Academic papers on American Literature

Charlotte P. Gilman/The Yellow Wallpaper
A 6 page essay that answers the question 'how should the reader view the nature of what happened to the unnamed heroine?' The writer argues that the story describes the protagonist's slow descent into madness, which, ironically, offers more freedom...
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Lan Cao/ Monkey Bridge
A 5 page essay that summarizes Lan Cao's evocative novel of Vietnamese emigrants. Monkey Bridge tells the story of seventeen-year-old Mai Nyugen and her widowed mother, Thanh, who emigrated to the US from Vietnam. It relates what assimilation to...
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Edgar Allan Poe/ The Tell-Tale Heart
A 5 page essay that analyzes Poe's masterpiece of horror, "The Tell-Tale Heart," concentrating on how Poe utilized point of view and meticulous use of detail to paint a psychological profile of the mind of a cold-blooded and utterly insane killer....
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Updike's A&P, Joyce's Araby, a Comparison
A 5 page essay that analyzes similar short stories by John Updike and James Joyce. In his short story, A & P, John Updike appears to have intentionally patterned his narrative on the famous story by James Joyce, Araby. In each case, the protagonist...
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Compare and Contrast: John Wintrhop (1630) and Philip Roth (1959)
(5 pp) Some old wag, has said, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." We will be balancing that thought against two works that are centuries apart: John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630) and Philip Roth's...
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Willa Cather/Use of Tone in My Antonia
A 5 page research paper that explores what various critics have said concerning the use of tone in Cather's My Antonia. The writer argue that My Antonia is a narrative of exile and longing in which the tone of the novel acts as a pivotal element,...
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Amy Tan/Mothers & Daughters in Joy Luck Club
A 5 page essay, in which the writer discusses how Tan explores the intricate bonds that exist between mothers and daughters. The novel concerns four aging members of the "Joy Luck Club," who gather regularly in San Francisco to play mah-jongg. By...
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Stephen King/ Man in the Black Suit
A 5 page essay that examines the King's use of setting in this award-winning short story, "The Man in the Black Suit." The writer argues that the rural Maine setting, which is so typical of King's work, plays an intrinsic role in the manner in which...
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Nathaniel Hawthorne/Comparing 2 short stories
A 2 page essay that examines the similarities in image, theme and symbolism between "Roger Malvin's Burial and "Young Goodman Brown" by Hawthorne. No additional sources cited.
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Faulkner/O'Connor Comparison
A 3 page essay that compares William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily, and Flannery O'Connor's short story "Good Country People." In both stories, female protagonists come face-to-face with their deepest fears. Also, in both stories, the...
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Robert Penn Warren/ Power in All the King's Men
A 5 page essay that analyzes Robert Penn Warren's classic novel All the King's Men, which illustrates the corrupting influence of political power in the career of Willie Stark, a character, who begins his career of public service as an idealist. The...
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Charlotte Perkins Gillman: "The Yellow Wallpaper"
(5 pp) The creative imagination is like a genie that has escaped its bottle; once it is released, it will do any and everything to stay alive, even to the point of fantasy and self -destruction. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The...
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Momaday and Alexie: Writers who connect
(5 pp). N. Scott Momaday and Sherman Alexie are Native American writers who "connect" with those they love. For Momaday it is the love of land - that unique place where one is born, that is both defining and healing. For Alexie it is the...
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Rhyming "Treasures" of Ron Padgett
(6 pp.) Padgett's poetry is rooted in popular culture. The poet says his own overt use of comic strip material: "I ascribe it to having grown up in a prospering, consumerist America in the 1940s and 1950s with parents who had just...
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A Christian View/Crane's Open Boat
A 5 page essay that, first, looks at the work of Christian writer James W. Sire and his definitions of worldview. After defining Christian, Naturalist and Existentialist worldviews, the writer demonstrates how the Naturalist worldview applies to...
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