Literature

Write a critical appreciation of ‘Home to Harlem’ by Claude McKay Hughes argued that the American Dream for African Americans was ‘a dream deferred’ and this extract from McKay’s novel clearly depicts this argument as it is set in a time where America was at the height of industrialisation and urbanisation, making the dream and any hope for a better life difficult for everyone, but especially for African Americans. Following the war there was heightened prosperity and hope which resulted in most people, such as the characters in this extract faced with poverty and isolation. McKay deliberately depicts the hardships of life for people who are amongst the struggling in America during the early 20 th century. McKay conveys the narrator to be seen in the deep poverty of which they are in as well as the people around the extracts main character also being in the same financial disadvantage also, and they are all coinciding and helping one another; this completely steers away from the

Edith Wharton- The House of Mirth (1905) Bridge at Belmont usually lasted till the small hours; and when Lily went to bed that night she had played too long for her own good. Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her room, she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the hall below, where the last card-players were grouped about the tray of tall glasses and silver-collared decanters which the butler had just placed on a low table near the fire. The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale yellow marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped against a background of dark foliage in the angles of the walls. On the crimson carpet a deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed luxuriously before the fire, and the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness on the women's hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved. There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified he