A Class of Their Own: Empowerment through literature in Coates’ Between the World and Me, Plath’s The Bell Jar, and Shelly’s Frankenstein
Education offers empowerment. To know more about the world, the people in it, and how they respond to the hardship around them is to prepare for life as an independent adult.
Same Racists, Different Experiences: Comparing Race, Assimilation, and Identity through Literature
In The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King writes that “somebody once told me that racism hurts everyone. Perhaps in the broader sense of community, this is true. All I know is that it seems to hurt some much more than others” (King 185).
Not Simply Black and White: Whiteness as a Matter of Belief in Coates’ Between the World and Me
The scale, intensity and longevity of inequality is especially unique and unprecedented in America. This is because, as Ta-Nehisi Coates argues in Between the World and Me, American identity is essentially founded upon oppression, and thus economic inequality is anchored in racial inequality.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: How the Psychological Afflictions of Plath’s Esther Greenwood and Shakespeare’s Ophelia are products of binary worlds in The Bell Jar and Hamlet
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet were written hundreds of years apart, but certain characters in the two works seem to have their lives controlled by similar conditions.
Lucretius: The Risk and Rage of the Joys and Despairs of Love
Sex, love, and relationships are compelling universal topics that have been the subject of countless musings and explorations. In his didactic poem, On the Nature of Things, Lucretius discusses all three, guided by his valuing of the Epicurean principle of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.
The Karamazov Brothers and their Discontents: A Freudian Reading of Pain and Pleasure, Aggression and Confession in Dostoevsky’s Classic Novel
While Sigmund Freud came to be known as one of the most (in)famous psychologists of all time, and while Fyodor Dostoevsky established himself as one of the great psychologists of world literature, some modern scientists might point out the audible similarity between ‘Freud’ and ‘fraud,’ and no professor of clinical psychology would be likely to assign The Double as required reading on schizophrenia.
I’m Talking to You: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States of America has emerged as an unmatched superpower in the international arena. With its supremacy in the global economy and monopoly over mass media, the West stands at the forefront in shaping not only world culture and our accepted history, but the attitudes and ideals of the anglophone world.
The Reflection
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the characters of Victor and his creature parallel each other as they both face injustice and suffering and both resort to violent revenge.
I am Not Your Stepping Stone: An Analysis of Ethnocentric Bias in Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist
In a world shocked by the horror of death and calamity that came from 9/11, Mohsin Hamid allows us to listen to the voice of a Pakistani-American during this tumultuous time.
A Faux Confession
Mohsin Hamid’s casual yet powerful writing style communicates the biographical story of a Pakistani Muslim’s enchantment and disenchantment with America while maintaining a degree of uncertainty regarding the character and intention of the narrator and protagonist, Changez.