Author Archives: Oliver Pittman

TW: suicide, self harm, hospitals, mental health in general I consider the end of my childhood to be in May of 2017. Summer of 2016 through summer of ‘17, my sister, mom, dad, and me were on a trip in … Continue reading →

Throughout Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, various gory, graphic, and disturbing images are described. But parallel to these horrors, O’Brien describes beauty: beauty in the mountains or the jungle, beauty in the relationships between his friends, beauty in … Continue reading →

It may seem counterintuitive that people- when people similar to them, with similar backgrounds, surround them- people free to interact and forge bonds with whomever they’d like to- tend to gravitate towards people with differences in interest and life stories, … Continue reading →

As long as I can remember, I have carried guilt like a wet wool blanket draped around my shoulders. When my mental health started to become a problem, I always blamed myself. I blamed myself for the pain and stress … Continue reading →

Throughout the post-apocalyptic novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, one of the most striking stylistic choices is the lack of names in the main characters. ‘The man,’ and his son, ‘the boy,’ are fighting for their lives in a flame … Continue reading →

I’ve spent an hour staring at this page, typing intros and deleting them, all with a different idea- but every time I get through the introduction and realize that that’s not what makes me feel alive. Sitting here in the … Continue reading →

I love Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, very dearly. But even though he is a character I hold very close to my heart, one thing can not be denied: his passivity as a person. … Continue reading →

In the novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane uses the concepts of light and color to move the plot and set the tone of the scene. Three examples of this in the work are the dance hall … Continue reading →

In both the The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Crucible by Arthur Miller, aspects of Puritan society are examined and portrayed to the reader. Though at first glance these novels seem to work together in criticizing Puritan morality, … Continue reading →

There was tension in the air as the citizens arrived. At dawn the first people gathered in hushed voices, hurriedly passing messages through the quickly growing crowd. From all forms of transportation more people poured, and flooded the square with … Continue reading →