Newest Literature Essays

Each of these poems comprise of motifs prevalent throughout Duffy's anthology, 'Mean Time'. Mortality and nostalgia are exemplified, in which Duffy often writes about –with love, with heartfelt feeling but never with sentimentality, and she...

Charlotte Smith’s late poem ‘Ode to Death’, published in 1797 in her collection of Elegiac Sonnets, draws on the idea of accepting death as a ‘friend’ (l.1) rather than fearing it. The ode carries a deep sense of desperation and sorrow, as it...

In Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, the concept of gender remains a key aspect throughout both of the narratives in regard to plot development and characterization. Whilst Lady Susan was thought to be...

The recently famous novel Jasper Jones, written by Craig Silvey tells a tale of a young boy named Charlie Bucktin and his friend Jasper Jones finding the killer of a girl named Laura Wishart. As Charlie searches for his identity, he faces racism...

The American political climate of the 1980’s is wrought with capitalistic fervor, the end game being victory over the constant battle for self-improvement. This victory can manifest itself in myriad forms; in ever-symbolic heaps of steaming cash,...

In everything we do, we seek to find happiness and meaning. While they aren’t necessarily what we always find, we strive to find it even if it’s the smallest shred of it. That couldn’t be farther from the truth in the gripping film American Beauty...

“The problem of half-castes is simply not going to go away”

“The bodies lying like so much fallen timber”

Both the novel ‘The Secret River’ written by Kate Grenville and the film ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ directed by Phillip Noyce showcase themes of...

“Thank You” by Ross Gay is a concise and powerful poem, in which the poet deftly weaves together Christian themes and Biblical allusions to craft an elaborate ode to the Old Testament. The poem alludes to Biblical passages and stories such as the...

‘Accordingly, he took the paper and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached his pen and examined it, dipped it in the ink and examined it again, then pushed the paper a little way from him, lifted up his spectacles...

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, one significant recurring image is water. Throughout the book, water imagery surrounds many events, despite having no immediate connection to any of these scenarios. Water imagery occurs in both positive...

Suspense is one of the most effective tools used to grip the readers undivided attention in creative writing. It pulls the reader into the story, and gets them invested in the characters and the story line. It creates the intense feeling of...

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes suggests that the experience of black Americans is a constant self-love and self-destruction, a separation of “the song of the bird from the bone.” Through the expert use of...

Drug abuse is one of the largest epidemics facing our world today. Through research, we have been able to get a better understanding of the factors that cause drug abuse and consequently drug addiction in the first place. Studies done specifically...

Fyodor Dostoevsky published his novel The Devils from 1871 to 1872 in installments in the joural The Messengerat a time when there was political unrest in Russia, although not yet enough for a real revolution. Inspiration for the novel came from...

Shakespeare’s Macbeth, written in 1623, and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, written in 1953, are both historical plays based on a character’s extreme behaviors that have stemmed from evil desires and ulterior motives. Miller and Shakespeare set...

1956 can be called the “year zero” because it makes a certain distinction between ‘the old era’ and the ‘new era’. Since after G.B Shaw and Galsworthy British theatre presented nothing noteworthy to hold the attention of the People of England,...

In the 19th century China, the custom known as "footbinding" was prevalent; it was traditional that young girls had their feet bound as early as age three and the goal was to achieve a pair of perfectly bound feet, which made a girl more...

Through her series of celebrated published sonnets, Charlotte Smith has provided readers and critics with useful insights into the life and experiences of an 18th century woman whose life events met her with a great number of detriments. Her...

What if you had to hide in your house your whole life? Or live a life where you were brainwashed into thinking everything was perfect? In dystopian societies, you don't have any other choice than to follow the rules of society and live a certain...

In writing, ambiguity is often used to give specific topics more meaning. In making an aspect of a work unclear, it draws the reader’s attention to it, and forces them to think about what is true, and what is important. Yoneko’s Earthquake written...

An individual’s sense of identity is shaped by many contributing factors, including interactions with society, as well as self-isolation, both which play a fundamental role in strengthening one's sense of individuality and self-representation....

“Give me the child for seven years and I will give you the man.”

In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark and The History Boys by Alan Bennett, the authors are seen to be “playing with time”[1] by using flash-forwards and flash-backs to...

There is no doubt that America is a racially divided nation, evidenced by the roots of slavery, the de jure segregation of the Civil Rights era, and even the de facto segregation of the modern school system and neighborhoods. The journey of the...

In Homer’s Iliad, readers can observe the dueling and opposite nature of the personalities and characters of Agamemnon, king of the Achaeans, and Priam, king of Troy. Some may wonder, if when a king must choose a method of ruling his people, is it...