American Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, poems by Emily Dickinson and the book "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. The author summarises each of the authors' works, analyzing their style of writing and the themes present in each of the works.

Outline:
Edgar Allan Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart
Emily Dickinson
Rip Van Winkle
Works Cited

From the Paper:

"The author thus hints that she does not feed her hopes, emphasizing thus her pessimism. In another poem, A Bird Came down the Walk, the protagonist is a real bird. This time, Dickinson does not use the figure of the bird allegorically but rather as a symbol: the bird descends and kills a worm without being aware that somebody is watching it. The common element that links the poems is again the crumb: the poet offers the bird a crumb and is again refused, as it flies swiftly away. The theme however is very different: the bird refuses the crumb because it is satisfied in its own world, from which the poet is excluded. Thus, the two poems use the figure of the bird in very different ways, to represent different poetical themes."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dickinson, Emily. Collected Poems. New York: Barnes and Nobles, 2003.
• Irving, Washington. Rip Van Winkle. New York: Vintage, 1976.
• Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works. New York: The Modern Library, 1985.

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