Pursuit of the American Dream While working for the Chandlers, a white family of considerable wealth, Lutie is exposed to the idea that success and financial freedom are the guaranteed outcomes of hard work and perseverance—the American Dream. Determined to transcend her impoverished circumstances in Harlem, Lutie adopts this mentality and worries about money constantly….
Tag: Themes
Sense and Sensibility: Themes
‘‘Sense’’ and ‘‘Sensibility’’ The title of Jane Austen’s novel and the Lee-Thompson film adaptation identifies one key theme of the story: the contrast between good sense and untrustworthy emotions. The moral of Sense and Sensibility is that rational thought, not strong emotions, should guide one’s actions and decisions. Those who get carried away by strong…
Le Pere Goriot: Themes
The Influence of Environment on Character Honore de Balzac’s portrayal of various social climbing characters in Le Pere Goriot examines how one’s environment shapes one’s character. As A. J. Krailsheimer puts it in the preface to his 1991 translation of the novel, ‘‘What interests Balzac is cause and effect, environment more than heredity, and behavioral…
No longer At Ease: Themes
Colonialism The social and psychological effects of European colonialism in African life is a central theme in all of Chinua Achebe’s writing. No Longer at Ease is set toward the end of the colonial period; two generations have passed since the white man’s initial disruption of Ibo society, the period depicted in Things Fall Apart….
Nicholas Nickleby: Themes
Class and Privilege Nicholas Nickleby, like most of Charles Dickens’s novels, is explicitly concerned with the human costs of the class system. Nicholas and Kate suffer a tremendous loss of privilege when they lose their father’s fortune and sink from the genteel class status of their birth to a sort of purgatory class of the…
A Lost Lady: Themes
Conflict of Values between Generations One concept that underscores much of the plot in A Lost Lady is how human values change over time. In the novel, Cather distinguishes between the generations and their different sets of principles. Men like Captain Forrester and Judge Pommeroy represent the old guard, the backbone of towns like Sweet…
Intruder In The Dust: Themes
Debt and Payment The incident at the start of William Faulkner’s novel, when Beauchamp refuses the seventy-cent tip from Chick, is in fact complex. On one level, the young and thoughtless Chick regards it as an insult to his race. More is happening here, however. The incident swells in his mind in part because he…
Themes in The Glory Field by Walter Dean Myers
The Importance of Family and Land One overriding theme of the saga that is The Glory Field is the value of kinship and relations. Myers expresses this idea by emphasizing the importance of the relationships between the generations of the Lewis family and their holding onto the land they own in Curry Island, South Carolina….
Themes in The Adventures of Augie March
Self-Realization Perhaps the central theme of The Adventures of Augie March is its protagonist’s lifelong struggle to discover who he truly is and what his place in the world should be. This epic search for a path through life is what launches Augie into his ‘‘various jobs,’’ including smuggler, thief, teacher, and shoe salesman. But…
The Pursuit of Happyness: Theme Analysis
The Pursuit of Happyness was a commercially successful film whose main appeal is its ‘feel-good’ ending. It treads the much worn path of the rags-to-riches narrative, albeit with some variations in plot, characterization and context. This essay would argue that despite the commercial success of the film, it fails as a social instrument. In other…