Newest Literature Essays

The fifth chapter of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps documents the transformation of protagonist Richard Hannay into his fourth disguise. Hannay, a mining engineer bored with the melancholy of his life in London, is suddenly thrust into the...

The middle of the twentieth century was rife with racial conflict and movement toward equal rights. Unfortunately, the characters of The Long Goodbye have a tendency to maintain this racist rhetoric that had such a negative impact on 1950’s...

Sherman Alexie’s novel Indian Killer is remarkably focused on identity. One of his larger points seems to be that individual identity has a lot to do with feeling a part of a larger group. The central character, John Smith, is a Native American...

The three women characters in Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon, portray three different types of femininity. While to Samuel Spade, consistently calling them “darling”(Hammett, pg. 25) and “sweetheart”(Hammett, pg.1), seems to group...

When Darwin first published his novel, The Origin of Species, in 1859, it was met with great controversy and backlash, sparking in the process a heated debate between scientists, religious scholars, and the general public over its implications and...

As a homeless man once professed on LA local news after being robbed for the sixth consecutive week, “When we are beaten down, we must always remember that God shall always be waiting as our crutch”. While the words are moving, they are certainly...

It is no secret that Lord Voldemort is the “big bad” of the Harry Potter Series; this is a fact that is established from the very first time he is introduced in the series. In Sorcerer’s Stone Hagrid reveals to Harry that his parents were murdered...

A labyrinth, on the surface, can be described as “a place constructed of or full of intricate passageways and blind alleys” (Merriam-Webster), but it can also be characterized as “something extremely complex or tortuous” (Merriam-Webster). Both...

It was soon after the American Revolution that Thoreau, one of the most influential literary figures of the 19th Century, questioned the effective freedom and happiness of American citizens. The Declaration of Independence stated that all men have...

One scene that rewards extended analysis is the “reveal” scene from Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. This scene can represent the rising action in the narrative of the film and it perfectly shows off the usage of the rack focus shot. The scene also...

Have you ever thought that, if given the chance, you would do everything you could to protect the people you love? Rick Riordan, the author of The Sea Of Monsters, perfectly shows how important friends and family are, that they are worth...

John Irving’s esteemed 1989 novel, “A Prayer for Owen Meany” is a lot of things - but it is not subtle. Over the course of its 600 pages, “Owen Meany” lends to us a surplus of heavily symbolic and provocative moments, which illustrate its...

While all people want happiness in life, most struggle to achieve this goal as a result of various distractions and other factors at play. In Infinite Jest, a maximalist novel by David Foster Wallace, the distraction inhibiting individuals from...

In the novel Girl at War, Sara Nović incorporates the theme of trauma throughout the story from the Yugoslav Wars that impacted most of the characters’ lives. Readers get to experience the characters during the war and many years later as they are...

In his sonnet beginning, “That Time of Year Thou Mayst in me Behold”, William Shakespeare examines the natures of death and love. Shakespeare’s speaker addresses the sonnet to an unknown third party, presumably his lover, and reflects on his...

While some individuals remember Cleopatra as a queen of Egypt with leadership skills better than any man, others emphasise her seduction of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony (Harold et.al, n.d). In his play The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, William...

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Faith is taking the first step with courage even when you don't see the whole staircase.” In the nonfiction novels “A Child Called It” and “The Lost Boy” by Dave Pelzer, Dave survives through hard times with...

The Harry Potter series and the world created by the stories is defined as being magical; in the literal sense of there being magical beings such as witches and wizards, but also in that all the stories show our main characters reveling in the...

Of the many puzzles and questions woven throughout Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, perhaps the most salient of all is the bizarre and often-times self-contradictory relationship between the various children of St. Petersburg and their adult counterparts....

The human experience demands pitfalls and darkness in order to grow and appreciate the light of life. Authors and poets control responsibility over recording these experiences that shape us and offering insight to the dark feeling that reside in...

Gothic literature is defined as “a recognition of the insufficiency of reason or religious faith to explain and make comprehensible the complexities of life” (Hume 290); as a genre, it is similar and related to Romantic literature, but an element...

In a polemic against the use of alcohol and narcotics, Lev Tolstoy poses and then answers the question of why men stupefy themselves. He attacks these vices as escapes used to silence the human conscience and allow one to do that which moral...

In the novel “Divergent” by Veronica Roth, the protagonist, Tris, learns that she must change the way the world works. In the world of Divergent people are separated into 4 different factions, and these factions are more important then their own...

Dreams of the Animals by Margaret Atwood is a poem written in several verses. From the title of the poem, the reader can see that the emphasis is put on "the animals" not "the dreams". This gives the reader insight on the topic of this poem, that...