Newest Literature Essays

Proust famously claimed that, because of books’ interpretive nature, readers subconsciously mold the characters in the literature they consume. In turn, one can construct a portrait of the reader’s own personality, offering insight into her needs...

Joyce Carol Oates’ short story Haunted deals with murder, mystery and the supernatural when the protagonist’s best friend, Mary Lou, is found dead. Set in a small, conservative farming town, Melissa and Mary Lou seem to live normal teenage lives....

In Book 2 of the Aeneid, the hero carries upon his shoulders the aged father and at his side walks the little son. They are fleeing Troy as she burns. Subject to the will of the gods and the promise of a future in safety, their image is not only...

The book of Luke is one of the several gospels of the Bible that delineate the life of Jesus. Providing one account of Jesus’ teachings, this gospel contains numerous parables that he uses to convey the Christian life to both his disciples and the...

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — later retitled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the book’s release in the United States — was first published in 1997. Beloved by young readers worldwide, the novel recounts the...

Tension between characters is a key feature of many plays. “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare contains many scenes in which there is tension, but 3.1 – the turning point of the play – is tensest of all. The scene is pivotal in the story of...

Many people were wary of women writers in the eighteenth century. Women were supposed to be seen and not heard, and the fact that women were trying to be writers and voice their opinions broke this “rule”, two women who broke this “rule” with...

“Money is life. Once upon a time freedom used to be life – now it’s money” (Hansberry, 74). The quote from Mama portrays the Youngers, a typical African American family living in Chicago in 1959, in their struggle to break free from the endless...

In ‘A Fixed Idea’, Amy Lowell presents a speaker tormented by reoccurring thoughts which cease to become pleasurable when are repeated in a monotonous cycle. As the stanza continues, the thought is revealed to be a memory of a loved one: whilst...

When thinking of the word “freedom”, one definition usually comes to mind; physical freedom, or the ability to go wherever, whenever. However, there are many more aspects to freedom than just physical freedom. There is mental freedom, which is...

Robert Musil’s The Confusions of Young Törless stresses the synchronicity between inner and outer chaos. Mystery and enigmatic disorder overshadow the narrative as the young adolescent, Torless, struggles with his identity and the world around...

In Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons (1960), paradoxically, queenly power and the woman question emerge as salient themes. Since ancient times, one understands that the woman is popularly conceived of as the weaker vessel and an instrument of...

Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction can be found near the top of many all-time-top movie lists. It is renowned for its absurd and deadpan humor, its modern satirical tone, and most noticeably its disorienting and time-breaking storytelling...

The York Mystery Plays were performed at the annual Corpus Christi feast which celebrated the body of Christ. The 48 plays, which represent sacred Christian history from The Creation to Judgement Day, aimed to entertain and educate people on the...

Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ can indisputably be called her most popular work considering the amount of critical attention it has attracted leading to disparate readings that delve into multifaceted motifs, each giving birth to fresher...

Finding and picking a flower may be a plain and straightforward task for many, but Natasha Trethewey suggests a deeper consequence in her poem “Genus Narcissus.” Trethewey employs the many different metaphors of a daffodil in tracking the...

In latinx children’s literature, there are themes that are more prevalent in this genre than other. In Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street and Benjamin Saenz’s Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, the two latinx...

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Dolly by Susan Hill both show connections between humans and the natural world. Rhys presents the rich landscape of postcolonial Jamaica to be difficult to harmonise with yet as able to provide comfort, which is...

Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography has remained an important piece of early American literature not only because it gives the history of one of the founding fathers but also portrays the American ideology of meritocracy. Franklin’s Autobiography is...

William Faulkner created Yokopatpua County to constitute a world in which his fictional stories/novels would take place and fit into the southern gothic genre. Within this town is tragedy, death, racism, gender role reversal, and a social...

Tim Turnbull’s "Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn" celebrates Grayson Perry – a ceramic artist who stealthily comments on societal injustices and hypocrisies through his art. It, instead of criticizing, glorifies the lives of the group of young...

In the novel We Are All Made of Molecules written by Susin Nielsen, the readers follow the journey of the main characters, Ashley and Stewart, through their perspectives on life and the bridge between “tween” and young adult. Ashley starts the...

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, while the genetic makeup of the model does have some bearing on the life of the clone, it is severely limited by the increased importance of individual experience in the development of identity and...

Romantic poetry can be said to have emerged as a counter-current to the 18th century intellectual and philosophical movement, the Enlightenment, which believed reason to be the predominating signifier of human greatness while completely shoving...