Newest Literature Essays

Specific sharp phrases, simple yet elegant, are what make up Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving but Drowning”. However, this austere selection of phrases is what serves the most powerful and sensual shot of the sorrowful themes and emotions, that Smith...

Life is full of intricacy and irony. Escapism can turn into captivity. And in captivity, there may lie freedom. Incredulous and nonsensical as it may sound, one can indeed find freedom in imprisonment, or, at least, it appears valid in the case of...

Inaugurated as the queen of the mid-summer festival, Perdita stands on stage, in Act 4, Scene 4 of The Winter’s Tale, dressed in royal garments and draped in flowers. It is a moment of visual splendor, with the floral arrangements of Perdita’s...

The short story “Ark of Bones” by Henry Dumas was originally published posthumously in 1974. The story is based on a black person named Headeye who undergoes a mysterious experience to deliver his people. Dumas tells the story from the...

Both Waters and Stoker use narrative point of view to enhance their novels. This is achieved by the use of striking openings, the inevitable elements of unreliable narration in both novels, and how this links to themes of uncertainty as well as...

Every minute, approximately 105 individuals die. Each of these people represent a story of a life lived, and each death reminds their respective company of the finite time every human has on Earth. Although some may argue that death is a...

The word ‘absurd’ is derived from the Latin ‘absurdus,’ which consists of the prefix ‘ab’ denoting ‘from,’ and the stem ‘surdus’ meaning ‘deaf.’ ‘Deaf’ can be further interpreted as ‘unable to hear’ or, by implication, ‘unwilling to listen’. [1]...

Howard Hawks’ 1938 film Bringing Up Baby and Shakespeare’s Macbeth both demonstrate the chaos that occurs as a result of the subversion of convention and gender roles. Bringing Up Baby follows the expected trajectory of a screwball comedy as it...

Throughout childhood we are taught by movies and novels that the world is judged on an even scale of good or evil, while the gray area becomes exposed as we age. The idealism that evil is born and not made is an unjust classification of humanity’s...

Part I: Formalist Approach: James Joyce’s contemplative short story, “The Dead” examines the actions of a neurotic Irish intellectual, Gabriel Conroy, and his existential realizations following a revelation from his wife, Gretta. The story begins...

Idiostyle is a structurally united and internally related system of means and forms of verbal expression used by a writer, or simply an individual writing style. In linguistics, the concept of idiostyle is associated with a certain choice, the...

Elizabeth Bishop never considered herself a believer. “I dislike the didacticism, not to say condescension, of the practicing Christians I know,”[1] she wrote to her biographer Anne Stevenson in 1964. However, her poems suggest that her aversion...

As young kids we hold our parents to a supernatural standard, only to feel the same level of duty when we grow older and uphold the same mantel. In "My Father in Heaven Is Reading Out Loud," Li-Young Lee writes from a growing perception of his...

Adaptations are bodies of work separated from its actual source that have undergone various steps of reconstruction to complement the new mediums that they would get involved with. They ought to capture the essence of their counterparts—commonly,...

Not all of us may like baseball; in fact, there are some that hate the sport, but regardless of one’s feelings towards this sport, a good story is universally pleasing. Having a strong bond between the reader and the characters in a story is...

The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams has many formal qualities that make it stand out as one of the most prominent works of its genre in the twentieth century – its rich symbolism being the one that stands out most. Throughout...

Opposing the inherent evilness in Antonio, Gonzalo proves to be the perfect foil for Antonio in the Tempest. Besides Miranda, Gonzalo is the only character in the play who is the epitome of all that is good and just, in contrast to Antonio, who is...

Having personal strength is an important thing to have in a time of crisis. The film shows that leaders especially need to have personal strength because they go through a lot of challenges. The Queen shows perseverance as she faces one of the...

Late Victorian literature had often dealt with social issues and social evils with the intention of sketching the colossal role played by society itself in the making of its ills and immoralities. The student of literature can easily discern this...

William Faulkner was born in 1897 in Mississippi to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Faulkner. At a young age, William learned to be self-reliant by fending for himself. This experience in his childhood thus is believed to have significantly...

From its inception in the 18th century, the Gothic genre has mostly focused on the experience of wealthy white men. However, as the genre took hold in America, with its own haunting history of slavery and racial subjugation, American authors of...

In Orson Welles’s 1941 groundbreaking film, Citizen Kane, the eponymous, recently deceased, character Charles Foster Kane is portrayed as a hugely influential figure to society. The gossip around his enigmatic personal life and illustrious...

In Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, stylistic elements and a unique cinematographic style contribute to the slightly absurd narrative, forming a distinct, surreal world in which the characters exist. The plot...

Emily St John Mandel’s novel, ‘Station Eleven’, demonstrates the negative impacts of idolising success and indicates that truth and beauty are more fulfilling. She implies that inauthenticity blinds society from valuing art and connection which...