SS 2 Literature in English (1st, 2nd & 3rd Term)

NON AFRICA POETRY. SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER DAY, BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, […]

” Birches ” is a poem by American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). It was collected in Frost’s third collection of poetry Mountain Interval that was published in 1916. Consisting of 59 lines, it is one of Robert Frost’s most anthologized poems. The poem “Birches”, along with other poems that deal with rural landscape and wildlife,

Style and Structure Goldsmith’s style is wry, witty, and simple but graceful. From beginning to end, the play is both entertaining and easy to understand, presenting few words and idioms that modern audiences would not understand. It is also well constructed and moves along rapidly, the events of the fir act—in particular, references to Tony

Themes Class Bias Until Kate teaches him a lesson, Marlow responds to women solely on the basis of their status in society. He looks down on women of the lower class but is wholly at ease around them; he esteems women of the upper class but is painfully shy around them. Like the London society

Setting Most of the action takes place in the Hardcastle mansion in the English countryside, about sixty miles from London. The mansion is an old but comfortable dwelling that resembles an inn. A brief episode takes place at a nearby tavern, The Three Pigeons Alehouse. The time is the eighteenth century.   Characters Mr. Hardcastle

Act 5 Plot Summary Sir Charles Marlow after arrival, shares a hearty laugh with Hastings over Marlow’s confusion. Marlow, besides apologising, declares his reluctance in forming any connection with Kate since there has been no purposeful conversation. This surprises Mr. Hardcastle, who has been an active witness of Marlow’s amorous advancements towards his daughter. As

Act 3 Plot Summary Both Mr. Hardcastle and Kate seem confused with their experiences with Marlow. Mr. Hardcastle proclaims him to be an impudent fellow, while Kate voices her utter disappointment on his lack of liveliness. Kate eventually requests her father to give her an opportunity of revealing the true nature of Marlow.   Accordingly,

The play opens in its primary setting, a chamber in the “old- fashioned” country house of Mr Hardcastle . Mr and Mrs. Hardcastle enter amid a pleasant argument. Mrs Hardcastle is perturbed at her husband’s refusal to take trips into London, while he insists he is the “vanity and affectation” of the city. He tires

One of the eighteenth- century’s most enduring comedies, She Stoops to Conquer takes a comedic, often farcical, look at the behavior and marital expectations of the upper classes in England at this time. The play centers around the desire of Hardcastle, a wealthy landowner in the country, for his daughter, Kate Hardcastle, to marry the

Allegory Definition: An allegory is a symbolism device where the meaning of a greater, often abstract, concept is conveyed with the aid of a more corporeal object or idea being used as an example. Usually a rhetoric device, an allegory suggests a meaning via metaphoric examples. Example: Faith is like a stony uphill climb: a

THEMES / THEME ANALYSIS The following are themes of Native Son. RACISM Native Son is an indictment of racism. Racism affects Bigger’s life at home, at the Daltons, and in police custody. The Thomases must live in their rat-infested apartment partly because no one will rent to blacks in any other section of town. At

Chicago. Illinoi is largest city and the industrial center of the Midwest. Richard Wright’s family was one of thousands of southern black families that migrated to Chicago between 1916 and 1920 and eventually settled in the South Side ghetto, where Wright grew up. His protagonist, Bigger Thomas, has the same Chicago background. Wright’s novel depicts

The novel Native Son begins in the Thomas apartment in 1930s Chicago, where Bigger, his sister Vera, his mother (Ma), and brother Buddy all live, in one room, together. Ma and Vera spot a rat, and Bigger kills it with a frying pan, before heading out for the afternoon—a day in which, as his mother

‘The School Boy’ is a Romantic poem. It helps to foreground the focus of attention of the poet. The poem is the lamentation of a young boy who is not happy with the restriction placed on him, which has not allowed him to fraternize with nature as he would loved. The regimentation of  this child’s

’The proud king’ is a poem about the evil inherent in arrogance and pride, which is a thematic preoccupation that is present in many culture around the world. ‘The proud King’ is a long narrative poem, of epic proportion. It has 119 stanzas in all. 117 of these stanzas contain seven lines each with the

A clear understanding of the poem requires that reference be made to Pandora’s box of gifts. Closly related to the Pandora’s box myth and also aiding the understanding of The Pully, is the biblical account of the warning given to Adam and Eve by God in the garden of Eden, not to eat a particular

This poem is said to have been written in 1889. The poet, Tennyson, wrote it after a serious illness at sea. No wonder the poem treats death as a main issue. The poem reflects the mind of the poet who is about embarking on a voyage of no return. He is about crossing the bar,

The poem talks about the experience of the poet on how to cope with modern trends. He found himself struggling for survival between the old and the new order .He believes that in comparison, the experience of the past that is, the old  order, could be more acceptable than the present day ideas. He thus

The poet examines the transitional stages in man’s life. He tries to point out what man feels or knows at the time of his growth till he gets old. Also the poet points out that the fear of growing older is just like an excited state of agitation in life of man. That at every

The poem has its background in the ten year civil war that ravaged the country of Sierra – Leone during which a lot of lives and properties were lost and many Sierra –Leones were displaced. The poet is one of the few Sierra –leoneans that decided to go into  reconstruction and rehabilitation of Sierra –leone