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The Mayor of Casterbridge. Heart of Darkness. The story is a complex exploration of the beliefs people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the stance on colonialism and racism that was part and parcel of European imperialism.

Heart of Darkness

Originally published as a three-part serial story, in Blackwood's Magazine, the novella Heart of Darkness has been variously published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century.[1] Composition and publication[edit] Joseph Conrad based Heart of Darkness on his own experiences in the Congo. Joseph Conrad acknowledged that Heart of Darkness was in part based on his own experiences during his travels in Africa. The Crucible. The Crucible is a 1953 play by U.S. playwright Arthur Miller.

The Crucible

It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the U.S. government blacklisted accused communists.[1] Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of "contempt of Congress" for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.[2] The play was first performed at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway on January 22, 1953, starring E.G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight and Madeleine Sherwood. Act One[edit] The Reverend Parris, watching over his sick daughter Betty, is wondering what is wrong with her. John Proctor comes to see what is wrong with Betty.

The Color Purple. Plot summary[edit] Celie, the protagonist and narrator, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in the American South.

The Color Purple

She writes letters to God because the man she believes to be her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once, a pregnancy that resulted in the birth of a girl. Alphonso takes the girl away shortly after her birth. Celie has a second child, a boy, whom Alphonso also abducts. Celie and her younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man identified only as Mister wants to marry Nettie. Shortly thereafter, Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie's house. Time passes and Mister's children begin to grow up and leave home. Celie is amazed by Sofia's defiant refusal to submit to Harpo's attempts to control her. After Sofia confronts her, Celie, who was already feeling guilty about what she had done, apologizes and confides in her about all the abuse she suffers at Mister's hands.

The Caretaker. Plot summary[edit] Act I[edit] A night in winter [Scene 1] Aston has invited Davies, a homeless man, into his flat after rescuing him from a bar fight (7–9).

The Caretaker

The Birthday Party (play) First publication (Encore Publishing, 1959) The Birthday Party (1957) is the second full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays.

The Birthday Party (play)

After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic".[1] Produced by Michael Codron and David Hall, the play had its world première at the Arts Theatre, in Cambridge, England, on 28 April 1958, where the play was "warmly received" on its pre-London tour, in Oxford and Wolverhampton, where it also met with a "positive reception" as "the most enthralling experience the Grand Theatre has given us in many months. "[1][2][3] A Bend in the River. A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V.

A Bend in the River

S. Naipaul. Go Down, Moses. Go Down, Moses is a collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel.

Go Down, Moses

The most prominent character and unifying voice is that of Isaac McCaslin, "Uncle Ike", who will live to be an old man; "uncle to half a county and father to no one. " Absalom, Absalom! Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom!

Is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William Faulkner , first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American South , taking place before, during, and after the Civil War , with the focus of the story on the life of Thomas Sutpen . Plot summary [ edit ] Absalom, Absalom! Details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen , a white man born into poverty in western Virginia who comes to Mississippi with the complementary aims of becoming rich and a powerful family patriarch.

Thomas Sutpen arrives in Jefferson, Mississippi , with some slaves and a French architect who has been somehow forced into working for him. Henry goes to the University of Mississippi and meets a fellow student named Charles Bon, who is ten years his senior. Beloved (novel) Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison.

Beloved (novel)

Set after the American Civil War (1861–1865), it is inspired by the story of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who temporarily escaped slavery during 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. A posse arrived to retrieve her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured. Beloved's main character, Sethe, kills her daughter and tries to kill her other three children when a posse arrives in Ohio to return them to Sweet Home, the Kentucky plantation from which Sethe recently fled. A woman presumed to be her daughter, called Beloved, returns years later to haunt Sethe's home at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati. When made to sleep outside in a shed, Paul D is cornered by Beloved.

Beloved received the Frederic G. It received the seventh annual Robert F. A Bend in the River. A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V.

A Bend in the River

S. Naipaul . The Bluest Eye. The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by American author Toni Morrison . It is Morrison's first novel and was written while Morrison was teaching at Howard University and raising her two sons on her own. [ 1 ] The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl, named Pecola, who develops an inferiority complex due to her eye and skin appearance in Lorain, Ohio , against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression .

It is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and an adult, as well as from a third-person , omniscient viewpoint. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism , incest , and child molestation , there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries. [ 2 ] Plot summary [ edit ] The novel opens with a prologue relating a paragraph-long Dick and Jane tale in which none of Jane's family will agree to play with her until a friend comes along at last. Benito Cereno. Benito Cereno is a novella by Herman Melville .

It was first serialized in Putnam's Monthly in 1855 and later included a slightly revised version in his collection The Piazza Tales (1856). Plot [ edit ] The story follows a sea captain, Amasa Delano, (the fictionalized version of a real-life adventurer by the same name) and his crew on the Bachelor's Delight as it is approached by another, rather battered-looking ship, the San Dominick . Upon boarding the San Dominick , Delano is immediately greeted by white sailors and black slaves begging for supplies.

An inquisitive Delano ponders the mysterious social atmosphere aboard the badly bruised ship and notes the figurehead which is mostly concealed by a tarpaulin revealing only the inscription "Follow your leader. " Delano concludes his story with the trial and execution of Babo. Critical response [ edit ] Adaptations [ edit ] The poet Yusef Komunyakaa wrote a poem, "Captain Amasa Delano's Dilemma," based on "Benito Cereno. " The poet Gary J. America Is in the Heart. America Is in the Heart , sometimes subtitled A Personal History , is a 1946 semi-autobiographical novel written by Filipino American immigrant poet, fiction writer, short story teller, and activist, Carlos Bulosan . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The novel was one of the earliest published books that presented the experiences of the immigrant and working class based on an Asian American point of view and has been regarded as "[t]he premier text of the Filipino-American experience.

" [ 1 ] In his introduction, journalist Carey McWilliams , [ 1 ] who wrote a 1939 study about migrant farm labor in California ( Factories in the Field ), described America Is in the Heart as a “social classic” that reflected on the experiences of Filipino immigrants in America who were searching for the “promises of a better life”. [ 1 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Plot [ edit ] Themes [ edit ] Publication history [ edit ]