The Chopping Blog

According to Waugh, a convert to Catholicism, this is a book about grace.

Heart of Darkness is the most frequently analyzed work of literature in universities and colleges, probably because Conrad doesn’t spell things out for his readers.

Vito Corleone is a godfather of crime, but he is also a godfather of plot.

The episodic structure of The Call of the Wild is a feature common in coming-of-age stories. This approach works when the protagonist has significant room for growth.

Eighty-four days without a catch was also the essence of Hemingway’s professional situation. He hadn’t had a successful book in over a decade. Critics thought he was done.

This book is a tour de force, the sort of novel you can come back to again and again and find more things to admire in it—which is the definition of timelessness.

The beauty of Giovanni’s Room lies in its simplicity.

The Bundren family is on a quest to bury Addie in Jefferson, but they each have different approaches to the journey. The voyage gives the story a through-line plot, while the character goals add narrative depth at the level of characterization and theme.

High praise surrounds Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary. It has been called “perfect” by many great authors, a novel that approaches poetry, and “the best novel ever written.”

"Tragic climaxes typically end in catastrophe—the final consequence of the protagonist’s fatal flaw."

In real life, people have many internal conflicts, which means that a protagonist should too. Everything bouncing around inside a character’s head contributes to their complexity and, therefore, their authenticity.

In short, this heartbreaking novella is about what it means to be human.