Newest Literature Essays

“A Rose for Emily,” written by Faulkner in 1931, looks back at the life of Emily Grierson once she passes away and as some acquaintances and family members of hers go through her house and belongings. Faulkner uses a very detailed plot of Emily’s...

In Experience, Ralph Waldo Emerson discusses the dichotomy of illusion and an absolute realm. Through the exercise of skepticism, Emerson establishes an uncertain knowledge of the phenomenal realm of reality; neither the intellect nor emotion can...

Claude McKay, a now-celebrated poet who was active during the Harlem Renaissance, was often seen as a literary voice for social justice for African Americans. One of his most famous poems, known for describing his mixed feelings regarding America...

Although female characters play a small role in The Things They Carried, it is a significant one. Women such as Martha affect the men of the Alpha Company by providing them with emotional ties that anchor these soldiers to reality as they make...

“After. Nothing is ever the same” (Green 12). After the worst day of Alaska Young’s life, her whole world is turned upside down and rearranged. John Green’s novel, Looking for Alaska, demonstrates the power and importance that death, suffering,...

Scientists often call the first few weeks of life for a duckling the “sensitive period” due to the uniqueness of this time. During these weeks, the duckling’s mind is the most impressionable that it will ever be; the sounds it hears in these weeks...

Sovereignty commands an eminent position in A Man for All Seasons (1960) composed by playwright, Robert Bolt. This play revolves around a controversy engraved in most Euro-American history, involving sovereignty (loyalty to the Crown), religious...

Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza narrates her painful autobiographical account of the Rwandan Genocide in April 1994. She gives a personal testimony of her traumatic confrontation with a national carnage and the hurt of losing her entire family...

Victorian poet Thomas Hardy- having immensely enjoyed a childhood in the idyllic county of Dorset- was a stoic believer in the transformative power of nature which is explored through settings in both ‘Drummer Hodge’, and ‘Afterwards’ as nature is...

Donne’s primary target audience was a select cluster of male friends as opposed to a universal one, meaning that some poems such as ‘The Flea’ and ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ are compelling as allow us insight into a particular male-centric...

Metaphysical poets have been renowned for their exploration of the extremes of human experience- love and death- and such a fascination can be identified in Donne’s verse: the love poetry of the writer- ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Flea’ concentrates...

Modernism was a period within literature that saw authors experimenting with different storytelling techniques and showcased the lives of the new generation who were living in an ever advancing technological society. This was an exciting time...

Metaphysical poets were concerned with grappling with original and unusual intellectual concepts, and none more so than John Donne, who amalgamates sacred and profane imagery in his verse in order to shock a deeply religious Jacobean audience. In...

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and August: Osage County by Tracy Letts are two emotionally-charged plays about dysfunctional families in the 20th century. While the plays take place in very different settings and time periods, both...

The Sexuality and Population debate is conspicuous in the plot of the novel The Romance of a Shop by Amy Levy. As the novel expands, the story remains mostly in relation to the main components of the debate, as outlined by Grant Allen and Havelock...

Allusions occur around us everyday. Neighbors make jokes about the most recent episode of The Voice, your best friend responds to your texts using only Taylor Swift lyrics, and your mom quotes Mean Girls nonstop. These allusions add depth to daily...

Oftentimes, the best representation of a nation can be found within literature. Such is through for Michael Gow’s 1986 play Away, which offers a distinct depiction of Australian society in 1968, a time when crises such as the Great Depression and...

Marya Hornbacher’s memoir Wasted was published when she was only twenty one years old, and describes her struggle with eating disorders throughout her adolescence. Her experience is greatly influenced by the fact that she is a woman in a...

What do people really want, and how far would they be willing to go to get that something? Is it always worth it - to get what one most desires, but not to be happy? These are the very questions that Kurt Vonnegut explores in his satirical novel ...

Analytical lenses allow for readers to gain a deeper insight into a literary work, but since there are many, it can be easy to focus on a single lens and miss critical aspects of a story that only another lens would bring to light. Guy de...

To consider the different aspects of motherhood as written by Morrison in her 1987 novel Beloved, inspired by the story of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner; we must first examine the assumptions made in the figure of an ‘ideal mother’ in...

In Thérèse Raquin, Zola creates bodies criss-crossed by tension through contrasting his characters’ temperaments (the “natural” self) with their outward surroundings and circumstances (social norms, family expectations). It is the stark contrast...

Although the moral ambiguity (and subsequent confusion related to Laclos’ social instruction) is the overarching obscurity within the text, it is the subtleties of the language and stylistic features of Les liaisons dangereuses that ensure this...

The early modern period brought with it a reshaping of European culture, and in particular, the derogatory perception of women, rooted in a traditionally male view of the female as inferior in both mind and body[1]. This view pervaded the...