Fiction Essay Examples

Edgar Allen Poe, poet, critic, and master of the short story, was born in 1809 and died in 1849 in the city of Baltimore. Though Poe gained fame in his lifetime he never became a literary giant. After his death he fell out of favor and was remembered mostly for his dark and scary poetry. […]

“The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” is an interpretation of a traditional folktale, “Beauty and the Best”. There are some aspects that make this story different from the old version. Firstly, the characterization of these two stories is dissimilar. The characters in the traditional version are almost flat characters. The protagonist, Belle, is completely good; lovely […]

According to Jane Burke, The Story of Tom Brennan revolves around the transformation in Tom’s life after a tragic car crash. In this event, Daniel Brennan crashed his blue ford falcon into a tree, causing the deaths of two people and injuring another individual. As a result, Tom is overwhelmed with despair and anger as […]

Ever since humans have existed they have learned that it is better to focus on the positive things in their lives rather than the negative, to uphold a positive attitude towards the things that they do. This method can be helpful in some certain situations, but as it is portrayed in Stephen King’s “The Man […]

In Cecil Bonstein’s short story, “It Will Grow Again”, the colour grey is used to symbolize sadness, the life of the narrator revolves around the colour grey, but throughout the story the grey fades away making life easier to live. The narrator first witnesses the colour grey “on a dull day” where everywhere he looks […]

One of the first things children are exposed to is the well-known fairy tales written by the Grimm Brothers or Hans Christian Anderson. These tales portray the story of a heroic, strong, and powerful man saving the weak, dependent, damsel in distress. As expressed by Leslee Kuyendal and Brian Sturem in their article “We Said […]

The father is able to locate underground water sources by using a forked alder branch. The father seems to think that formal education is not as useful as the information he can pass to his son. This is evident in the following quotations: “After I started going to school my father scarcely talked any more”  […]

The Great Depression was a time of economic and social upheaval. The story Of Mice and Men exemplifies the struggles Americans faced. In this literary master peace the dreams of several characters are shattered. Lennie’s were crushed when he died at the end of the novel he never had his chance to see his and […]

Miss Brill’s given name is never mentioned since she has no friends who would use it. However, at the beginning of the story she is blissfully happy with her life and situation. She has compensated for her isolation by sitting in on the lives of other people and casting herself as a significant character in […]

Rivers within a well written novel are a representative of a great variety of things. Within the book “A Bend in the River” by V. S. Naipaul, as the name implies, the river is a very significant symbol throughout the novel that shows representation for many aspects of the plotline, ranging from an ever-changing lifestyle […]

One of the stories that I choose was I Used To Live Here Once by Jean Rhys. The story is a short story that is told in third person format. In the beginning of the story the woman is looking at the stepping stones and remembering them as she is walking across the river. When […]

William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” has many minor characters, some that even have only one line. Colonel Sartoris Snopes or better known as Sarty is one of the more major characters that is defined by the minor characters, mainly being his family. They help define Sarty’s character by being his opposite. His mother Lennie Snopes might […]

Hi there, this is my first book review. I think I’ll be doing a lot more because I like reading, I like writing and I adore public speaking and this combines the three. I look forward to hearing your responses. I just read this wonderful story, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. The […]

There are three types of irony: situational irony, verbal irony, and dramatic irony. Verbal irony is when a character or the narrator says something but doesn’t mean it or means something else; usually involves sarcasm. Dramatic irony is when the reader of the story has more knowledge on the plot than the characters. Situational irony […]

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is science fiction because the theme of the story is time travel. Time travel is a scientific principle that is new which contradict known laws of nature, for example Marcus abilities to travel in time as a homeless man to save Sal make this story science fiction. The […]

You can’t hide from death forever; however in “The Masque of The Red Death” the Prince and his subjects try to avoid the red death anyway. They shut out the world in hope to increase their own life span. Unfortunately for them they do not succeed. Edgar Allan Poe uses the dark style of death […]

The Silver Donkey, a tale of a young English soldier who fled the chaos of the first world war to be founded by two French sister, Marcelle and Coco. Lieutenant Shepard is temporarily blind and has walked away from the war as he found it too hard to bear. The two sisters hide and feed […]

There is an adult who is telling the story talking about he or she’s aunt Belle and how she had a alligator. And aunt Belle how she would train the alligator and how she got older and she saw the alligator. The Night the bed fell was about a kid named James and about the […]

The two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe – The Masque of the Red Death and The Tell-Tale Heart, have some rather important differences but mostly share the same tone/mood, themes and other stylistic ways. The Masque of the Red Death creates a tone of gothic and horror throughout the short story. You can understand […]

In both the stories “The Outcast of Poker Flat” by Bret Harte and “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, the role of regionalism is very prominent and it plays a very vital role in both stories. If the region of either of these stories were to be changed, then neither of them would work […]

The concept of fear towards the unknown is examined in both “Lord of the Flies” and “Sufi Tales.” In “Lord of the Flies,” this trepidation is represented as “the beast,” while in “Sufi Tales,” it manifests itself as a watermelon. The reaction to this unfamiliarity is similar for both the boys in “Lord of the […]

Nathaniel Hawthorne was very important to America’s early literature. His story “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” represents the extremes of leaving home with the intentions of having others to help you to make your way. He gives a gritty account of what was believed to be the American dream by showing the harsh realities of the […]