Newest Literature Essays

In a riddle, nothing is as it seems. Words and images are twisted for the reader to unravel, and from these complexities, with a little cleverness, the true meaning of the piece can be deciphered. In Emily Dickinson’s riddle poems, “I like to see...

Charles Dickens often used his narratives as a means to express and commentate on the shortcomings of the society he resided in, and his critiques were often pointedly focused on both the ineptitude of the legal system and the unfulfilling nature...

Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in 1962, when the fear of war loomed over everyone’s heads. The youth of that generation were born to be rebels. They felt they needed to counteract the obedient society of the 1950s and sow their own path....

Originally from The Story of ‘Ala al-Din and the Magic lamp in The Arabian Nights, Aladdin and the story of magic lamp have gained great popularity in the past few years due to various adaptations into films and other media. Among those...

In his autobiography Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves recounts his life experiences from his earliest education, through the First World War, and up to his later time in Majorca where he writes in 1929. Graves acts as a Modernist by supporting...

Nearly two centuries later, Judith Butler would describe gender identity as “a stylized repetition of acts…which are internally discontinuous…[so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative...

The characters in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady long for a way into Isabel Archer’s mind. They are particularly curious about her decision to marry her husband, the self-centered and manipulative Gilbert Osmond. James offers more of his...

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s poetry reflects her keen awareness of the gender politics that pervaded her lifetime. Exploring themes of power, sexuality, and beauty in her writing, she stands out because of her criticism of the patriarchal standards...

Much like how Paradise Lost by John Milton is easily misunderstood without knowledge of Christian theology, much of Keats’s poetry is easily misread without a passing knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology. This is especially true in “Ode to...

In both Arthur Koestler’s anti-Stalinist novel Darkness at Noon, and in George Orwell’s memoir of his time fighting for Spanish Republicans in Homage to Catalonia, both authors contend with similar political and historical questions pertinent to...

In much of the poetry of Gerard Manly Hopkins it is his mental anguish and suffering that strikes a chord with the reader. The extreme nature of his suffering can be seen most clearly in two of his terrible sonnets, “No worst, there is none” and “...

David Herbert Lawrence is one of the key English writers of the twentieth century even despite the fact that his works were often refused to be published and were considered to be obscene. The issue of his poetic works, as well as of the prose, is...

The men of the Pollitt family suffer a great deal throughout Cat On A Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, but they would rather die than let anyone know of their pains. This disastrous trait was established in them as children, by the men who...

The question of racial issues is a serious challenge even in the modern society as the norms and values which were created many centuries ago are not as easy to overcome as it could be. Toni Morrison in her work Recitatif depicts how two girls...

Gail Godwin in her “A Sorrowful Woman” dives deep into the philosophy of the routine today. That being said, Godwin addresses particular methods in her story in order to attract the reader's imagination and critique in order for the latter to...

The first chapter of ‘Shame’ refers to the Garden of Eden, and does so in a manner with implications for the entire narrative. One may interpret the Shakil household as a subversion of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Eve encounters a crafty serpent...

The Hemingway Code is the set of characteristics that comprise the male characters in the writer`s works. In fact, the personages, created by Ernest Hemingway, perceive the world in terms of the hyper-masculine moral code that determines the...

Shakespeare and Sex How do Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece together serve as an interrogation of sexuality? What’s the message? The only works Shakespeare personally published, Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece, were written and published...

“Real. Not a game. Ender's mind was too tired to cope with it all. They weren't just points of light in the air, they were real ships that he had fought with and real ships he had destroyed. And a real world that he had blasted into oblivion...”...

Imagination is a key requirement when reading in order to interpret or “experience” significant settings and scenes that reflect specific moods throughout the story. An author’s use of adjectives through various senses helps the reader to do so....

Every true artist develops a style, with the greatest managing to produce styles different than their contemporaries. Different styles set artists apart so that people they have not met nor ever will can observe the person’s art and recognize the...

It is the middle of the nineteenth century, and, seemingly by coincidence, two novels, both written by women, are released in close proximity to one another, and each manages to grip tight the American public, and each in their own way becomes...

Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat,” published in 1926, focuses on Delia and Sykes Jones and their volatile marriage. The protagonist, Delia Jones, suffers at the hands of her abusive husband, the antagonist, Sykes. In her work, Hurston...

In the opening scene of “Othello” written by William Shakespeare, the key sources of tension lie within the racial prejudice of the Moor people and the ambition behind occupational and wealth success, are portrayed through bitter conflict between...