Allen is supporting the idea of male identities being the strong focus of Song of Solomon. ... Allen again supports the idea of Milkman's reassertion from immature selfish boy to knowledgeable honest man. "Milkman's transformation from an indulged and self-indulging child into a dangerously won maturity shapes the narrative line of event and perception,"" (30). ... Everyone wants Milkman's identity because he is the key to their own personal truth. ... Milkman is a prime example of a strong black man with no idea where to begin or even what he is looking for, but he finds it no...

• Word Count: 1366
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Although "Benito Cereno" holds a powerful message about slavery, this is not the major idea of the story. ... He has no idea about what Benito has really been through with his partner. ... He also requires repeated incentives of evil before he will engage in personal alarms or consent to believe that a person is bad. ... "Benito Cereno" is told in third-person narrative form. ...

• Word Count: 927
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Just as she casts aside men when she is done with them, Sula takes Eva's altered "cultural narratives of femininity and desirability" and uses them to recreate her own version of woman (de Angelis 174). Eva fashions her own cultural narrative by not allowing the departure of BoyBoy to devastate her life and the lives of her children. ... The focalization in this chapter is Nel-centric - ideas, descriptions and observations are only offered in reference to her. ... The narrative goes on to describe a changed Medallion, a place where blacks are assuming jobs traditionally held only by whit...

• Word Count: 2386
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Through modernism, many of today's innovative ideas have developed. Modernism is a movement toward modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas. ... So accepting their modernistic ideas was very farfetched. ... Du Bois states, "The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing, -a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. ... " Celebrate the idea of being different from the majority. ...

• Word Count: 1517
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

She states that the idea to write this novel came from her childhood friend who wished to have blue eyes. ... Morrison uses two narrative voices. ... In "The Bluest Eye," Morrison shifts to varied narrative situations, which are: Claudia the first-person retrospective narrator and Claudia the first-person experiencing narrator. ...

• Word Count: 2371
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

This produced copious perspirations so that the air became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died- - thus falling victims of the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers" (From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, London, 1789) In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African the protagonist recounts the pain involved in entering this enormous ship, and how, gradually, the more the ship flew over ...

• Word Count: 4160
• Approx Pages: 17
• Grade Level: High School

The Colour Purple Chapter 1 The first few pages begin Walker's narrative of the life of Celie, a fourteen-year-old black girl who lives with her dying mother and her sister, Nettie. Her stepfather, Alfonso, is portrayed as the villain of the narrative, first demanding sex from Celie's sick mother and then demanding it from young Celie herself. ...

• Word Count: 4341
• Approx Pages: 17
• Grade Level: High School

Walker, Marshall, and Hurston; Women writing other Women Alice Walker, through her essay "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens", and Paule Marshall, in "Poets In The Kitchen", both write about the African-American women of the past and how these women have had an impact on their writing. Walker and Marshall write about an identity they have found with these women because of their exposure to the African culture. These women were searching for independence and freedom. Walker expresses independence as found in the creative spirit, and Marshall finds it through the spoken word. Walker...

• Word Count: 3271
• Approx Pages: 13
• Grade Level: High School