Of Herman Melville’s shorter works, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ has remained the most popular and widely studied. Critics have disagreed over the story’s meaning, with this tale of one man who repeatedly asserts that he ‘would prefer not to’ carry out the orders of his employer inviting a raft of interpretations. […]
Family plays an important part in much fiction, of course, but sometimes the short story form has offered us an insight into family life that the longer novel does not. Because it can only provide us with a few snapshots, or a handful of moments, perhaps even just one episode […]
‘The Snake’ is a short story by the American author John Steinbeck (1902-68), published in The Monterey Beacon in 1935 before being included in Steinbeck’s collection The Long Valley in 1938. The story tells of a young scientist who is at work experimenting with animals in his laboratory when he […]
Poets have often tried to emphasise the hopeful aspects of human nature, and our tendency to look optimistically towards the future as a brighter, happier time. Individual ambitions and aspirations, too, have often come under the purview of some of the best and most celebrated poets writing in English.
The tale of the Three Apples is not quite so familiar to Western readers as, say, the story of Aladdin or Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, but it is a more authentic tale in that it was included in the original medieval collection known as the One Thousand and […]