The Glass Menagerie is one of the classic pieces of performing art to have been made in the twentieth century. First published by Tennessee Williams in 1944, it is a memory play with four main characters – Amanda Wingfield, Tom Wingfield, Laura Wingfield and Mr. Wingfield. The Gentleman Caller is the other character in the…
Category: Classics
A Socio-psychological study of Seamus Heaney’s poems The Grauballe Man and Strange Fruit & Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot
Both Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney display an acute understanding of human pathos, which is manifest in their works. This essay peruses Waiting for Godot by Beckett and the poems The Grauballe Man & Strange Fruit by Heaney to illustrate the social awareness contained in them. Social awareness (sometimes also referred to as social consciousness)…
Holden Caufield’s take on Much Ado About Nothing
I find Much Ado About Nothing quite amusing. Some of the characters in the play sound phony. The high-intensity romance between Claudio and Hero comes across as especially phony to me. After all, most whirlwind romances come crashing to ground one day. The way Claudio and Hero express their love for each other betrays their…
Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl – A Happy Ending
The Holocaust is undoubtedly the most tragic event in the history of modern human civilization. One has to go back many centuries in time to point a catastrophe of such magnitude – for example, the Black Death that afflicted most of Europe and wiped out nearly a third of its then population. The difference of…
A psychophilosophical perspective on Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce’s short story titled An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is one of the classics of the art form. The story could be read from several different angles, such as the social, cultural, psychological, political, etc. First, the American Civil War of the 1860s provides the political angle. Second is the cultural angle, whereby…
Contrarian themes in the film Paths of Glory (1957)
The film Paths of Glory (1957) is of the few mainstream Hollywood movies of the century to espouse a contrarian theme. While many films of the period talked of issues and the drama surrounding war, Paths of Glory went a step further and made an emphatic statement about the nature and contradictions of war. The…
An analysis of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Reverend Martin Luther King’s famous letter from Birmingham Jail captures some of the core elements of his public discourse. Although the letter had not been orated in public, it is similar in style to his more popular public speeches and brings out the inspirational and charismatic aspects of King’s personality. The letter was first published…
American Apartheid by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton
The book American Apartheid by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton is an eye-opening book that throws light on the issues of poverty and seclusion among African Americans. Contrary to many illusions and simplistic assumptions about the economic backwardness of blacks in America, Massey and Denton show that the community’s poverty is directly linked…
Critical Analysis of God is Alive (1966) by Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen is one of those artists of rare breed who drew creative inspiration from the rapidly changing social and cultural atmosphere after the Second World War. He is also one of the most versatile and accomplished artists, in that his genius is evident in various art forms such as music, poetry and the novel….
The Yellow Wallpaper: Feminist Viewpoint
The Yellow Wallpaper is a much acclaimed nineteenth century short story authored by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It first appeared in The New England Magazine in 1892. Upon its publication it proved controversial and provocative due to its bold portrayal of women’s sexuality and psychology. The story is also unique, for it adopts the epistolary style,…