In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce follows the mental and physical maturation of Stephen Dedalus. ... Throughout the novel, Simon is depicted as a man who seems stuck n a rut, unable to move forward. ... Again, Joyce's personal life bleeds through the pages of his novel; Joyce's father was a drunkard and shameless debaucher who gambled away most of the Joyce family fortune over the course of Joyce's formative years. ... Leaving Ireland by ship, Stephen is crossing the ocean to intellectual freedom as Daedalus crossed the sea to his freedom on mainland Europe...

• Word Count: 1289
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Throughout the opening pages, Conrad pays close attention to detail. ... "White" is above all ivory, the beautiful luxury of civilized man, which is the root of all evil in the darkness. ... This is furthermore demonstrated through the following quotation: "The old river a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth into the heart of an immense darkness". ... The message of the novel in just the opening pages seems to be that sometimes, man is "fit for nothing but placid staring" rather than "toying architecturally with bones". ... This is an extremely dark thing for the pure white...

• Word Count: 1586
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Eliot for "the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James, because Fitzgerald depicted the extolled grandest and most boisterous, reckless and merry-making scene" through what he knew or indirectly experienced and discovered the disillusionment that "a generation grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken", what's more, he depicted the postwar unprecedented boom of material revelry and at the same time presented the disappointment of the postwar generation for America, the concern for the loss of conventional values and ideals, and the re...

• Word Count: 1437
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate