Newest Literature Essays

The nineteenth century saw the attempt word weavers of all kinds – poets, essayists, journalists, and novelists – to artistically capture the multitude of facets of the ever-changing political, social and economic conditions found in England...

In order to truly love, one must be open and vulnerable with another person. James Baldwin’s prolific novel, Giovanni’s Room, depicts a young American man whose inability to be intimate with others because of his own learned shame is what...

When a person suffers injustice for too long, it can often lead to blind rage. For the titular character of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, this rage leads Shylock, a Jewish moneylender who is accosted throughout the play for his “other”...

While modern sensibilities claim a wide array of roles and identities for women, current feminine archetypes are still heavily influenced by those of the past. Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, portrays a dichotomous archetype of what an ideal woman...

White people have oppressed Native American populations in America for centuries, and racial biases continue to affect Native Americans today. In the short story The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the Native American narrator...

The Gospel according to Mark written by Jorge Borges is a brilliant short story that captures the attention of the reader through the craft of tight narration leading to a shocking climatic action. The suddenness of the climax stuns the reader for...

The use of omens and dreams in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, significantly develops the theme that everything in the universe is interwoven and interconnected. It is through these events that the main character’s personal destiny is revealed....

Families in poverty are sometimes forced to make incomprehensibly difficult decisions in order to attempt to improve their respective situations. In the novel And the Mountains Echoed, author Khaled Hosseini makes a concerted effort to highlight...

Self interest is a prominent ideal in Casablanca, manifesting itself in characters such as Louis Renault, and his manipulative tendencies. Conversely, kindness and altruism prevail in characters such as Rick Blaine and Victor Lazlo, most saliently...

Negative emotions such as despair, disappointment, fury, bitterness are very impactful on one’s life and actions; at times, such sentiments can drive one away from the right path. The complexity of feelings is accountable for the depth and...

1984 is a novel written by George Orwell in 1948 which presents a dystopian totalitarian society to convey Orwell’s warnings of the consequences that would come if the world supported and embraced communism. Home is important as it has values and...

On the surface, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich seem like the most dissimilar of contemporary poets: Rich identified as Jewish, lesbian, and a feminist, while Plath considered herself religiously apathetic and although some scholars interpret the...

The relationship between power and love brims with conflict. Introducing a dominant and a surrendering role within the interactions of men and women unequivocally creates opposition between the two. In three different sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt,...

A former president of the United States of America, Harry S. Truman, had once said, “actions are the seed of fate; deeds grow into destiny.” This quote can also be contributed to two of the famous Anglo-Saxon tales, Beowulf and The Seafarer. In...

When readers first encounter Jane Eyre, the fiery protagonist of Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous novel, we are met with an intelligent and rebellious child. As we follow her growth into governess at Thornfield, many critics feel as though her...

From the 18th to the early 19th century, a wave of Romantic writers rose fervently against the emergence of industrialisation, resisting against the Industrial Revolution’s intrusion upon the natural world. Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth,...

The tragedy Macbeth written by William Shakespeare is thought to have been first performed in 1606. Needless to say, the information about the date of it being written is not known, yet the date of publication is - 1623 in the First Folio. That,...

In the essay, “Rethinking the African Diaspora: Global Dynamics,” Ruth Simmons Hamilton writes that, “those who have a strong connection to - and sense of - Africa as homeland often form networks with others who share in this, building alliances...

Kamikaze, written by Beatrice Garland, is focused around the Japanese soldiers who self-sacrificed their lives during WW2, whilst flying missile planes into enemy ships. This act was perceived to be one of great bravery and honor, reflecting a...

William Shakespeare’s King Lear recounts a tale of a father and his three daughters as he decides to divide up his kingdom based on who loves him the most. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is a modern day King Lear farm with Larry Cook’s three...

In The Consolation of Philosophy, the main character and author of the work, Boethius, faces the hardest time in his life when he is imprisoned and sentenced to death. Boethius is mourning the loss of his privileges, influence, and freedom, and...

Since 1945, German literature has met the challenge of evoking mental processing of past events by exploring by what means we access the past. As literature depends far more on individual production and reception than film and television, which...

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy” is a twenty-one line, three-stanza poem that metaphorically compares African-American life to that of a caged bird. The author suggests that African-Americans are trapped in an inescapable cage. It is interesting...

During the 1830’s, the cultural movement of Russian Romanticism evoked a multitude of intense feelings amongst the Russians, in particular a fervent sense of nationalism. This inspiration occurred incongruence with an enormous Russian victory. At...