Chapter 48. LITERARY REVIEW Two Student Samples of a Literary Review (To return to this chapter's information and methods page, click in the right column on the chapter's name.) --- SAMPLE ONE: Review of a Short Story Using Other Literary References   SAMPLE TWO: Review of a Novel with Emphasis on One Literary Theory Introduction The samples below are of two types. The first is a paper by a student that demonstrates excellence in writing to literature using literary references to examine a story. The second is a review that highlights the use of a particular theory of literature -- in this case Joseph Campbell's mythic-hero theory -- to showcase interpretion. Both are quite good for the type of essay they exemplify. Note: The authors of all sample student papers in this Web site have given their permission in writing to have their work included in this textbook. All samples remain copyrighted by their original authors.  Other than showing it on this website (or a web page printout from this website), none should be used without the explicit permission of the author. Please note that sample papers in this Web site's section do not necessarily meet all requirements an individual literature, arts, or humanities instructor may have: ask your instructor.  In addition, samples are single spaced to save room; however, a proper manuscript normally is double spaced with margins set at about 1". --- SAMPLE ONE: Review of a Short Story Using Literary References SPECIAL NOTES: This paper includes a bibliography with several sources used throughout the paper.  EngC 1027, Univ. of Minn. D-III Copyright by W. Schroepfer    Reflections on the Revenge of a Lost Soldier as Tomorrow's Camp by William G. Schroepfer         In "The Demon Lover" from The Oxford Book of Short Stories, Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen paints an emotionally sterile, haunted world.  Bowen writes in the voice of a lost soldier, “I shall be with you.... sooner or later.  You won't forget that. You need do nothing but wait" (349).  The inevitability portrayed in that statement, many editors of short fiction insist, conveys the fate of the predominantly alienated and passive citizens of the war-ravaged twentieth century.  "The Demon Lover's" inclusion in so many anthologies, however, is due to such interpretations that ignore, yet share, the author's nostalgia and disillusionment for her family's once privileged view from the Anglo-Irish Big Houses of English rule in Ireland. Biography         Biographical information on the author lends insight to an understanding of "The Demon Lover."  Elizabeth Bowen was a product of the tradition of Protestant Ascendancy, a term, according to W. J. McCormack in his Burke to Beckett: Ascendancy Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History, that "has come to name (or rather postulate) an eighteenth-century ruling elite, quasi-aristocratic in kind and yet somehow unique to Ireland" (21).  An only child born into a middle-class Protestant family of Dublin and Cork County, Bowen was a product of an increasingly isolated minority in swift decline.  She left her homestead, Bowen's Court, for England as a young girl upon the divorce of her parents.  She retained her ancestral home for most of her life, returning, notes Hermione Lee, "to Ireland . . . not exactly as an absentee, but certainly as a part-timer" (14). Description         The action of "The Demon Lover" revolves around Mrs. Drover, a woman in her forties, returning to her abandoned house to retrieve some personal articles during the German Blitz of London.  Upon her return to her house she finds a mysterious letter from her former fiancé, missing in action and presumed dead since the First World War. The letter tells her of his impending return to reclaim his possession of her after a twenty-five year absence. In the letter, the estranged fiancé informs Mrs. Drover that "nothing has changed, and I shall rely upon you to keep your promise" (347).  It is a promise Mrs. Drover now has neither the desire nor the ability to fulfill. Mrs. Drover becomes frightened and disconcerted by the prospect of reuniting with him. She recalls the following: He was never kind to me, not really.  I don't remember him kind at all. . . .  He was set on me, that was what it was--not love. What did he do to, to make me promise like that?  . . . [S]he remembered--but with one white burning blank as where acid has dropped on a photograph: under no conditions could she remember his face. (351)         As she tries to recapitulate her time with him, she is unable to remember his face.  She then realizes that the promise she made as a young girl has caused the intervening years to belong to her lost fiancé despite her subsequent marriage, family and quiet middle class life.  At this point, it becomes clear to her that her life has been a setup for which she was doomed to fail.  In the end, she encounters him in her one attempt to flee her fate.  Ultimately, he controls the means of her flight, a taxi, and we are left with the impression that Mrs. Drover is being carried off to a tortuous damnation at his hands, never to emerge safe from his vengeance. Interpretation         Bowen's story has many interpretive avenues, from the straightforward to, as offered by some, the numbingly obtuse. "The Demon Lover" strikes the reader immediately by the serenity, lifelessness and lack of emotion present in what is otherwise a Victorian horror story.          Here we will find no descriptions of ancient ruins, natural decay, moisture, and passionate longing that one might expect to find in a story of this type.  In fact, desire, except ultimately for that of survival, is wholly void from Mrs. Drover's experience.  To the extent that passion exists in this tale, it is the rage of the former fiancé that looms just beyond the confines of the story's hushed setting.  