck’s ideals when Muley Graves says,“…if a fella’s got somepin to eat a ...

... rights sunk to a new low. Even after experiencing freedom during the Civil War, their hopes of immediate equality died with the death of Lincoln. Groups like the KKK drove blacks down to a new economic low. What time would be better than this to write a book about the great American dream, a book about long held American ideals, now squashed by big business and white supremacy? Mark Twain did just that, when he wrote what is considered by many as the “Great American Epic”. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “The great American epic,” may be one of the most interesting and complex books ev ...