American Literature – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The 1955 play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is widely regarded as Tennessee Williams’s greatest play, and in it we find an echo of many of America’s main social and political preoccupations and struggles of the 1950s. But the way Williams taps into the national psyche at a particular point in US history is subtle, and requires closer analysis. Before we offer an analysis of the play, however, it might be worth recapping the plot of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

A Summary and Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Death of a Salesman is that rare thing: a modern play that is both a classic, and a tragedy. Many of the great plays of the twentieth century are comedies, social problem plays, or a combination of the two. Few are tragedies centred on one character who, in a sense, recalls the theatrical tradition that gave us Oedipus, King Lear, and Hamlet.

A Summary and Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Like many of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, the short 1933 story ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’ uses its spare, direct dialogue to hint at the relationships between the characters and the themes the story is delicately and obliquely exploring. The story is about an old man who frequents a Spanish café at night, and the two waiters who discuss why the old man comes to sit there every night and is always reluctant to leave.

A Summary and Analysis of John Steinbeck’s ‘The Chrysanthemums’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Chrysanthemums’ (1937) is probably John Steinbeck’s best-known and most highly regarded short story. But although his novels such as Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and The Grapes of Wrath are widely read and studied, the plots of Steinbeck’s short stories are not quite so firmly entrenched in the popular consciousness. Let’s take a closer look at ‘The Chrysanthemums’ and discover more about it.

A Summary and Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Artist of the Beautiful’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story ‘The Artist of the Beautiful’ has a curious claim to fame: it’s thought to be the first short story to contain a robotic insect. This intriguing tale is layered and rich in symbolism, so like so many of Hawthorne’s stories it requires some careful close analysis.