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Folk tales are all about conveying a deeper meaning—no banjos required. Arabian Nights is one of the most famous collections, so get ready to lea...

What's the deal with "Nectar in a Sieve"? Shmoop amongst yourselves.

Whenever you start regretting the choices you've made in your life, just review Oedipus' story, and you'll start feeling a heck of a lot better.

In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, Death narrates the story of one girl who lived during the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, it's kind of a downer—bu...

Crime and Punishment is all about a boy killing for money, literally, and then spending the rest of the book trying to hide it. Although the book c...

No HBO? Well then, how does a horror short story writing contest sound? And the winner is...drum roll, please...Mary Shelley. You go, girl. And tha...

Lisbeth Salander is a tough nut to crack. Hero? Villain? Somewhere in the middle? We're not sure, but we're hesitant to accuse her of anything...es...

Don't fly too close to the sun, Shmoopers.

Life of Pi tells the story of a boy and a tiger trapped on a lifeboat for 227 days... or does it?

Shmoop is our shepherd.

Maybe it's just us, but we don't like to put off our dreams. After all, who knows? Tomorrow night, we might not want to have hands that are giant m...

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. In our opinion, however, it should be popped into the microwave for about 30-45 seconds.

This video discusses Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a negative utopia in which women have no control over the government o...

The Mahabha-what-now? Although you may not be as familiar with this epic text as you are with the Bible, it's just as famous in other parts of the...

Every culture has some idea about where we all came from. Surprisingly, very few of them hypothesize that we are all simply figments of Lady Gagaâ€...

Books become classics because they either reflect on or influence the world around us. As was the casewith Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Of...

Guy in a black leotard. In a cage. Not eating. Weird? Yes. Popular? Absolutely. Kafka's short story includes iconic artist-figures: a mouse singer...

Why would Yehuda Amichai write an entire book on the diameter of a bomb and the diameter of its range? Is he trying to convey a message? Is his boo...

She was just a girl who found herself in some unimaginably awful circumstances. If you feel like gaining some valuable perspective on the drama in...

Today we aren't looking for the most virtuous person, or most likeable, but rather the most disturbing. Will it be Echo, the nymph who is doomed to...