Study guides - Page 9 | Just Great DataBase

“Oliver Twist” is no Tom Sawyer, but the idea is the same. It is a novel written by Charles Dickens at the end of the 19th century with a similar plot that has its unique particularities. The novel avoids romanticizing the life and motifs of criminal gangs in London, but it also highlights the cruelty in which the orphans lived in England. That’s why the novel’s second...

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a painfully accurate depiction of the day of Soviet labor camp prisoner. Ivan Denisovich is an intelligent and strong-willed man, whose main task is not only survival but preserving his morals and identity intact. Unfortunately, the camp is specifically designed to strip the prisoners of their free will, any hopes and desires...

During his life Ken Kesey has been very interested in alternative perception, altered states of human mind and mental disorders. He based a lot of his works on it. Throughout his life he’s made himself a rebellious reputation of avid drug experimenter and wrote a couple of texts on that.  One of them, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, was written right after the...

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” is a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It represents a typical Latin text with all its colors, passions, brightness and grotesque.  The events of the book take place in Colombia and are centered around one family of Buendias. They founded a separate city Macondo that is isolated from the outside world. A patriarch, Jose Arcadio Buendia, who is a...

Every piece William Shakespeare created is doomed to be a success. “Othello” is one of his later works and this is a culmination of all the mastery and creativity the writer possessed. This particular piece is a mix of an Italian prose written by Cinthio and Knolles narrative on the history of the Turks. Shakespeare borrowed the events and added his style and magnificent literary...

The play by Thornton Wilder is very interesting because it is literally a play within a play. The events of the book are happening on stage in a theater of the small town of Grover’s Corners. The best way to get acquainted to this play is to actually watch it in the theater - this will give you the authentic feeling of presence inside the plot and completely break the fourth wall between...

Having received two majors of English and religious studies, John Green initially intended to become a priest. But life has introduced its changes and on his way of getting an extreme popularity as a young adult writer, he wrote a good number of book reviews for living. His fiction works are now turned into movies and video blogs and are known all over the world. The events of the “Paper...

Those of us who are madly in love with poems find “Paradise Lost” written by John Milton in 1667 the quintessence of literary mastery. You might not like the Bible, but you will for sure like the Biblical interpretation of contemporary reality executed in the book. Prepare to get carried away with this dozen of books written as a blank verse story. It evokes lots of feelings and...

The revolutions are always a source of great literary inspiration and occupy a large part of world literature plots. But there isn’t much written about the Islamic Revolution. Marjane Satrapi from Iran wrote “Persepolis” as a recollection of her own memories. It’s a series of two books, the first of which is “The Story of a Childhood” and it talks about what...

Persuasion is worth reading not just because it is the last creation of a legendary Jane Austen. Most of all it is a detailed autobiography that sheds a lot of life on the author’s life. It is also a very mature love story that unfolds in a middle of economic and political changes in the country. At the beginning of the book, the reader meets a respected and wealthy Elliot family. It...

Phaedra is a tragedy based on Greek mythology and dedicated to the only topic: the unrequited love. We see it in many forms: tender affection of star-crossed lovers, all-consuming forbidden passion and the calm love of a caring husband, who doesn’t know that he is not welcomed in his home anymore. The plot is based on the myth about the ancient Greek queen Phaedra, who suddenly and...

For quite a while Jane Austen has lived behind the scenes of her works. Writing behind the closed door of her bedroom and publishing the books anonymously might have been a necessity of the English morals and censorship tendencies at that time. But it also allowed her to escape the unnecessary over interpretation of her novels. The readers of those times experienced each book on its own, instead...

“Pygmalion” is probably one of the most famous plays by George Bernard Shaw that laid the foundation for a famous Broadway musical “My Fair Lady”. It was published in 1913 and named after a Greek myth about a sculptor who tried to make his beautiful sculpture come to life.  Similarly to the myth, the protagonist of the play, professor Henry Higgins, spends 6 months...

Richard II by William Shakespeare is a historical drama, the first one in the epic tetralogy that is called Henriade by some researches. It tells us the tragic story of the aforementioned King Richard II, from the pinnacle of his power to the downfall, imprisonment and, finally, murder. The author deliberately shows us Richard as the magnificent King on his throne at the very beginning of his...

Richard III by William Shakespeare is the fourth and the last part of the tetralogy called Henriade by some of the critics. It tells us about the short but bright reign of King Richard III, who is described as a ruthless ruler, ready to do anything and everything to get his power. The play is the one of the longest in the First Folio and can compete only with Hamlet. In the full variant, with...

One of the many things that Daniel Defoe’s novel entitled “Robinson Crusoe” did was instilling in everyone the thirst for adventure and admiration for traveling. Published in 1719, the book is a major piece of catastrophe writing that glorified the ability to survive under any circumstances.  The events of the book are presented from its main narrator and protagonist...

Mildred Taylor wrote “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” in 1976 as a continuation of her previous novel written a year before that. The novel is set during the Great Depression times and talks about racial issues in the society. The book is intense. The events are taking place in the geographical heart of the racist movement, the language used by characters is harsh, the actions can&rsquo...

In late 1590s William Shakespeare wrote this eternal love story that every one of us grew up admiring. It was one of his most popular works, having been played numerous times and then translated into thousands of languages and interpretations. If there still exist unproved speculations that Shakespeare didn’t write his books, it is actually no secret this particular the story of two lovers...

Tom Stoppard wrote what is often considered an absurdist book entitled “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”. This tragicomedy was first staged in Edinburgh and has won for its author a place on the international area along with Samuel Beckett and other writers of this genre. There’s a certain beauty to absurdist texts – through confused plot they deliver a greater...