The fiancé’s rage at Mrs. Drover's lack of compliance to his impossible demands not so much drives, as it haunts, the existence of Mrs. Drover.  Startled by the story's brevity, we are made curious by Mrs. Drover's lingering passivity and the lost soldier's ability to control Mrs. Drover, as he does, for such a long time without benefit of any discernible emotional bond.  In fact, it is the case that Mrs. Drover's name is the combining of "lover" and "driver," foreshadowing the means of her demise, ironically striking us that nothing in the story is "driven by love."         This story is reminiscent of the emotional landscape most perfectly crystallized in Ezra Pound's "The Garden":  In her is the end of breeding.   Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like some one to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I Will commit that indiscretion.  (Raffel 19)         For Bowen a similarly modern, alienated urban world exists: it is one that paradoxically refuses to be moved by the war, yet, in the end, becomes its passive victim.         Pound's "end of breeding" gives spark to a more lively interpretation.  As a child of a fallen Ascendancy, Bowen renders a character who is a ideal reflection of the author's ambivalence and idyllic remembrances of a childhood in Ireland.  Like Mrs. Drover's bomb pocked London home, Bowen's Ireland is an exiled place still remaining to be visited but not in which to reside.  Mrs. Drover's home is a place of quiet dignity, even when damaged by war.  Lee describes Bowen's childhood life in segregated Ireland as follows: "Among families like her own who seemed to exist comfortably on unquestioned rules.  No-one was shy, or vulgar, or Catholic. . . .  Her first view of London, 'street after street of triste anonymity,' confirmed her sense of Dublin's grandeur and exclusiveness" (13).         Although the twenty-five year absence of the lost soldier is said in the story to have begun with his departure for the Great War in 1916, back dating twenty-five years previous to the publishing of the story in 1947, takes us to 1922 and the bloody emergence of the Irish Republic and the end of Protestant rule.  The fiancé with the face not recallable is not so much a symbolic representation of the specter of the European experience of war, as he is Bowen's loss of a homeland of privilege and her ambivalence towards to the Catholics now in power and forever in possession of her birthright.  The lost soldier, although the instrument of Drover's eternal undoing, is more tawdry than horrific. Evaluation         When casting an evaluative eye on Bowen's piece, the most curious aspect of "The Demon Lover" is not the story itself.  Instead, it is its position as a perennial of esteemed short story anthologies.  At six pages, it is easy enough to add to any volume, and one must suspect the Bowen estate is more than accommodating to editors.  Beyond the particularity of Anglo-Irish vision there is not a great deal to recommend this story to the pantheon of English-language short fiction.         The story itself is does not work well as a thriller or a suspense story.  It is too brief to build suspense and it never is emotionally to flat to give the reader much of a sense of dread.  Bowen never allows the reader to penetrate much below the protagonist's psychological surface to garner our sympathy.  The antagonist is too oblique to give us very much concern of his motives.  The need to show a prim world of dislocation and alienation works directly contrary to the telling of a cathartic ghost story.  It is obvious that the author went to great pains to tell a spooky story with nary the slightest chthonic reference.         This is a story that seems to have a life of its own as fodder for literary examination and re-examination, reminding us of "Susan Sontag's famed definition of camp as 'failed seriousness"' which may predict the future place for much of the volumes of debate on this and other stories by Bowen (Pierpont 118).  Some critics, such as Phyllis Lassner, have shown much of the commentary on Bowen's story are based on ever increasingly abstract moralism (162).  But, as much of literary criticism becomes more and more isolated from everyday reality and afloat in a world of dowdy esoterica, perhaps this will give critics even more reason to identify with Mrs. Drover's fate.  Otherwise they would be left to admit it is merely a well-crafted story without the benefit of timeless, universal truth. Conclusion         "The Demon Lover" by Elizabeth Drover is good, but not so good that it deserves perpetual import by literary scholars.  The lack of strength of the story's impact dooms "The Demon Lover" ultimately not to be felt far beyond some members of an elite sensing their cultural privileges waning.  It lends one to questions whether it is not only cultural pluralists who are guilty of placing socio-cultural consideration over "pure" artistic merit in choosing "great works," but also those same literary scholars who proclaim themselves as the guardians of the Western Canon of literature.  The inclusion of "The Demon Lover" in numerous literary anthologies nakedly demonstrates the hypocrisy of the indignant resistance from many scholarly quarters to calls for more cultural diversification in literary studies. -----   Works Cited (Note: This is an older version of MLA Style.) Bowen, Elizabeth.  "The Demon Lover."  The Oxford Book of Short Stories.  Ed. V. S. Pritchet.  New York.  Oxford UP, 1981.  346-352. Lassner, Phyllis.  Elizabeth Bowen: A Study of the Short Fiction.  New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991. Lee, Hermione.  Elizabeth Bowen: An Estimation.  London: Vision Press Limited, 1981. McCormack, W. J.  From Burke to Becket: Ascendancy Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History.  Cork.  Cork UP, 1994. Pierpoint, Claudia.  "The Strong Woman."  New Yorker 11 Nov. 1996: 106-118. Raffel, Burton. How to Read a Poem.  