Going to Meet the Author: The Lynching of James Baldwin
On one hand, James Baldwin’s short story “Going to Meet the Man” seems fairly straight forward. A deputy sheriff in the changing south remembers his family taking him to the lynching of a black man with the same air of excitement someone might experience on a family picnic. The details are both gruesome and [...]
Self Contempt in James Baldwin’s Novel “Giovanni’s Room”
James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” is a poignant take on self contempt and personal deception. David is a young man who not only attempts to deceive himself, but deceives others along the way. In today’s world of trite pop psychology we tend to focus on the harm we cause ourselves through self-deception, but Baldwin’s story points [...]
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Northrop Frye’s Theory of Myths
Northrop Frye’s “theory of myths” refers to a system of patterns which mankind has used to realize the narratives of his stories and literature. Frye asserts human beings realize basic narrative in two fundamental ways; representations of the real world and representations of an ideal or fantasy world. Frye calls the two fundamental narratives the [...]
Indeterminacy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Although the Jazz Age in America came on the scene with a bit of a strut in its stride, taking bold steps forward into a whole new era, the same bold steps brought an air of uncertainty; new territory, previously uncharted, could bring its own dangers. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” echoed that underlying [...]
A Marxist Critique of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
When we feel we have nothing out of the ordinary, when everything we have is viewed in our society as a commodity, we raise the bar of our expectations and want something more. But even then, it isn’t enough to merely have it. We want to have it and rub it in the face of [...]
A Psychoanalytic Criticism of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Although psychoanalytic criticism believes we are each born with a clean slate, soon that slate is cluttered with images. Even before we have words to label them, we begin working to sort this clutter and make sense of the world around us. If a thing is suitable we keep it or forget it, but if [...]
An Overview of Structuralist Criticism in Literature
A typical American middle class home is built from a few basic ingredients: wood, nails, miscellaneous wires, pipes, and tubing, wrapped in layers of plaster and paint. But a student of Architecture wouldn’t necessarily be interested in how these ingredients are combined to make one single house. Such a student is more likely to study [...]
A New Criticism View of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
In another age, traveling medicine shows would tout their amazing stars as “The Great” or “The Invincible”. We learned to expect feats of magic and miracle from these men, even if beneath it all we knew they were charlatans. Fitzgerald used this bit of the pop psyche in the title of his novel, “The Great [...]
A Feminist Critique of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Even if they disagree about other issues, all feminists believe patriarchal ideology works to keep men and women confined to traditional gender roles so male dominance may be maintained. Utilizing the precepts of Feminist criticism, it could be argued “The Great Gatsby” promotes a thinly veiled patriarchal agenda. Through Fitzgerald’s treatment of the three women [...]
Hardboiled Crime Fiction
Given enough time, a hypothetical chimpanzee typing at random would, as part of its output, almost surely produce one of today’s mystery/suspense genre novels. Of course, these novels might never form a series with titles that conveniently fall into alphabetical order, and these novels are not likely to be about cats that do various unusual [...]
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