Into the Wild
After abandoning his car and burning his remaining cash, Chris McCandless adopted this alias before hitchhiking into the wilderness.
Who is Alexander Supertramp?
Though Gatsby acquires a mansion, parties, and wealth, Fitzgerald ultimately uses his fate to deliver this message about the American Dream.
What is the American Dream is corrupt, hollow, or ultimately unattainable?
Troy Maxson's emotionally distant and domineering behavior toward his family can be traced back to this combination of personal trauma and larger societal forces that shaped him long before the play begins.
What are an abusive upbringing, systemic racism, and economic hardship?
This is how the symbolic meaning of fire changes from the opening scenes of the novel to Montag's final moments with the book people.
What is the transformation from violent destruction and control to warmth, survival, and renewal?
This is the literary device being used when an author gives human qualities, emotions, or actions to a non-human subject — such as 'the sun smiled down on the empty playground.
What is personification?
McCandless repeatedly rejected financial help from his parents and refused Walt's offer of a new car, reflecting this recurring motif throughout the book.
What is the rejection of materialism (or wealth/money)?
Gatsby's entire lifestyle — his mansion, his parties, his illegal bootlegging empire — was built not for personal fulfillment, but with the sole purpose of winning back this woman.
Who is Daisy Buchanan?
When Troy refuses to allow Cory to pursue his football scholarship, Wilson reveals that Troy's decision is driven less by logic or love and more by this unresolved feeling from his own past.
What is bitterness and grief over the racism that ended his own baseball career?
This is what the river and the natural world outside the city symbolize for Montag after he escapes.
What is freedom and clarity, untouched by the artificial noise and distraction of society?
This is the literary device at work when a writer references a well-known person, place, event, or text — such as calling a difficult task someone's 'Achilles heel.'
What is an allusion?
McCandless was heavily influenced by what two transcendentalist writers — one who wrote Walden about living simply in the woods, and one who argued in Self-Reliance that individuals must trust their own instincts over society's expectations.
Who are Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Located at the end of Daisy's dock across the bay, Gatsby stares at this symbol which represents his longing for Daisy, his pursuit of the American Dream, and the impossibility of recapturing the past.
What is the green light?
While Rose wants the fence built to keep her family close and protect what she loves, Troy's repeated delays in finishing it reveal this truth about his character.
What is his emotional distance and inability to fully commit to family and connection?
This is the quality Clarisse possesses that almost no one else in the novel demonstrates, and the reason she serves as the catalyst for Montag's transformation.
What is genuine curiosity — the habit of asking real questions and truly noticing the world around her?
This is the literary device being used when an author places two contrasting ideas, characters, or settings side by side in order to highlight their differences — such as wealth and poverty existing in the same scene.
What is juxtaposition?
Over the course of his journey, McCandless transitions from viewing human connection as a burden to expressing this sentiment in one of the final notes found in the bus.
What is the realization that "happiness is only real when shared"?
When Daisy reveals she hopes her newborn daughter will grow up to be a 'beautiful little fool,' Fitzgerald uses this moment to critique the limited roles available to women in 1920s society and suggest that ignorance is a woman's greatest protection against this.
What is the harsh, disillusioning reality of a world dominated by wealth and men (or a patriarchal society)?
Wilson's title Fences functions on both a literal and metaphorical level — the physical fence in the yard mirrors this broader pattern seen in every major character throughout the play.
What is the tendency to build emotional barriers that both protect and isolate — keeping some things in and others out?
This is the broader social warning Bradbury makes through Mildred's obsession with her parlor walls and seashell earbuds.
What is that constant stimulation and avoidance of silence creates emotional numbness and makes a population easy to control without direct force?
This is the umbrella term for when language appeals to the five senses to create a vivid mental picture — and it is also the device Bradbury relies on heavily when describing the cold river Montag escapes through or the burning books in Fahrenheit 451.
What is imagery?
Krakauer opens each chapter of Into the Wild with a quoted passage from authors like Thoreau, London, and Tolstoy — a literary device used to foreshadow themes and reflect McCandless's mindset called this.
What is an epigraph?
In the novel's closing lines, Nick compares humans to 'boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,' suggesting that no matter how hard Gatsby (or anyone) strives toward the future, they are ultimately defeated by this.
What is the impossibility of escaping or repeating the past?
At the end of the play, Cory must decide how to reckon with Troy's complicated legacy — and his choice reflects this central theme about the relationship between fathers, sons, and inherited pain.
What is the struggle to honor where you come from without being destroyed or defined by it?
This is the thematic message Bradbury leaves the reader with through the image of the destroyed city and the book people who have memorized texts to preserve them.
What is cautious hope — that knowledge survives in people rather than pages, and that civilization can rebuild if individuals choose memory and meaning?
This is the literary device at work when what is said, what happens, or what a character knows is the opposite of what is expected — such as a fire station burning down, or a character congratulating someone on a loss.
What is irony?