Newest Literature Essays

Both historian Herodotus and playwright Aeschylus adopt the central subject matter of the Persian Wars- a series of conflicts fought between Greek and Persian forces, which roughly began in 499 BC, and ended in 480 BC in Greek victory at the...

In a traditional Mexican household, the women tend to personify a maternal character in which they nurture, provide for, and maintain the unity of their family. Throughout the novel Pedro Páramo, the protagonist Juan encounters three significant...

In today’s world, Western society has grown incredibly desensitized to violence. Children play video games such as Grand Theft Auto in which they murder civilians and sexually assault women without a second thought in order to win the game. Turn...

A fragmented narrative challenges readers to piece together the jumbled components of a narrative in order to make sense of the story (Hamilton). Although hard to follow at times, the narrative presents an alternative form for storytelling. In his...

In a last, desperate attempt to gain support and exercise free will in a society that condemns her, Seneca’s Medea calls on the gods for help. Medea finds herself in a country with an oppressive government that despises foreigners, and her foreign...

Maxine Hong Kingston’s No Name Woman explores the life of Kingston’s aunt, who had a child out of wedlock in rural China. As she doesn’t know the exact circumstances of her aunt’s story, she’s forced to imagine different versions of her aunt’s...

In literature, the opinion of a character seems to not solely derive from the perspective of one narrator. A holistic characterization of an individual requires a multitude of viewpoints, as each person notices distinct nuances of a persona that...

In Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde, Lorde invents a new genre that she calls “biomythography,” a genre in which she can explore her experiences, emotions, and life-journey in a way that emphasizes emotions, eroticism, and the...

The role of nature in American literature operates on three levels. Firstly, nature in American literature provides a refuge for characters from the austere conformity required by American society, allowing them to be themselves without fear of...

In 1991, Bao Ninh published his novel with the title Thân Phận Của Tình Yêu, or The Destiny of Love in accordance with North Vietnamese regulations to publish material that only glorified the war, reflecting Ho Chi Minh's fervent patriotism to...

When students learn about abolition, they are typically introduced to significant texts written by historical literary figures such as Fredrick Douglass and William Wells Brown. However, the slave narrative genre is overwhelmingly comprised by...

"An expression of culture" [1] is what defines architecture. Recognized as the "first major arts in the arts' classification, architecture is part of the 9 major arts as well as the fine arts" [2]. The history of architecture is more or less...

Both Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” (1978) and Solange’s song “Don’t Touch my Hair” (2016) illustrate different stages in the African-American struggle with otherization of their identity. “Still I Rise” iterates many examples of how...

The work Pedro Paramo, written by author Juan Rulfo, explores in an abundance the notion of confinement in relation to its physical, mental, and metaphorical manifestations. Through his use of temperature description, overwhelming sound imagery,...

Every choice a person makes, every action a person performs, every thought that crosses a person’s mind is influenced by emotion. The strength and intensity of feelings in the decision-making process makes emotional manipulation a powerful tool...

Celan’s Deathfugue is a haunting description of the day to day realities of a Jewish person being held prisoner inside a work camp during the Second World War. Having been one of those prisoners himself, this poem appears to serve as an outlet for...

Little kids often sit at their kitchen table, trying to connect the dots in the newspaper game section. They go from number to number, not knowing what the emerging picture will be until they reach the last one. As they slowly drag their pencil...

Most translations of Homer’s The Iliad keep the entire narrative of the story, incorporating Homer’s themes on the glory of war. Alice Oswald, however, chooses to deviate from this aspect of Homer’s epic in her Memorial: A Version of Homer’s...

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English Aristocrat and poet, who wrote a poem called “The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd”. In that poem written in 1596, the nymph rejects the shepherd’s offer to become his love and explains why she cannot accept his...

As developed from the human’s historically survivalist quality, modern people tend to initially work for their own gain before considering or regarding others. People’s self-interest, whether a narcissistic trait or simply inherent one, is even...

William Carlos Williams’s poem titled “The Red Wheelbarrow” paints a picture of a wheelbarrow outside in the rain. It is composed of just sixteen words that are divided equally into four stanzas. At first glance, it may seem like a concise and...

In 1312, Dante Alighieri wrote a treatise called De Monarchia, in which he expressed his belief that society would operate best under a single authority - that is, a secular monarch. Dante, in his characteristic rabble-rousing way, argued that...