Newest Literature Essays

Conflict is inevitable in any relationship. However, if left unresolved, conflict can fester and make things worse. Sam Shepard writes plays that tackle issues with the mid-21st century American family and the American dream, including unresolved...

Season of Migration to the North (henceforth, Seasons) is a post-colonial Sudanese novel by author Tayeb Salih which records the life of the narrator after his return to his village, Wad Hamid, after staying for seven years in England. A new man,...

William Blake’s attitude about the poor in his poetry suggests that he is angry at his country, Britain, for allowing so many of its citizens, especially children, to be poor when it’s supposed to be a wealthy global superpower. This is shown...

In George Elliot’s Silas Marner, the protagonist undergoes a series of events that emphasize victimization from culture and people of the surrounding area. The images of Lantern Yard’s betrayal, seclusion, stolen gold, and the discovery of Eppie...

Francois Mauriac presents Therese Desqueroux in a somewhat ambivalent, ambiguous way. She is a woman who has committed a crime against her husband, Bernard, but cannot fathom what compelled her to do so. In this light, the reader is presented with...

In Jack Weatherford’s book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, readers are immediately presented with a side of history not usually seen. Weatherford portrays Genghis Khan as a sympathetic, smart, brutally determined ruler who goes...

In Les Miserables, a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, many characters acted according to their convictions in liberalism, nationalism, and reactionaries. These characters appeared in the June Rebellion of 1832. Along with these characters,...

The subject of modern day racism is sensitive, loaded, and very real. Whether present in public realms, such as news headlines of injustice, or private spaces, like the hearts of those who burden bitter perspectives, the topic of race is a...

Effective oratory skills are crucial tools every true leader and military frontrunner must possess. In Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Richard III, the reader is introduced to the two opposing leaders, Richard and Richmond, who possess distinct...

The Waste Land, at first glance, can often be mistakenly perceived as fragmented and scattered and having no coherent pattern or meaning between the five short poems. T.S. Eliot’s creative style of writing creates this impression, as there is no...

The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories originally told from an oral tradition that was later written down and spread from its place of origin, the Middle East, throughout the western countries. It is told through a frame-tale...

There are many instances throughout the Oresteia trilogy where animals and animal figures play an important role in the function of the play. While the use of animal imagery is a common technique in literature, Aeschylus uses animals to manipulate...

Brokeback Mountain is a short story by Annie Proulx that touches upon social issues such as intolerance and gender stereotypes in the American West. Using the beauty but also the vast wilderness of the landscape of the American west and the...

As a Caribbean author, Jamaica Kincaid submerges Annie John, the novel, in rich sea symbolism. Living on the island of Antigua, and with Dominican parentage, the novel Annie John is immersed in deep, sea imagery, in which the author connects Annie...

The poem, ‘The Pigeon’ by Richard Church metaphorically explore themes of nature and beauty against destruction and industrialisation of the modern world. The pigeon is a metaphor for nature and wildlife and the concrete mixer represents...

Woven between Jamaica Kincaid’s emotionally charged memoir of Antigua is a strong rhetorical message to her audience to try and be different than those of them - middle class North American/European tourists - who came before to her land. These...

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most iconic narratives of the marriage plot. There is a variety of discourse which surrounds the novel. Over the course of the text readers are introduced to many different characters, most of which...

In a time when women were never considered victors in the realm of sexuality, author Eliza Haywood protests these standards in her writings. She creates female characters who show the world that women can win, even in patriarchal societies....

Penelope of The Odyssey is a widely disputed and studied character. She is often understood as unique to Greek mythology in her rejection of the stereotypical femininity that is apparent in most other female characters, like Nausicaa of The...

James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” is about the complicated relationship between two brothers. The tale opens with a nameless narrator discovering his brother, Sonny, had been imprisoned for the use and distribution of heroin. Until his...

Eliza Wharton is a character who stands on public trial against society in the epistolary novel, “The Coquette.” She is not a criminal in the eyes of the law, per say, but she is a criminal in the eyes of society. Society’s expectations for women...

The common woman in the late 1700s was clearly different from the common woman of today. Only recently has the idea of marriage been contemplated as something unnecessary to a woman’s success in society. In Hannah Webster Foster’s book, “The...

Lasting from 1789 to 1799, the French Revolution is characterized by the uprisal of the lower class and the bloodshed associated with it. It is now recognized as the most violent, inhumane revolution in European history, and with it came new ideas...

In the book "Love Medicine," Louise Erdrich transcribes about the lives of Native American families and relationships during the period between 1934 and 1983. The story is set on an unnamed Native American reservation of the Chippewa tribe in...