.... and the way in which he changed throughout his life. To understand Dante's poetry requires us to understand his motivations. Throughout his life and career, Dante's primary motivation was always love. As Dante grew older, his ideas about love and life changed and these changes are reflected in his poetry. In particular, Dante's ideas of love were focused upon a single person in his life: Beatrice. Dante first saw Beatrice when he was only 9 years old (Dinsmore 69). She became his inspiration for almost every major work he created and he viewed her as his savior, first temporally and later spiritually (Fergusson 165, Inf. II, 109-114). His La Vita Nuova is .....

.... the conventional beliefs about people and society. Because she is not a musician, her listening is based on intuition, allowing for a direct apprehension of the music by the soul and leading to a confrontation with the reality itself — the reality of "solitude, of hope, of longing, ... of despair"(p.34). This is the beginning of Edna’s awakening, for such emotions, especially despair, are not an end but a beginning because they take away the excuses and guilts, those toward herself, from which she suffers. This revelation of previously hidden conflicts gives birth to dramatic emotions within Edna. It is so powerful that Edna wonders if she "s .....

.... a truth since the beginnings of America, such as the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, which is an example of this set in the 20’s. The characters in this novel are too fixed on material things, losing sight of what is really important. The characters in The Great Gatsby take a materialistic attitude that causes them to fall into a downward spiral of empty hope and zealous obsession. Fitzgerald contrasts Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway to display how the materialistic attitude of the 1920’s leads many to hopeless depression and how materialism never constitutes happiness. Fitzgerald uses Jay Gatsby, a character who spends his entire .....

.... This self-respect was in great contrast to the other prisoners who were portrayed as dirty, stereotypical prisoners. The common prisoners also had vocabularies and grammar that were far inferior to Andy’s. The distinctions between Andy and the common prisoners showed that Andy was different, those differences were that he had hope. Many scenes involved ironic contrasts between the tone and the surroundings. On several occasions the background music was cheerful and upbeat while the physical settings and scenery were terribly dark, dreary and depressing. One good example of this is the scene where Andy was helping the guards with their taxes. .....

.... I have read such short stories with similar titles by authors like Raymond Carver and others. I was surprised when I began to read "The Death of an Author" that a story with such a powerful title would be a wordy, whimper of a passage. The author Roland Barthes is a brilliant writer, he is able to weave phrases and create new uses for verbs, nouns and adjectives. Though he is a brilliant writer I have to assume that he was not a very bright man or that he at least has very little common sense outside of the literary world. If he wrote in a more simple, to the point modern style I would have read the story, absorbed its content, and would not have giv .....

.... Being that he is a very educated person, Grant was elected by his grandmother to try and get Jefferson to realize that he was a man and not an animal like the white people had led him to believe. Throughout the entire novel, Grant is battling this idea in his head because he doesn’t feel that even he knows what it is to be a man. He doesn’t believe that he is the right person to talk to Jefferson. But by the end of the novel, he figures out what it is to be a man. Minor Characters: Miss Emma is Jefferson’s grandmother. She is the one who had the whole idea of Grant going up to the jail and talking to Jefferson, showing him that he is a man. T .....

.... he does but also the fact that he does not confess to everyone in town. By not admitting his responsibility, he increases his guilt because Hester must endure all the blame. Dimmesdale's guilt eats away at him and leads to his doom. On the other hand, the adulteress handles the guilt by telling other people and showing them that she feels guilty. The people forgive her after time but Dimmesdale still feels guilty, and since time has passed can not face the truth. A situation that creates guilt can also illustrate how people deal with difficulty. Guilt does not only appear in literature, but also in daily life. A famous case is the O.J. Simpson murder .....

.... and turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone--fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion with his hands in his pockets . . . (p. 21) Being the absolute mystery that he is, Gatsby is this "silhouette of a moving cat," and lives his life this way. As this quote shows, Gatsby emerges from the shadow to reveal himself to Nick (who is one of a very few amount of people that he confides in with the truth of who he really is). Whether Gatsby is throwing extravagant parties in his own home or with a small group of people, who he is remains a secret. Gatsby is constantly encompassed by darkness and secrecy When Gatsb .....