‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is set in the futuristic republic of Gilead. Everybody has somebody controlling what they do and only a minority have control over other people. In the first chapter alone we learn of the system of control within the Handmaids’ residence. There are the angels, who are responsible for the Aunts, who have responsibility for the handmaids, i. e. the narrator. This system […]

The crime and the detective novel and their conventions have changed considerably over the last century. As societies have changed, these genres have adapted and branched out to meet the needs of writers attempting to express new concerns. Edgar Allen Poe’s detective novel, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) follows conventions we would now consider to be traditional in mystery writing. Bearing a close […]

EXISTENTIALIST FOCUS ON PROTAGONIST SITA – ANITA DESAI’S -WHERE SHALL WE GO THIS SUMMER ? The protagonist herself has an existential entity. Desai, has presented an intense identity crisis of the central character Sita, a sensitive woman in her late forties. Existentialism’ is a difficult term to define and an odd movement as many feel, but it not totally impossible to define. ‘Existentialists’, tend to […]

Chaim Potok’s Asher Lev is a dual being trapped inside a little boy. On one side there is the family’s beliefs, the religious traditions and his great ancestor role-model, who Asher is expected to take after, if not surpass. On the other, there is art encompassing the artist’s emotions and portraying them in form more beautiful than anything else Asher has access to. These sides […]

How this quote is important to the novel “Within the diamond haze of the beach something dark was fumbling along… Then the creature stepped from the mirage on to clear sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing.” (Golding 19) The arrival of Jack Merridew and his militant choir is described as the imminent arrival of a savage beast […]

It is an excerpt from A.G Macdonnel’s humorous novel ‘England, their England’. The English society has been satirized in a light hearted manner especially what is known as ‘Englishness’ , as seen from the eyes of a Scotsman. In this the author humorously describes a cricket match being played between men from England and men from Scotland in the village of Fordendan.The cricketers are petty […]

Is Therese Raquin a Naturalist novel? Emile Zola is often considered the chief literary theorist of the Naturalist movement and so one would assume that his creative offspring, including the novel Therese Raquin, would display the traits of the genre. Zola may be responsible for many of the conventions that one would associate with Naturalism and so naturally you could extend this logic to argue that […]