Articles written by Jennifer M. Willhite
Showing 22 Articles
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Sylvia Plath's Tongues of Stone
Written in 1955, "Tongues of Stone" is one of Plath's more compelling works of short fiction. A young woman tries desperately to find meaning in an empty, sterile world.
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John Milton's Satan in Book One of Paradise Lost
Milton makes the case for Satan to be viewed on a human level different from the tradition of a demon detached from the material world.
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Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"
Chopin's Mrs. Mallard has been burdened with heart trouble for years. Following her husband's death her newfound freedom heals her pain, but ultimately takes her life.
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Kate Chopin's "Regret"
Aurelie's is consumbed by anguish and saddness over allowing herself to be deprived of a life that she thought she could exist without.
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Fitzgerald's Gatsby: Daisy Buchanan
Daisy Buchanan is the epitome of a daughter of privilege. She comes from old money, never wanted for anything, but she has no concept of how it has shaped her character.
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Poe's The Cask of Amatillado
Montresor's vengeful nature is exhibited through his diabolical actions. His complexion remains a mystery to the audience, but the glimpses to his soul display an abyss.
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Stein's "Melanctha"
Melanctha constantly sought acceptance and found her worth in the eyes of others. When she meets Campbell a relationship blossoms that causes her to amend her ways.
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Euripides' Medea
The rage Medea feels consumes her when she addresses Jason in the aftermath of his affair. Her uncensored language is considered unbecoming of a woman in her position.
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Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls
Neely is consumed with the illusion of power, wealth and influence. She is willing to ride the high all the way to her own destruction.
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Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
Marlow, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, comes face to face with himself in the heart of a dark, horrifying and extreme experience.
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Shakespeare's Macbeth
Masculinity/Femininity are demonstrated as a double construction of gender as a professional and private manner in Macbeth.
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Poe's "Annabel Lee"
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most celebrated American authors of the 19th century. His most memorable works were published shortly before his death in 1849.
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Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby and Hunter S. Thompson
Just as Gatsby spent his life chasing the green light over the bay, Thompson spent his career chasing the elusive American Dream.
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Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
Esther Greenwood desperately searches for purity in a world that is anything but pure. The disillusionment she suffers antagonizes her eventual mental collapse.
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Gertrude Stein's Three Lives
Stein's Melanctha is a young woman who is desperate to find herself. Through her relationships, she tries to define who she is and what it is that she seeks
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Voltaire's Candide
Voltaire's Candide defines the roles of faith and suffering through experience and thought, while rejecting the threat of conformity that looms all around him.
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Moliere's A Would-Be Gentleman
Moliere's view of a woman's role in the 17th century, through the character of Mrs. Jourdain, turns conventional stereotypes on end, and indicts traditional decorum.
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Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"
Written October 12, 1962, Daddy serves as a type of confession. The poem is a deep, dark examination of a paternal relationship that died when Plath was young.
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Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
Darwin's theory of sexual selection is prominently portrayed through Catherine, who adds a human element to a theory traditionally applied to the animal kingdom.
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Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Santiago Nasar's masculinity is defined by secondhand accounts of the events, observations and experiences in the hours leading up to his death.
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Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Chief Bromden's obsession with the combine, and the mechanisms thereof, is allegorical of the threat conformity inflicts on individuality.
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Kierkegaard's Influence on Hunter S. Thompson
Thompson's writings on the death of the American dream are, in part, a response to Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.
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