Night Versus Day – Good Versus Evil

The book Something Wicked This Way Comes relies heavily on the theme of Good versus Evil, and it uses the symbol of Night to do this. Read the Poem Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost Assignment 2: Be sure that you have read the first 10 chapters of Something Wicked This Way Comes by…

Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving – Focus on Characters and Settings

RIP VAN WINKLE. A POSTHUMOUS WRITING OF DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER. By Woden, God of Saxons, From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday. Truth is a thing that ever I will keep Unto thylke day in which I creep into My sepulchre—— Cartwright. [The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old…

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca DAPHNE DU MAURIER ISBN U 582 419379 First published in the Longman Simplified English Series 1957 Contents Introduction V Chapter 1 Maxim de Winter 1 Chapter 2 Manderley 7 Chapter 3 The Cottage in the Bay 11 Chapter 4 The Shadow of Rebecca 19 Chapter 5 Rebecca’s Room 23 Chapter 6 The Fancy-Dress Dance…

Powder by Tobias Wolff – Focus on Character

Powder is a short story written by Tobias Wolff, who also wrote This Boy’s Life, which is Wolff’s memoir that later became a motion picture by the same name. “Tobias Wolff writes prose that is clean and honest. He deals with the gritty realities of experience, sometimes relying on his own years as a soldier…

The Flowers by Alice Walker – Focus on Plot

Alice Walker wrote the eye-opening, life-changing novel The Color Purple. The story is epic but it is brutal. Notice the climax in the following scene of The Color Purple: Alice Walker is a consummate storyteller. Let’s study her very short story The Flowers. The Flowers By Alice Walker It seemed to Myop as she skipped…

Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan

“If I were fully conscious of my surroundings at this moment, I would describe the light through the window, the way it searches out the apples in the glass bowl, buffing them to an unnatural sheen. I bought them for their fragrance, not their freshness, so even if you were to close your eyes, you’d…