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Allegory
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Allegory is a literary and philosophical device in which characters, settings, and events carry sustained symbolic meaning beyond their surface narrative. Students encounter it across literature, philosophy, and humanities courses because it sits at the intersection of storytelling and argument, making abstract ideas accessible through concrete imagery. The most prominent work in these papers is Plato's Allegory of the Cave, drawn from The Republic, in which prisoners chained before a wall interpret shadows as reality until one escapes into the light. This scenario has remained a cornerstone of academic inquiry because it dramatizes fundamental questions about knowledge, truth, perception, and the examined life.

Student papers on this topic take several consistent approaches. Philosophical summary and close reading are common, with many essays unpacking Plato's cave, its prisoners, shadows, and the ascent toward light as stages in understanding reality. Comparative analysis also appears frequently, most notably in papers pairing Plato's allegory with the film The Matrix to explore how the same ideas translate across centuries and media. Some papers place the allegory in dialogue with other thinkers such as Descartes, while others extend into Christian allegory, examining texts like The Pilgrim's Progress and the treatment of characters like Faithful at Vanity Fair.

A strong essay on allegory requires a focused thesis about what the symbolic layer reveals that a literal reading cannot. Evidence should trace specific images — light, shadows, the cave wall, the journey upward — back to the abstract concepts they represent. The most common pitfall is summarizing the narrative without analyzing the symbolic structure, which reduces an interpretive essay to mere plot description and leaves the deeper argument undeveloped.

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Paper Undergraduate

Role of Women in the Book of Genesis

In the book of Genesis, women are portrayed mostly in a negative light, and are judged by their obedience to God and the patriarchs and how well they fulfill their duties as wives and mothers. God has a plan for the world, but repeatedly the sins of humanity interfere with it, and from Eve onward, women are often portrayed as particularly weak, dishonest or untrustworthy. Adam's duty was to protect the Garden of Eden while both he and Eve were required to "be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it"(Gen 1:28).

Paper Undergraduate

Theatre art history and contemporary practice

The Shape of Things, a play by Neil LaBute, (A) expands on the central themes of society's distortional emphasis on appearances, and art as a potentially limitless and human-sculpting instrument. Linearly structured in three acts, the plot closely follows the problematic evolution of a student couple from a Midwest university. Starting as a discrepant match, Evelyn and Adam develop an oddly unequal relationship, as the former increasingly impacts major changes in the apparel and psychological onset of her partner, who complies with every single suggestion out of innocent devotion.

Paper Doctorate

Hunchback Oppression, Isolation and World

The film adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame which came out in 1939 deals with a number of themes of direct relevance to that period in history. This essay discusses the pertinence of its themes of oppression and ethnic prejudice to the events unfolding in Europe at the time of the film's release. This is highlighted by the prejudice shown to gypsies both in the novel and in the Holocaust.

Research Paper Doctorate

Dante\'s Journey Through His \'Mid-Life\' Crisis. It

¶ … Dante's journey through his 'mid-life' crisis. It uses 7 sources in MLA format and it has a list of bibliography.

Research Paper Doctorate

Shakespeare's works and literary influence

The supernatural is a topic that runs throughout Shakespearean plays. Indeed, the ability of the supernatural to affect the movement of drama in Shakespeare's works is almost unparalleled.

Research Paper Doctorate

Courtly love in medieval literature and culture

Courtly love is, in general form, a structured form of male / female interaction which was infused with a poetic, heroic, romantic idealism about the virtue of both the man and the woman.

Paper Doctorate

Nature of Justice -- Secular or Divine?

The comparison of Antigone and Dante's Inferno is interesting as they are really quite different in style, tone, context, and story type. Both stories address the choices made by mankind, and the allegiances that people form which impact their actions. Dante is in charge of the telling in his story, but Antigone must suffer through the interpretations, telling, and retelling of her story and that of her opponent by the Chorus. Antigone is compelled to express her rationale for insisting that her brother be given a proper burial to honor him, and she believes for a time—though she remains fatalistic throughout the play—that Creon can be made to understand why her position is honorable and correct from a social and religious perspective. Dante, too, in his narration, give voice to his philosophy and seeks to elevate mankind, to encourage and implore, if necessary, them to do the right thing and act in accordance with their heritage as civil, righteous people.

Paper Doctorate

Rhetoric and the Public Sphere

As the iconic co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc., and the innovator responsible for revolutionizing the way humanity communicates in the modern world, Steve Jobs was uniquely positioned to understand the immense persuasive power of rhetorical ability. Throughout his storied career Jobs' reputation for effectively communicating visionary ideas was exceeded only by his preternatural ability to persuade, shaping public perception and convincing consumers time and time again that the latest Apple product was an essential addition to their lifestyle. When Jobs took the stage to deliver his now legendary commencement address to the 2005 graduating class at Stanford University, the late multimedia mogul responsible for the Macintosh personal computer, iPod, iPhone, iPad, along with a wide array of similarly groundbreaking advances in computing technology, was poised to present his own life as an allegory for the dogged pursuit of one's personal passion. In doing so, Jobs epitomized the concept of the epideictic oratory, or "ceremonial speech which assigns praise or blame and is concerned with the present" (Dawkins, 2013), as conceived by Aristotle in his Rhetoric, the original discourse dedicated to forming theoretical foundations for rhetorical speech.

Research Paper Doctorate

Role of Time in Classical Literature: Analysis

Analysis of Three Classical Literary Works

Paper Undergraduate

Character Analysis of Amir in the Kite Runner

The author Khaled Hosseni wrote and published the book, The Kite Runner, in the year 2003 (Miles 207-209). It was during the year 2005 that the book became a bestseller in the United States.

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