Newest Literature Essays

Although the postmodern classic The Crying of Lot 49 is known for its obscurity and lack of a single interpretation, it should not be seen as an experiment in a tortured narrative of curve-balls that destroys the reader’s assumptions without...

As a classic source of insight and wisdom in the Western heritage, the Bible has been studied, questioned, and alluded to for as long as it has captured the imagination of believers and novelists alike. As such, this perennial text lends itself...

Through the consistent allusion to fairy tales throughout both The Necklace and The Son’s Veto, de Maupassant and Hardy are able to present the vulnerability and suffering of the characters in an instantly recognisable template, portraying the...

The chorus was an integral feature of traditional Greek tragedy, which explains the high degree of importance placed on the chorus by Aeschylus in ‘The Persians’, used to reinforce the tragic elements of the plot, whilst also helping to create a...

Although established as nonhuman, poets often use animals, nature, and other objects to comment about the human condition in poetry. While in some cases this may lead to a clear distinction between human and non-human, William Carlos Williams’s ...

While Robinson Crusoe is undoubtedly a story of survival, it is first and foremost a story of religious and spiritual growth. Crusoe’s spiritual journey affects every single aspect of his life and draws him to reconsider many of his close-held...

George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil explores the nature of human sympathy from the perspective of a supernatural, clairvoyant character. The narrator of the story, Latimer, uses his power of clairvoyance to analyze the sympathies of others, which...

An extremely specific author, Tennessee Williams is known for his elaborate and in-depth descriptions of sets, costumes, sound, and general staging, often appearing to have the last detail written out in his seemingly endless supply of stage...

A number of Marvell’s poetry often centers around the soul and its qualities, notably in ‘A Dialogue, between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure’ and ‘On a Drop of Dew’. There is significant highlight of the soul’s spiritual and nature, along...

Monica Ali published her debut novel ‘Brick Lane’ in 2003 to much critical acclaim. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the novel tells the hardships faced by Nazneen, a young Bengali woman who is sent from her quiet rural village home to...

Shintoism is an ancient Japanese religion that initially focused on praying for good harvest with the start of Japan coinciding with the start of rice growing. Shinto followers believe in spirits that live in living things such as animals and...

Bernard Maclaverty’s Cal and Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother both present the larger conflicts of a country through the voice of a single protagonist. The violence plaguing the lands of both Northern Ireland and South Africa in the late 1900’s...

Throughout crime fiction such as ‘Atonement’ and ‘Brighton Rock’, unwitting characters fall to the machinations that antagonists - even immature antagonists - set for them. While some might argue that the characters in Graham Greene’s novel ‘...

Nature is a vital and powerful component of life. It has the power to provide, as well as the power to take away. Human life depends upon it, but can also be destroyed by it. We are forced to interact with it in numerous ways, but at the same time...

Evgeny Zamyatin was born and raised in Lebedyan, a small village located in the Russian countryside, before moving to St. Petersburg, the then Russian capital, in order to study engineering (Charnaya, date unknown). Therefore, Zamyatin had...

There is no glory in war; it only tears relationships apart and nobody returns home unscathed. In Joseph Boyden’s novel Three Day Road, the true horrors and realities of war are revealed. Through the characters of Xavier and Elijah, the historical...

Feminine deviance, or the failure to adhere to societal standards set for women of the time, is a concept displayed by characters across many genres and eras, from William Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth to Ernest Hemingway’s Lady Brett Ashley, but...

Throughout the life of each and every human, waves of cascading happiness, sorrow, confusion, anger, and relief will be evoked; a person can be triggered to undergo an endless number of these emotions, and each person reacts to such feelings in...

Inasmuch as the human psyche has a prospect for advancement and evolution, the human mind must contrive a plane of imagination upon which certain concepts and taboos can be explored and grappled with, for most of life comes from fiction, not fact....

Densely populated with similes, allusions, and speeches, John Milton’s Paradise Lost takes Satan’s fall from Heaven and expands it into a meditation on hierarchy, knowledge, and power. Though Satan’s main vendetta against God is established in his...

Most Canadians when asked what the traditional family looks like will tell you that there is a mother, and a father, and their children, living together, and providing for each other. This is the standard, and simple, image of a family. Joan...

While we often cast aside shock value as a cheap method of producing a volatile reaction from readers and filmgoers, the fact remains that decay, disfigurement, and other elements of the grotesque are capable of establishing a theme and perhaps...

Are you aware that the idea of courage or bravery does not have an exact definition? In fact, it can be depicted in many different ways. For example, one of the many definitions of bravery could be having a strong moral sense of duty and the need...