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1500 questions
13
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Who does Mollie represent in Animal Farm?
It's well known that various characters represent real Soviet figures. Who does Mollie, the horse sympathetic to the humans, represent? Is she just a generic non-Soviet sympathizer or does she represent any other major figure in reality?
fi12
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Why does Tom Sawyer forget what "ransom" means?
In Chapter XXXIII of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom explains "ransom" to Huck. But in Chapter II of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom has no idea what ransoming is. Is this just Twain forgetting what his character knew? Or perhaps Twain…
Witness Protection ID 44583292
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Is Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984 an unreliable narrator?
In a recent discussion in on online course about How to Read a Novel, someone suggested that Winston Smith in Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is an unreliable narrator. L. Kip Wheeler's glossary of "Literary Terms and Defnitions" defines…
Tsundoku
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Why did the author of The Dictionary of the Khazars publish a "male" and "female" edition, and what's the significance of the textual differences?
The author of The Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavic, published two editions: the Male Edition, and the Female Edition of the Dictionary. The two sections critically differ in only a few sentences, in one passage.
(Don't worry, these aren't…
user80
13
votes
1 answer
Why did Montresor want to kill Fortunato?
In The Cask of Amontillado, Montresor traps Fortunato in the catacombs, but his motives are not explicitly explained. Montresor does allude to some wrongs committed against him by Fortunato. Is it possible to glean something from literary analysis?
Shaymin Gratitude
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What does the last sentence in chapter 2 of Crime and Punishment really mean?
The sentence I'm referring to is this one.
‘And what if I am wrong,’ he cried suddenly after a
moment’s thought. ‘What if man is not really a scoundrel,
man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind—then all the rest is prejudice, simply…
Chris Fraser
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13
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Did the Lord of the Flies have any kind of religious reference more specific than just the Devil?
Lord of the Flies contains an absurd amount of biblical references, one of which being the titular character. The creature is obviously supposed to be some kind of demon or devil, but is this a specific reference to a specific religious…
Matrim Cauthon
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13
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Why did Isaac Bashevis Singer win the Nobel Prize for Literature?
I love IBS's books and have read many of them, but I fail to understand how such niche writing garnered a Nobel Prize in Literature.
The audience of his brilliant books are Jews, old Jews, Judeophiles and maybe 1% just randoms. But how many…
Eli
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13
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How did Ursula Le Guin translate the Tao Te Ching / Dao De Jing?
In 1998, Shambhala Publications published a translation of the Tao Te Ching (in pinyin: Daodejing and Dao De Jing) by Ursula Le Guin. The Dao De Jing was written in Classical Chinese, so it takes much more than just "knowing Chinese" to undertake a…
Tsundoku
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Postmodernist fantasy with nested stories structure
Searching for a work of metafiction I read about five years ago, probably published originally in the early 2000s. It's a bizarre fable about a young man who develops an obsession with a girl, a stranger to him, who is in a coma. I seem to think…
Chris Sunami
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Why doesn't Winston ask Mr Charrington about life before the Revolution?
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston goes to a pub and asks an old prole about life in the olden days. But it's all in vain, because the man can't remember anything Winston thinks is important, so Winston gives up and leaves.
Later that evening, he…
dain
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What are the nets in Ender's Game? Are they based on anything in real life?
After reading Ender's Game, I liked the idea of "nets," and had some good ideas to put on there, but could never find them or what they are. Any idea, or is this just another fictional part of Ender's Game?
Plqsmic
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How can the inscription on AURYN be interpreted?
In The Neverending Story, AURYN, the medallion of the Childlike Empress, bears the following inscription (at least while Bastian is carrying it - it's never 100% confirmed that it had the same writing in the first half of the book when Atreyu had…
Rand al'Thor
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What's the significance of Faust's meeting being on Easter Day?
In Goethe's Faust, the eponymous (anti?)hero meets the demon Mephistopheles on what seems to be Easter Sunday, during local celebrations of Easter. Given the religious themes in the story, this surely can't be a coincidence.
Why is their meeting on…
Rand al'Thor
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Is John Milton's Lucifer a tragic hero?
Loosely related: Was Paradise Lost the first major work of literature to give "sympathy for the devil"?
In Paradise Lost, Lucifer/Satan appears to have at least some heroic characteristics, such as courage and (apparent) dedication to his comrades.…
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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