Newest Literature Essays

Seen from the surface, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 27 is a lament for the absent beloved. However, when regarded from a more careful perspective, it rather implies a mental voyage that unveils the speaker’s inner reality and his state of mind. As in many...

Ever since it was released to the movie theatres in 1979, the sci-fi film Alien (directed by Ridley Scott) has instantly attained the status of a “cult-movie” – the development that was followed by the film’s inclusion into the list of 100...

Images of the vampire over time show a cohesive relationship with the genre of gothic literature because of its complex and contradictory nature. Gothic literature’s rise as the artistic interaction between the scientific and the supernatural...

A Fiend in Disguise in Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Connie, a 15 year old in Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a prideful and churlish girl who has a habit of belittling others and...

David Guterson’s 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars spans three days detailing the murder trial of Japanese-American fisherman and family man Kabuo Miyamoto, all the while shifting in and out of real time to discuss the events leading up to it....

Mani Ratnam produces and directs the film Guru, in which a young commoner has a dream to become a businessman. He succeeds despite obstacles and social constructs, but in the end his life in on trial for various corruptions and scandals. In 2007...

Commonly referenced in Western Europe and around the world, the story of the Faustian bargain—in which a remarkable individual trades soul and salvation for vast power—has appeared throughout history in poems, plays, newspapers, and novels...

“Neither man nor woman, neither and both, cyclic, lunar, metamorphosing under the hand’s touch, changelings in the human cradle, they were no flesh of mine, no friends; no love between us” (229). Genly Ai doesn’t think that he will ever be friends...

Ernest Hemingway is a profound writer who not only won the Nobel Prize, but also inspired the American writers who came after him to embrace minimalistic forms of expression. Just as Hemingway began writing, other authors also picked up his style...

The Seagull is a typical Chekhovian drama, part of a sub-genre which could be referred to as an "undramatic drama". It has little plot, and most of the plot's place is taken up by psychological portraits, lyricism, and a certain, truly ungraspable...

In the short stories "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and "A Party Down at the Square," authors Ursula LeGuin and Ralph Ellison depict desensitized scenes in which communities show an extreme lack of empathy to human beings receiving...

Natasha Trethewey often writes about the relationship we have with the past, a shared history that many wish to remember and forget at the same time. This internal conflict of memory presents itself throughout “Pilgrimage” in unexpected contrasts,...

When you are trying to find treasure, you follow the map. When you read a story, you listen to the narrator. Once you get to the final destination, you might not find treasure, a disappointment which would mean that you had a deceptive map....

Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game features an intense change in the protagonist’s morality and motivation. Prior to interacting with the alien race, the Buggers, Ender has a very logical, and strategic approach to his problems. He chooses to...

The story of how and why author Mary Shelley wrote the novel Frankenstein is a story within itself. Living as a young woman in 19th century England who experienced a notable amount of pain and loss was heavily reflected in her writing. Each aspect...

An astutely stated and compelling assertion that “perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be” brings light to one of the myriad disputes concerning what constitutes the core of any human being and whether...

The definition of a ‘crónica’ is a factual account of important or historical events in the order of their occurrence. García Márquez’s novel, far from being chronological, involves the chronic repetition and re-enacting of events over and over,...

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë employs a complicated narrative structure where characters’ stories are passed down a chain of narrators until they are finally recorded in a diary through an outsider’s perspective. This outsider is Lockwood, a...

Sewing is often viewed as a proper pastime for married women to engage in, even if it can often be laborious to do for hours on end. Yet, the women in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple managed to turn this monotonous activity into something...

There is something about donning on a uniform that makes a man feel invincible and demand the respect of those around him. When times are tough, people tend to look towards the uniformed man for guidance and to help pull them through a difficult...

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Kathy’s discovery of her world occurs simultaneously with the readers’. Except for the beginning, the readers travel through the same journey of discovery, excitement, and then the steady erosion of hope as the...

In Thomas Gray’s poem, “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes,” he shares a story about a cat named Selima while also teaching a lesson to readers. Even though the poem is amusing, it is written and arranged...

Traditionally, drama has been an outlet for the extraordinary; only fairly recently with more modernist plays have the focus been shifted onto more ordinary lives. Greek tragedy follows the fall of a noble protagonist; by comparison, domestic...

Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits is a whirlwind of color, sound, and magic, set in the midst of Chile’s 1970 socialist revolution. Although the novel paints a lucid portrait of Chile in tragedy, I would like to focus on the conclusively...