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The white Tiger by Arvind Adiga

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  Corruption in India Throughout  Balram 's narrative, Adiga constantly exposes the prevalence of corruption throughout all of India's institutions. Schools, hospitals, police, elections, industries and every aspect of government are thoroughly corrupt, while practices such as bribery and fraud are entirely commonplace. Balram's approach to this truth largely involves a deeply cynical humor. However, there is an ugly component to his character arc. In order to escape the "Darkness" and enter into the "Light," Balram must himself become a part of this system. His victory is thus bittersweet; while he has succeeded in elevating his social position, he continues to live in a country paralyzed by corruption, which prevents true progress from taking place. Adiga's ultimate point seems to be that corruption necessarily breeds corruption, unless of course a greater revolution remakes society. Globalization The India described by Balram is in...

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

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             A nameless person explains that he is and was   extremely  nervous, but is not and was not insane. Rather, the narrator has a "disease" which makes all his senses, especially his hearing, very sensitive. To prove that he isn't insane, the narrator shares an event from his past. Let's jump into his tale: The narrator has an idea that he can't shake. He loves the old man and has nothing against him. Except…his horrible eye, which is "pale blue […] with a film over it" (2). The narrator hates the eye and decides to kill the old man to be free of it. To that end, the narrator goes to the old man's room every night at 12am, for seven days. Each night the narrator opens the man's door and puts in a lantern (the kind they don't make anymore, with panels that can be adjusted to release more or less light). After the lantern, the narrator puts his head through the doorway, extremely slowly, and then opens the...

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO by Edgar Allan Poe

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              The story is told in first person, so we don’t explicitly learn the narrator’s name until near the end. Until then, we’ll call him “the narrator.” Here we go. The narrator begins by telling us that Fortunato has hurt him. Even worse, Fortunato has insulted him. The narrator   must  get revenge. He meets Fortunato, who is all dressed up in jester clothes for a carnival celebration − and is already very drunk. The narrator mentions he’s found a barrel of a rare brandy called Amontillado. Fortunato expresses eager interest in verifying the wine’s authenticity.   So he and the narrator go to the underground graveyard, or “catacomb,” of the Montresor family. Apparently, that’s where the narrator keeps his wine. The narrator leads Fortunato deeper and deeper into the catacomb, getting him drunker and drunker along the way. Fortunato keeps coughing, and the narrator constantly suggests that Fortunato is too sick to be down amon...

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

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       The Fall of the House of Usher by   Edgar Allan Poe                                              The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic tale: a haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. For all its easily identifiable Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We cannot say for sure where in the world or exactly when the story takes place. Instead of standard narrative markers of place and time, Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement weather and a barren landscape. We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s mos...

Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill

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it is late spring afternoon in front of the Mannon house. The master of the house, Brigadier-General Ezra Mannon, is soon to return from war.         Lavinia, Ezra's severe daughter, has just come, like her mother Christine, from a trip to New York. Seth, the gardener, takes the anguished girl aside. He needs to warn her against her would-be beau, Captain Brant. Before Seth can continue, however, Lavinia's suitor Peter and his sister Hazel, arrive. Lavinia stiffens. If Peter is proposing to her again, he must realize that she cannot marry anyone because Father needs her.       Lavinia asks Seth to resume his story. Seth asks if she has not noticed that Brant looks just like her all the other male Mannons. He believes that Brant is the child of David Mannon and Marie Brantôme, a Canuck nurse, a couple expelled from the house for fear of public disgrace.     Suddenly Brant himself enters from the drive....

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

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                                  Okonkwo   is a wealthy and respected warrior of the Umuofia clan, a lower Nigerian tribe that is part of a consortium of nine connected villages. He is haunted by the actions of Unoka, his cowardly and spendthrift father, who died in disrepute, leaving many village debts unsettled. In response, Okonkwo became a clansman, warrior, farmer, and family provider extraordinaire. He has a twelve-year-old son named   Nwoye   whom he finds lazy; Okonkwo worries that Nwoye will end up a failure like Unoka.              In a settlement with a neighboring tribe, Umuofia wins a virgin and a fifteen-year-old boy. Okonkwo takes charge of the boy, Ikemefuna, and finds an ideal son in him. Nwoye likewise forms a strong attachment to the newcomer. Despite his fondness for Ikemefuna and despite the fact that ...

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

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            Oliver Twist  is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother, whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults. After the other boys bully Oliver into asking for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London.      Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Daw...