All Questions

I have always loved the writing style of early 1900s writers like E.B. White and George Orwell. Even Winston Churchill's writing was incredible in his biography about WWII. A lot of books that I pick ...

One of the fictional accounts of July's birth in The Long Song (historical novel, set in 1830s Jamaica, when slavery was coming to an end), describes a 'tiger', without the usual appearance belonging ...

From chapter 5 of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell ...

I have always been charmed by George Orwell's and E. B. White's essays. They're insidiously plain, but extremely pleasant to read. The way that they talk is so different from authors today (for ...

I am currently writing a paper with 'games' as a subject. One of the axes I am working on deals with games contributing to pleasure in pedagogy, and I intend to use Rabelais' concept mentioned in ...

In Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," it says: Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself: "Look ...

I have noticed that online listings for books primarily marketed toward children sometimes include the text "This title has Common Core connections.", usually toward the bottom. What does this mean? ...

"The Shepherd Boy" is a very short story by the Brothers Grimm which recently found fame in the world of popular sci-fi by being referenced prominently in an episode of Doctor Who. In general it is ...

I am planning to buy Mein Kampf (translated to English by James Murphy). Since it is 500+ pages, I want to know if it is worth the read. I do like history and would love to know what really made an ...

In Ted Hughes' "Crow and the Birds", the lines before the ending read: While the bullfinch plumped in the apple bud And the goldfinch bulbed in the sun And the wryneck crooked in the ...

I recently began reading Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast. In it, Hemingway and his contemporary Americans are described as a ‘lost generation’: It was when we had come back from Canada and ...

In chapter 1 of Jack London's The Call of the Wild, the dog Buck gets a beating: He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man ...

I was rereading Prince Caspian and noticed that in the start of the story they're in an empty, sleepy country station, and there was hardly anyone on the platform but themselves and then they're ...

The king of Archenland during the time of The Horse and His Boy, father of the Archenland princes who play a more major role in the story, is called Lune. Is there any significance to this name? ...

It's from "The Case for Classicism" by Lovecraft. The first thing one remarks on reading his frigid “Engineering English” is its laconic atmosphere of aloofness from vivid feeling and from love of ...

From chapter 5 of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: Miss Maudie had known Uncle Jack Finch, Atticus’s brother, since they were children. Nearly the same age, they had grown up together at Finch’...

From Independent People by Halldór Laxness (translated from Icelandic by J. A. Thompson): Others believe that she lives much in the lake in the form of some kind of serpent or water-monster; and ...

Orlando is about an immortal man who changes into a woman. Originally Woolf wanted to write about a bisexual character but the laws of the time wouldn't allow it, so this was her way of compromising ...

Here’s the last stanza of Robert Browning’s ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’, first published in Dramatic Lyrics (1842): Or, there’s Satan!—one might venture     Pledge one’s soul to him, yet ...

In The Wind in The Willows, at the end of the chapter 'VI: Mr. Toad', Toad is convicted and sentenced to twenty years in "the remotest dungeon of the best-guarded keep of the stoutest castle in all ...

This is from chapter 18 of Persuasion by Jane Austen. This is when Admiral Croft tries to mention Anne about the possible alliance of Louisa Musgrove and Captain Benwick. Anne had been ashamed to ...

In Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, the people on the Ship treat women as if they're not people. There are references to "naming" their women like dogs, they make deals with father and husband, and are, ...

Something that always struck me about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is how the four Pevensie children not only spend years in Narnia but grow up and become adults there, before having to ...

"The Day of Doom" has been described as America's first bestseller, but can that be attributed to the above-average literacy rate among Puritans and in America overall? Would this poem have been less ...

Rachel Carson begins her book Silent Spring with an allegory, explaining how a small American town with beautiful nature, one day is destroyed and all the birds stop singing. There was a strange ...

In Emersons essay Nature in the first chapter, he describes a sensation of being part of god and everything mundane becoming meaningless for him. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I ...

In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, television shows are broadcast with parts missing so that viewers can act the scenes out: She didn't look up from her script again. “Well, this is a play comes on ...

In the earliest mention of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"; John Manningham's Diary: A good practice in it [was] to make the Steward believe his Lady . . . in love with him, by counterfeiting a ...

From chapter 2 of The Green Mile by Stephen King: It was still as hot as the hinges of hell, October or not. The door to the exercise yard opened, letting in a flood of brilliant light and the ...

In the poem [may i feel said he] by e.e. cummings, it is suggested to be a dialogue between a male and a female. My interpretation (an obvious one) is the dialogue spans for a period of time, and ...

I am having trouble understanding a passage in Chapter 15 of Jane Austen's Persuasion. This chapter describes Mr. Elliot's renewal of acquaintance with his family, from whom he was previously somewhat ...

In both The Clock and The Bread by Wolfgang Borchert there is a mention of the events happening at "half past two" in the morning. I have been unable to find a historical event of World War Two that ...

In ‘Aristotle on Detective Fiction’, a lecture delivered on 5 March 1935, Dorothy L. Sayers described a book of which the ancient philosopher would not have approved: Yet he [Aristotle] was no ...

Over on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange, some participants apply the following theoretical approach to the interpretation of fiction: The role of fiction is to describe a fictional ‘...

Ulysses is written in iambic pentameter. There are a few spondees and trochees thrown in for good measure, but I'm confused in some places, like here: I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life ...

George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion has been adapted many times for different media, but most notably as a musical entitled My Fair Lady. This musical was so popular that some screen adaptations have ...

I read this around 15 years ago in English as a Second Language class in a summer class I was attending in Poughkeepsie. We were reading short stories from a book (a collection of short stories by ...

I once read a quote about getting to the top of your field by moving to the edge and declaring it the new center. It wasn't exactly in those words but if I remember correctly is came from someone in ...

The Yeti, experts will attest, is physically unkempt at best. And due to this may go for weeks, alone amidst the snowy steeps. (Goes on to tell how he is looking for his "yet unmet counterpart".)

In book III of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book, Violante adopts an unwanted new-born child and passes her off to her husband Pietro as their daughter Pompilia: Well, having gained Pompilia, ...

Please refer to this extract from chapter 14 of Jane Austen's Persuasion: Elizabeth’s last letter had communicated a piece of news of some interest. Mr Elliot was in Bath. He had called in Camden ...

When I was young, I had a few books with compiled horror, mystery or macabre short stories. I want to go back and read some of these short stories, and was able to find a few. I was able to find many ...

When an intellectual work (philosophy book, literary book, painting etc) is studied there are (at least) two principal questions to be addressed: What is this work about? Why is this work important? ...

In what ways do the winners of these three awards differ? I'm surprised there is not more overlap when surveying the results. I understand that there are some variations in criteria between the ...

When Hank Reardon met with the Looters to discuss the Steel Unification Plan, he noted with some consternation that they were meeting in the same suite at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel that Francisco d'...

I'm not sure if I'm asking in the right place, but hopefully someone can help. I remember having this book as a child and it basically fell apart from so much use. It was a collection of stories, ...

And in the midnight train A cold wind blows through the rain A child laughs an adults cry Leads to pain and sacrifice Toward the tracks of the unknown The icy river icy cold flows Trapped ...

I remember having heard that many Christian ideas don't come from the Bible like the idea of Hell and Satan. I was wondering if golden halos were also an invention of the Christian Church and isn't ...

I remember reading a short book as a child about an evil wizard and a giant. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that the story ends with the wizard attempting to turn either the giant ...

Book I of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868) ends with an apostrophe of 26 lines, addressed to “lyric Love”. The passage was admired by many, including Arthur Quiller-Couch, who ...