In his 1865 poem “O Captain! My Captain!” Walt Whitman temporarily sets aside his love for free verse poetry in order to craft a conventional elegy for President Abraham Lincoln. Permeating this poem, and perhaps what inspired its fame, is an extended metaphor that reflects Whitman’s perspective on the condition of the United States after... Continue Reading →

In her 1862 poem “Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti addresses the concept of mental duality through the characters Laura and Lizzie, whom she implicitly describes as twin sisters. Throughout the poem, Laura and Lizzie’s actions show the disparity between their respective mental states, which represent the different sides of a single psyche that struggles to embrace... Continue Reading →

In her 1818 novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley experiments with the importance of narrative perspective in storytelling. In particular, she employs the technique of frame narration, a narrative style that offers readers multiple interpretations of a story based on which character narrates a specific passage. Through this technique, Shelley invites a variety of interpretations regarding whether... Continue Reading →

In her novel Ceremony (1977), Leslie Marmon Silko examines the importance of living harmoniously with nature to the mental recovery of the protagonist, Tayo, whose modern education and deployment in World War Two have separated him from the traditional beliefs of his home tribe, the Laguna Pueblo. Silko primarily accomplishes this through the lessons taught... Continue Reading →

In the late 1800s, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs began an initiative to eradicate Native American identities across the country. A major component of this initiative was the implementation of Indian boarding schools that sought to educate Native Americans in European culture with the ultimate goal of assimilating them into “civilized” society. However,... Continue Reading →