The Five Twenty By John Cheever

In the exciting novel, “1776” by David McCullough, McCullough puts faces and emotions to the commemorated events of the Revolutionary war, which makes this novel overpowering even when the outcome is already known. I choose this extraordinary book, due to the fact of how McCullough writes about the significant events, how he introduces many characters that at first overwhelming but he makes sure you remember them due to that they are very significant throughout the whole story and how McCullough manifests the events of the war. With McCullough’s previous work called, “John Adams”, this book acts as a counterpart to his work as to how this book has a rigid military view compared to a political view.

As for New York City, in the novel it is defined as the perfect place to live life to the fullest and not have a care of the world. As a reader, it is expected to envision this city full of lights as a bright, restless, and colorful place. Nick Carraway depicts New York City as a “...city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of

The story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston focuses on the marriage life of Delia Jones and her husband Sykes. Hurston is known as famous American writer, she writes on real life stories as it was during the years when she wrote the stories. The story is about Delia Jones, a hardworking and religious woman who mistakenly marries Sykes and has been living in a strained marriage life from fifteen years. Although they have been married for fifteen year, the relationship has been abusive. Sykes is an abusive and unemployed man. In addition, Sykes have a mistress and he wants Delia to leave their house so that he can move in his lover Bertha. Sykes knows that Delia is afraid of snake, so he scares Delia several times with the bullwhip, which looks like a snake. Eventually, he brings the real snake to get rid of Delia. However, at the end of the story Delia gets her revenge on her husband Sykes for his mistreatment over the past fifteen years.

The Roaring Twenties were a time of leisure and parties. The media and events surrounding this time period greatly impacted the carefree, extravagant lifestyle. This era was one of the most dramatic and energetic times in American history. To many, the symbols of the roaring Twenties were F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, due to their tales of the young and the wealthy (Hanson 96). The Roaring Twenties influenced many literary works, throughout the 1920s such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise.

When Paul, the main character, decides to abandon his childhood home to travel to his ideal city of New York, he eventually succumbs to the bitter reality of his own struggle with depression. “It was the old depression exaggerated; all the world had become Cordelia Street” (Cather 21). In Paul’s Case, by Willa Cather, the author writes of the depression-ridden Paul who attempted to convince himself that his appreciation and admiration of his dreams were nothing less than ideal, but they ultimately morphed into obsessions that failed. Despite Paul’s limited glimpses into his greatest hopes of living a life well beyond his current lifestyle, it was one he eventually realized he could never attain. Paul believed he could convince himself and the world, that Cordelia Street was where he started, but the lavish life of a New Yorker would be where he—not only deserved to be—but where he was meant to be. Despite his efforts, he ultimately fell. The aspects that made Paul resent Cordelia Street were aspects he discovered everywhere else—including New York City.

John Krakauer, Chris McCandless, and Henry David Thoreau are three mean who embrace the idea of Transcendentalism. In the books, Into the Wild by Jon Krakuer and Walden by Henry David Thoreau, the readers are able to see similarities between Chris’s and Thoreau’s beliefs in Transcendentalism. Both men embrace individualism, starting over, and believing in oneself. The first belief that McCandless and Thoreau share is individualism.

Night and Boys in the Boat books that are completely different but they both share a common lesson on pushing through difficult times in life. Night took place during World War Two, at German concentration camps, Nazis were capturing Jewish people and sent them to concentration camps along with Elie Wiesel. Boys in the boat is about a boy named Joe Rantz who had to provide for himself at a young age. Joe joined the crew team for college, he found trust in his crew members and became friends with them. Boys in the Boat and Night are both books that are great examples of people never giving up and being resilient.

The Dial was an American journal, first edited by Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1840. In its first edition, the magazine came out as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. It continued its evolution from being a political magazine in 1880 to an impressive source of modern literature in English from

During the Great Depression, it was not uncommon to become morosely secluded while working. Men would go far away from their families in search of any jobs they could get, with only themselves to confide in; colleagues only filling in the void of friends and family partially. Naturally, John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men, written during this period, would reflect this fact as a major aspect of the story. Loneliness would become the sinew of Of Mice and Men, manifested in some of the story’s main characters: Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife. These allusions to loneliness are found throughout the book, mimicking the rampant disease of isolation at the time.

Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451 expresses his perspective on life in an interview. His interview contains a common theme: "Do what you love, and love what you do" (Bradbury). Bradbury sends a message in his interview that people should love life, and live to the fullest because he believes life is a beautiful thing. Although Bradbury no longer can demonstrate his love for life his message still lives in the pages of Fahrenheit 451. The Government of the society in the novel has told their citizens that thinking is as useless as a broken power tool. The citizens are told that books are meaningless, and have no value to anything except those who want to create chaos. The Government replaced all the meaningful things in society with seashells that can play music and television sets fit to stretch along a wall to be called a family. The Government has corrupted society. The protagonist, Guy Montag, burns books to restrict knowledge in society, but he does not know this. Clarisse, Montag 's neighbor, lives in a home where socializing and thinking are essential which in society that in highly unusual. Montag has always been curious, but Clarisse sets Montag on a journey that involves being rebellious, curious, and persistent by asking him a strange question. These characteristics set Montag apart from society. Montag has been persistently searching for guidance after Clarisse dies, and decides to visit Faber, on old English Professor for assistance in his journey.

In the novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne, the author develops a charming protagonist named professor Arronax. He and his faithful servant Conseil were originally aboard the Abraham Lincoln in search of a cetacean that had been destroying boats worldwide. They were on the boat a few months when the finally found this “cetacean” then it hit the Abraham Lincoln sending Conseil, Professor Aronnax, and his friend Ned Land overboard. They were soon rescued by a submarine. The submarine turned out to be the cetacean that had been destroying ships. They soon met Captain Nemo, a man who wanted to cut himself off from society so he built a submarine that

Racial prejudice is a pessimistic aspect of society that has critically affected many different people around the world. This idea is well demonstrated in Ray Bradbury’s short story “Way in the Middle of the Air”, which is part of The Martian Chronicles (1950). “Way in the Middle of the Air” displays a great amount of inequality and racism within America. This story focuses on the relations of the African-Americans and the white Americans in the South. The African-Americans, other known as “blackies” and “niggers” in the story, are tired of being belittled and treated unfairly by the

When doing the bag project in class and discussing the number of objects each student filled their bag with I have witnessed the similarities as well as differences within each one. Some students used many of the same things as others, yet there also were many very distinctive differences. Therefore I disagree with Zora Neale Hurston's acclamation that a person would still be nearly the same if they poured out the contents of their bag and refilled it with that of another’s. I disagree with Hurston's statement because I think of the contents of ones' bag as being equivalent to one’s personality, experiences and values.

Loss, wastefulness, and regret are not words that anyone wants to hear. While reading the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Babylon Revisited” and of Ernest Hemingway in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” these three words seem to connect to two stories together. In these stories loss, wastefulness, and regret intertwine in the stories to better explain the struggles that people have to deal with.

“There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.” F. Scott Fitzgerald in his short story “The Sensible Thing”. This quote relates to the grandiose dream of Jay Gatsby. Gatsby tried to recreate Daisy and his love, but this dream was shattered by the haunting presence of reality. His dream to recreate this lost love was like trying to recreate the “same love twice”. His dream thus exemplifies the conflict of reality and illusion. His illusionary vision of the future is faced not by what he thought would happen, but instead by the presence of reality. In the Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the idea and manifestation of Gatsby’s dream dramatizes the conflict between his dream and the world outside his fantasy. Through