Category: Critical Reflection

In The Things They Carried, Tim OBrien underlines the devastating effects of war and the lasting damage of death that a soldier may witness or experience. OBrien employs a fragmentary and metafictional form of storytelling to highlight the theme of death and morality and explore the different perceptions of the actions of the war. OBrien…

Gurinder Chadhas bold 2004 film Bride and Prejudice is an adaptation of Jane Austens novel, Pride and Prejudice (1813). The film serves as a clever, contemporary take on the classic novel. Chadha introduces the themes of cultural diversity in the romantic comedy. Kenyan-born and raised in England, Chadha aims to make non-westerners visible in the…

What is more immoral than war? (Sade). The Vietnam War was a bloody and gruesome war that affected many people in the United States and Vietnam. The war lasted 21 years, from 1954 to 1975. The war started as fear grew that communism would spread from Vietnam to nearby countries. The Vietnam War severely impacted…

Andy Lees Life of Pi, is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and animated magic realism. Inspired by Yann Martels 2001 novel, it is a visual masterpiece that encapsulates the human ability to overcome hardship through faith and resilience. Audiences feel like active participants in the plot through powerful cinematic techniques and rich motifs. Life of…

Rarely does an adventure revolve around the treasure hunt ahead alone or a romance relies merely on how attractive the sweethearts are. Rather any successful story instinctively acts around a latent fabric serving as a purpose that truly defines that storys essence beyond its surface. The theme is that purpose, that sense of meaning. However,…

Tragedy. A three-syllable word that brings nothing but great suffering, distress, and always the unfortunate unhappy ending. The novel and film, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, shows a journey powered by a father and a son’s love through a post-apocalyptic disaster. A world once full of color is now a grey, cold, barren land that…

Through the archetypes in the short story Catch the Moon, Judith Ortiz Cofer teaches the reader that love heals all. One archetype in Catch the Moon is The Crossroads, which is a place or time of decision where a real realization is made and change or penance results. The Crossroads is a symbolic archetype for…

The graphic novel Maus was written by Art Spiegelman. The novel consists of two novels inside, the first novel My Father Bleeds History, was written in 1986, and the second, And Here My Troubles Began in 1992. The two novels were first combined and published as one novel in 1996. The inspiration behind the novels…

Advice to Youth (1882) by Mark Twain is a satirical essay. It was written several centuries ago, but it still offers a powerful message. It is hilarious, caustic, and all-around good advice. He was asked to write it for America’s youth. Twain tends to take advantage of opportunities to address society’s standards and to criticize…

Being considered one of the most recognizable poets within American poetry Robert Frost offers the rhetorical question in his work The Road Not Taken (Poets.org). If I were asked about what the poem is about, I would reply in several words it is about life, choice, and regret. Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken speaks…