Sleep is often a poetic euphemism for death; Utanapishtim even says as much when Gilgamesh finally catches up with him... "How alike are the sleeping and the dead..." In any event, Gilgamesh's foreboding deepens as they face the entrance to the forest. Gilgamesh and Enkidu find and confront Humbaba, and Humbaba tries to pursuade Gilgamesh to make friends with it, but Enkidu advises him to kill it, for fearing the

The characters in all of the literary works discussed here experience the elation of rising above whatever ails them on earth, but then being forced to fall back down to the harsh reality that they can never seem to fully escape. Additionally, in each of the works discussed here, ignorant bliss is portrayed is preferable to stark clarity. The primary difference between the poems and Keyes' novel, however, is

Civilization and the Wilderness -- Early American Literature The collision of society against the wilderness in the early stages of the development of America was used often as a theme in early American literature. As "civilization" arrived in the New World and immediately encroached upon the natural world and the Native Americans who thrived in that New World there were stories to be told to reflect the conflicts and relationships that

Thus, by contrast with Bradstreet's self-imposed humility, Fuller displays a very high-regard for herself, obviously influenced by the Transcendentalist movement which was centered on the self. In her writings and meditations, Fuller makes use of the Transcendentalist philosophy to extol the self and at the same time to promote the equality between men and women, which is a logical consequence of the privileged position of the human being and

Henry David Thoreau also senses this loss of distinction. His book, Walden, published in 1854 at the height of American Romanticism, celebrates his return to Nature -- a sanctum of non-artificiality -- where Romantic writers sought knowledge and spiritual fulfillment. Walden is a key work of American Romanticism because of its embedded ideas of solitude, individualism, pantheism and intuition. Thematically rich, Walden tackles the importance of self-reliance, solitude, contemplation and

.....space below to complete this section. Include the number and first sentence of the prompt you chose from the list of prompts.) Prompt 2: 'In some stories, characters come into conflict with the culture in which they live.' For this literary assignment, I have chosen Prompt 2, which explains that the characters of some tales enter into discord with their surrounding culture. Usually, a character may feel estranged and different from the