New York: New American Library, 1984. --- Return to top.   SAMPLE TWO: Review of a Novel with Emphasis on One Literary Theory Catherine LeBrun Professor Jewell Eng 1140-99 6 April 2017 Literary Review of Great Expectations Volume I Introduction To begin, Great Expectations follows the terrifying and tumultuous career of a common and yet uncommon young orphan named Philip Pirrip or Pip for short. When it was first published in 1861, Great Expectations was well received by its critics and the public alike. However, beginning suddenly and ending sullenly, Great Expectations may not measure up to the modern reader’s expectations. Summary of Elements             Volume I of Charles Dickens's classic, Great Expectations, is set in the small village of Kent, England, during the 19th century. The main character is the young orphan, Pip, who was “brought up by hand” by his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery. Also Pip’s closest friends are Mr. Joe Gargery and Biddy and his strangest companions are Miss Havisham and Estella. Pip is a common laboring boy with the uncommon aspiration to become a gentleman. Narrating the story from the first-person point of view, Pip traces the budding and breaking of his great expectations. Major themes within the work include the ongoing struggle between good and evil that every man must wage within himself, the cruel circumstances that shape who we are and what we do, and the injustices that the individual alone and the society as a whole do onto their fellow man. Interpretations             Joseph Campbell’s theory of the Hero’s Journey can be applied to Charles Dickens's book, Great Expectations, through its adherence to the specific stages of the Hero’s Journey such as the ordinary world, call to adventure, and crossing of the threshold. In his guide to Joseph Campbell’s theory, “The Hero’s Journey Outline,” Christopher Vogler defines the ordinary world as “[t]he hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma. The hero is shown against the background of environment, heredity, and personal history” (www.thewritersjourney.com). Within the first few pages of Great Expectations, Dickens paints the picture of a young orphan boy standing before his parents’ grave contemplating his family history in a cold and misty churchyard. In this depressed atmosphere, Pip is introduced as a “small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry” (9). In this way, the hero, Pip, immediately gains not only the reader’s sympathy but also their understanding. In addition, Vogler defines the call to adventure as “[s]omething shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change” (www.thewritersjourney.com). In this case, someone, the escaped convict to be exact, “shakes up the situation” by quite frankly shaking up Pip. In this way, the convict elicits a solemn promise from Pip that he will go into the village and rob his own home that very night. Moreover, Vogler defines the crossing of the threshold as “the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values” (www.thewritersjourney.com). Indeed, Pip crosses the proverbial threshold of adventure as he crosses the threshold of his own house with the stolen goods. In effect, Pip has entered a new world or region of existence and even the cattle seem to look down on him with suspicion and accusation in their large eyes (22). In this way, Pip takes the frightful steps that are destined to change his life forever. Consequently, Joseph Campbell’s theory, the Hero’s Journey, is apparent in Charles Dickens's book, Great Expectations, through Pip’s crossing of the threshold from the ordinary world to the extraordinary one after receiving the call to adventure.   Evaluations             Several points may be made in regards to Charles Dickens's book, Great Expectations, both when it was first published in 1861 and now 56 years later in 2017. As Great Expectations was one of Dickens’s later books, it was almost an immediate success and remains so to this day. Characters such as Pip and Joe go straight to the heart and stick there; while stories such as Miss Havisham and Estella’s, tickle the mind. Consequently, Dickens's eccentric characters and enigmatic plot are indeed timeless. However, many modern readers are no doubt put off by the book’s great length and odd wording. Nearly 600 pages in length, Great Expectations is not the quick and easy read that many people look for at the bookstore and check out of the library. In fact, most people will not even pick up a book of its length in the hopes of deriving any pleasure from it. In addition, besides being lengthy and wordy, the plot and storyline of Great Expectations often seems over dreary and disjointed. For example, the story begins in the churchyard amid the graves and does not seem to leave there in spirit throughout the whole first volume. Undoubtedly, Pip’s long succession of miseries and monstrosities dog his steps unto the very end of the novel. However, the story also begins with the convict and does not seem to return to him except on two brief occasions. So what seems to be a clutching conspiracy fades into the drudgery of daily life. While Pip does seem forever stained by this first encounter and destined quite definitely for the hulks, the rate and tone of the writing do not inspire avid reading. In short, several inferences may be made in reference to Charles Dickens's book, Great Expectations.   Conclusion             In conclusion, Volume I of Charles Dickens's classic, Great Expectations, is both an intriguing and disturbing read. However, the length of the story and breadth of the plot may prove daunting to some readers. Works Cited Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1992. Print. “Hero’s Journey.” Thewritersjourney.com. Storytech Literary Consulting. Web. 6 April 2017. Vogler, Christopher. “The Hero’s Journey Outline.” Thewritersjourney.com. Storytech Literary Consulting. Web. 6 April 2017. --- Return to top.