Newest Literature Essays

In Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Boo employs the themes of corrupt law enforcement and false hope to signify that Annawadians are doomed to escape their lot in life due to the ‘uneven’ land on which their entire community lies....

In Crace’s novel, Harvest, the eventual downfall of the villagers could be attributed to a number of factors. Arguably, Crace may suggest, through his foregrounding of the villagers’ cruelty, prejudice and errors, their responsibility in their own...

In ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’, Blake evokes contrasting visions of the world. The two poems, 'The Echoing Green' and 'London', are especially characteristic of these contrary visions; evoking polar opposite images of innocence,...

Blake’s protest against oppression of the human spirit is a clear and assertive one, yet his methods to establish it are subtly employed. The collection of poems establishes, as Blake intended, two “contrary visions” of freedom and oppression....

Despite Blake’s asserted protest in his dual collection, ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’, the role of protest in his vision of innocence, itself, is more debatable. Arguably, Blake’s protest is constructed only through the contrasts that arise...

In the social and political protest writing Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ and Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’ the desired impact upon the audience is arguably to reveal to them a truth about society or about a particular situation, to inspire empathy and...

Blake explores ideas of power and corruption consistently throughout his two collections. Most notably corruption tends to focus around particular elements of society such as the Church with which Blake himself took issue. Power is interesting as...

Throughout the book, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood the author; Marjane Satrapi illustrates through her autobiographical graphic novel about the Iranian Revolution and her perspective of the events that occurred her early ages from when she...

In Frantz Fanon’s psychological non-fiction book, Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon criticizes the acculturation of the African American community to become much more caucasian to gain the perspective of superficial status. Fanon brings to the...

One may read between the lines to conclude the Bennets’ marriage in Pride and Prejudice was an act of convenience, lacking love. As a result of this incompatibility, their relationship is fraught with flaws. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice...

Within the first few sentences of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky introduces the protagonist of the story, an unnamed man who narrates his life, as a bitter and emotionally distant man. These long-standing feelings and...

My Oedipus Complex by Frank O’Connor is a short story in which the method of narration drastically impacts the success of the story. The story begins with Larry and his mother having a normal day. Their bond is clearly demonstrated as is the way...

Atwood and Orwell’s differing assessments of masculinity are largely due to their differing narrative voices. Through the eyes of Offred, Atwood constructs a pointed feminist critique of masculinity as a nymphomaniacal and tyrannical animal that...

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne is the fictional autobiography of Tristram Shandy in the novel form that tries to find out, defy, and/or experiment with the rules of this new genre it is written in as the...

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (hereafter Winter’s Night), authored by Italo Calvino, has often been critically analyzed by scholars for its unique narrative style and the role it has played in establishing metafiction as a definitive genre at...

The Poema de Mio Cid’s (The Poem of My Cid) many examples of historical distortion and unexpected silences on the subject of figures who are known as having acted in the historical time period are evidence either of genuine misinformation...

There is so much more to an individual that what they do or what they say. By limiting one’s judgment to the two above criteria, one is subject to falling short of the true light. It is common in literature because of this nuance in personality,...

Examining the concept of binary gender proves valuable when exploring gender and sexuality within literature. This essay will examine this notion by focusing on how key novels relating to gender and sexual challenge the fixity of a gender binary,...

“We wished to know. We wished to know about all the things which make the earth around us” (23). Herein Ayn Rand’s hero expresses a universal truth: Homo sapiens are a curious and ever-changing species. For tens of thousands of years, our...

Many of Graham Greene’s works of literature include references to the author’s homeland, England. After living through World War II and experiencing the instability following the war, Greene weaves symbolism of England into his fiction. In his...

What is greed? Should family be sacrificed in return of money? Does greed ruin a person? These are all questions that are answered in the book, The Pearl, by John Steinbeck. In The Pearl, a simple man named Kino, and his wife Juana, risk their...

Rollo May once argued that the opposite of courage is not cowardice, but conformity. In a society which constantly pushes one to fit an ideal, remaining true to oneself is the greatest sign of bravery. Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness...

To ascertain whether or not the ending of a novel is ‘adequate’, one must first isolate components of adequacy. For the purposes of this essay, four general categories of adequacy have been defined: moral adequacy, artistic adequacy, narrative...

You are what you eat, they always say. This timeless proverb holds true for the wizarding world, as well. Harry Potter might be able to escape the muggle world after he becomes a wizard, but no one is immune to the truth behind proverbs....