Newest Literature Essays

Upon arrival in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel and his companions are shocked by unspeakable atrocities, and quickly are reduced to instinct. “We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted...

The Brontë sisters utilized particular spaces in their novels as places of transgression and feminine power, often allowing characters to transcend the confines of civil society, and to commune more closely with the natural world. In Jane Eyre, ...

Charlotte Brontë’s Villette revolves around the myriad cycles and seasons of life. Lucy Snowe traverses from place to place, witnessing different stages of life and yearning for her own fulfillment of elusive experiences. Lucy’s introspections...

“But man is not made for defeat…A man can be defeated but not destroyed”. These eternal lines from Hemingway’s novel, The Old Man and the Sea reflect the strong Christian motif of hope and resurrection that is present as a strong undertone in the...

Traditional Gothic characteristics were originally exemplified by Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. This text was the first novel of its kind to introduce, a suspenseful atmosphere, ancient prophecies, and metonymy of horror. Novels and stories...

Every coming out story must deal with the characters’ struggles of being in the closet. The stage of not yet being able to be open about one’s identity can be the most difficult and turbulent point in dealing with their queer identity. It is a...

Arthur Miller confronts the “weight of truth," "weight of authority," and the "weight of law" in The Crucible. This play expresses the different complications that come along with having to bear each "weight." Many characters in the play conform...

“If I decide to be indecisive, that’s my decision,” is a famous quote from one of the most prominent poets of the Mersey Sound era, Roger McGough. Since the vast majority of the poets from this era were very close friends and performed their works...

For the Ancient Greeks, the concept of love was divided into six different categories: in particular, eros represented the idea of sexual passion and desire. While current societies tend to glorify this variety of romantic love, Greek culture...

Prozac Nation chronicles a bright 19-year-old woman’s struggle with depression. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Wurtzel is an aspiring writer and freshman at Harvard University. With a childhood plagued by divorce and abandonment, Lizzie has a history of...

The poem “A City’s Death by Fire” by Derek Walcott is a semi-autobiographical poem, a recollection of the Great Fire of 1948 in Central Castries (the capital and largest city of St. Lucia). The Great Fire attacked three quarters of the town and...

As conceptualized by Luce Irigaray, notions of self-affective touch are present in, and in fact are immensely important to, Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. Irigaray conceives of touch as necessarily constituting tact, which calls...

Many people believe that total equality for any race, sex, or religion is worth the effort. Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” focuses on individuals’ greatest qualities and the altering of them to exceed the average standard. For...

Reading a Dostoevsky book doesn’t give us any insight into the mind of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky almost never makes a blanket statement in his books, and, in general, very few opinions voiced by characters in his novels can be traced back to...

Through his work, A Mad World, My Masters, Thomas Middleton challenges the viewer’s perspectives on adultery by portraying it as comical, rather than starkly reproachable. During the first four acts of A Mad World, My Masters, the play seems to...

One of the most universally acknowledged beliefs states that there is no bond as strong, forgiving, and irreplaceable as a mother’s love for her child. On the contrary, poet Seamus Heaney challenges this conviction throughout his poem “Bye-Child”...

Of the consequences of maintaining an obsessive nature, its ability to cloud rational judgements and encourage humanity to surrender to his darkest, innermost impulses serves as one of its most tragic aspects. Robert Browning explores this concept...

Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner claim, is a newly invented field of study that address the unexpected questions that others fail to explore. As a result, their book discusses and relates a variety of strange yet important topics,...

To a certain extent, Orwell harnesses Winston and Julia’s romantic relationship as the antidote to their oppression. Not only is it the ultimate transgression due to the fact they care about one another more than the state and for a brief time...

The most dreaded lesson in the eyes of a child is the concept of “no.” While most children eventually realize that not everything in the world is available for their taking, the select few who neglect to recognize their limitations inevitably grow...

In Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe, the author tells a story about a boy named Hiram who comes back to Greenwood, Mississippi to visit his Grandfather. When he revisits and goes down memory lane, he discovers that a lot of things have...

Sadly, in today’s world, we do not trust many people but ourselves; with the influences of social media and celebrity culture, we think that we are worth more than others. In The Hunger Games, however, without trusting others you won’t survive....

Widely celebrated as a cornerstone text of the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella Passing is concerned with its titular subject in more ways than one. While racial passing undoubtedly constitutes the text’s thematic center, Larsen’s...

In Plato’s The Symposium, Plato details the events of a dinner party, a symposium for which the work derives its namesake, comprised of a group of seemingly well-educated individuals. Plato tells the story of the symposium and the dialogue of the...