The Big Fish – Daniel Wallace SUMMARY Edward Bloom (Albert Finney), a charismatic teller of tall-tales, is a source of frustration to his grown son, William (Billy Crudup). At Wills wedding, Edward embarrasses him by telling the guests an impossible-sounding story about the day of Will’s birth, involving a giant catfish that ate his wedding ring. […]
The Time Factor – Gloria Steinem Personal Point of View Perhaps I have a lower level of reading, or maybe Gloria Steinem and me come from two completely different worlds. It took me four times to read and fully understand the implications and ideas put forth by her in her article entitled: The Time Factor. After […]
Di Grasso: A Tale of Odessa – Issac Bable Summary Because this brief work is a sophisticated commentary on the nature of art as well as “just a story,” it is all the more interesting for the reader to know that it is the last work Isaac Babel published in his lifetime, before he fell […]
The Hunter Gracchus – Franz Kafka SummaryKafka’s stories often deal with the power that either drives man beyond himself into the spiritual sphere or pulls him back into a primitive, this-worldly realm. (Compare the “assault from above” and the “assault from below” in “A Hunger Artist.”) In several of his stories, he uses the symbol […]
What is Poverty ? – Jo Goodwin Parker In Jo Goodwin Parker’s essay “What is Poverty?” she asks you first to listen. To listen to her story of what poverty is like. She then talks about the different aspects of what poverty is, what parts it includes that make it a dangerous reality. Jo talks about […]
A Marriage Proposal – Anton Chekov Plot synopsis Ivan Vassiliyitch Lomov, a long-time neighbor of Stepan Stepanovitch Chubukov, has come to propose marriage to Chubukov’s 25-year-old daughter, Natalia. After he has asked and received joyful permission to marry Natalia, she is invited into the room, and he tries to convey to her the proposal. Lomov […]
THE HAPPY JOURNEY TO TRENTON AND CAMDEN -Thornton Wilder Plot summary Almost the entire play takes place during an automobile journey from Newark to Camden, New Jersey by a family on their way to visit a married daughter, who has recently lost a baby in childbirth. Very little happens, but the father, mother, and children […]
Riders To The Sea – John Millington Synge Plot synopsis Maurya has lost her husband, father-in-law, and five sons to the sea. As the play begins Nora and Cathleen receive word that a body that may be their brother Michael has washed up on shore inDonegal, far to the north. Bartley is planning to sail […]
She was a Phantom of Delight – WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Wordsworth writes about his changing perspective on his wife, Mary Hutchinson, who he describes as the “Phantom of delight.” At first he sees her as he did as a youth, as a spirit “to haunt, to startle, to way-lay,” but by the third stanza, he sees her […]
Musee des Beaux Arts – W. H. Auden The basic premise of the poem is response to tragedy, or as the song goes “Obla Di, Obla Da, Life Goes On.” The title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. Auden visited the museum in 1938 and viewed the painting by Brueghel, which the […]