Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Abandon Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn: Why Bother?, Johnny Duan '12

2009 Fall Semester

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been an incendiary novel for decades; it has raised controversy in schools for at least half a century (Kim 1). Many have sought to remove it from literature classes, for various reasons, whether because of its racism, improper language, or alleged corrupting affects (Liechty). These arguments have not convinced the public to ban this book; none of the arguments used have been effective. There is no reason for us to break this trend.

Listen: A Close Reading Of Vonnegut, Elizabeth Zaretsky '10

2009 Fall Semester

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his death and birth many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. (Slaughterhouse-Five, pg 23)

Kurt Vonnegut has long been respected as a master of the written word. In this passage, he uses a specific tense, repetition, and clause arrangement to portray …

Interpreting Meteors, Weeds, And Sunshine: Acts Of God In The Scarlet Letter, Eleanor Cory '12

2009 Fall Semester

In recent years, many occurrences—from hurricanes to medical rarities to pictures on pieces of toast—have been labeled acts of God. Those who disagree attribute this association to the idea that people read what they want into a situation. Similar comparisons were made in the time of the Puritans, although theirs tended to be taken more seriously and often held authority in government or court. Still, the idea that these “messages from God” are subconsciously interpreted to fit personal beliefs can also be applied to those of Massachusetts Bay. In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows that when events …