Newest Literature Essays

What is the meaning of life? Is life not a constant journey to finding the meaning of our existence? Is life about finding this meaning of existence or is it all about searching? One of the oldest epics in the world, “The Epic of Gilgamesh”,...

The anarchist is dead – this is perhaps the only ‘fact’ the text subscribes to throughout; everything else in the (performative) text is presented in a vaudevillesque fashion by bringing in a bizarre combination of different genres and techniques...

In a study of Voltaire’s Candide, the central critical discussion revolves around the final chapter. Candide’s epic journey finds its conclusion in a garden, where Candide and his companions are reunited and choose to spend the rest of their days...

In both the movie Seabiscuit by director Gary Ross and the novel Jasper Jones by author Craig Silvey, many heroes hidden in plain sight can be found. These characters are very similar in certain elements such as Johnny Pollard, who is also known...

The Scarlet Pimpernel can be seen in many different ways: a contrast between law and disorder, a war between different ideologies, or a personal fight between characters. In all of these interpretations, the victory of Sir Percy, the Scarlet...

There are two different types of captivity: being captive to an outside force or being captive to yourself. When most people think of captivity, they think of an outside force, someone restricting someone else through overt force. Yet the other...

History and individual testament as narrated in the novel Left to Tell, authored by Immaculée Ilibagiza clearly defines the trajectory of holocaust as springing up as a natural consequence of an established racism. In its embryonic stages, the...

Impregnating her narrative with rich symbolism, Immaculée Ilibagiza gives birth to the Left to Tell novel. She employs prolific imagery to clarify on the tenor of events during the Rwandan genocide. Descended from an inveterate Catholic home,...

An often-explored trope of both contemporary and classic literature is the utilization of somewhat morbid imagery to further a narrative or perhaps convey an underlying message in a vividly grotesque manner. One such example can be found within...

The potential for political meaning in the metaphors, allegories and allusions of Paradise Lost is rich for interpretations due to the shifting associations of political ideologies with various sides, in order to prove a spectrum of arguments. The...

Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Plato: All influential philosophers with differing opinions on what it means to be marked by morality. One situation in which the opinions of these philosophers could be used to evaluate the morality of a person is in...

Although very different in rhyme, tone and structure, both Woman’s Constancy and Song focus on the same theme: Women; in fact, though it may appear that these two poems have many differences, they are actually more similar than they at first...

Throughout Batter My Heart, the speaker is expressing his desire to be made new again and live a life without sin. The sense of unworthiness conveyed in this poem is mirrored in Love, as Herbert creates a speaker who believes himself unworthy of...

Jordan Baker is perhaps the most forgettable of The Great Gatsby’s core cast of characters. Even the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway himself, admits to having “lost sight of Jordan Baker” altogether for at least a few weeks of the narrative,...

Critics have long puzzled over what Emily Heady terms an “uneasy fusion” of genres in Charlotte Brontë’s final novel, Villette (341). Toeing the line between two dominant—and, in many regards, opposing—literary modes of the era, realism and Gothic...

When conducting a close reading of Dana Gioia’s “Pity the Beautiful,” the odd number of stanzas stands out; this observation is accentuated by the fact the third (and middle) stanza acts as a turning point in the poem. Sometimes, poets do this...

Masculine identity in The Song of Roland is grounded in emotional experience. From knights on the battlefield to King Charlemagne, men throughout the poem frequently weep or faint because of the intensity of their emotions. Contrary to...

Timothy Findley’s, The Wars, is an intriguing novel that outlines the physical and internal battles of individuals during World War I. This novel focuses on the troubled life, the main character, Robert Ross, leads as he tries to escape his guilt...

Quentin Blake and Neil Gaiman both utilize desire as a driving force in the plots of their works. Blake’s Mrs. Armitage on Wheels sees its protagonist desiring more out of her bicycle and using her creativity and mechanical prowess to enhance the...

According to Auden's essay "The Guilty Vicarage," the typical formula for a detective story is the "occurrence of a murder; then, many are suspected, all but one suspect, who happens to be the murderer, are eliminated; finally the murderer is...

The tensions between John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy and Henry Odera Oruka’s Mythologies as African Philosophy speak to the greater divide between ethnophilosophy and sagacious reasoning. The former is the practice of discussing the...

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water both respond to the presence of white influence within native cultures. Although the King and Dangarembga focus on different ethnic groups—First Nations people in...

Toni Morrison’s Sula and August Wilson’s Fences have countless similarities. The two stories, which at their cores revolve around African American struggles, showcase the complexities of being a person of color in a rapidly changing society....

Novels with a cast of primarily male characters can include varying amounts of feminist ideas. Although Giovanni’s Room mainly focuses on the lives of gay men, James Baldwin includes various feminist themes. Through the men in Giovanni’s Room, ...