Newest Literature Essays

“This man had appeared from nowhere. He had killed in front of my eyes to save my life. I dropped to the ground before him, trying to find the words to thank him” (Hearn, 9). It was after this heroic act of Otori Shigeru from “Across the...

“The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy” – Richard Wright.

Although Zora Neale...

Stories are an important part of society, an element that provides humanity with a way to connect, separate, cry, laugh, be happy or be sad. In fact, life is nothing but a story. Human history is a story. The universe is just a massive collection...

In the children’s classic Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie we are introduced to the concept of never growing up, embodied in the young title character. This refusal to grow was a result from denying his eventual responsibilities as an adult. Throughout...

In the chapter “Go Down, Matthew” of Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, Dr. Matthew O’Connor, speaking to an ex-priest at the Café de la Mairie du Vie after an extensive and exhausting session of consoling a lamenting Nora Flood, relates himself and the...

After the post-humous publication of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, the poet exploded into the scene of second wave feminism, widely regarded as a victim of her mental illness and the men in her life. While the tragedy of Plath’s life is inseparable from...

Traumatic events leave an unforgettable imprint on people. Often, it is the way in which people handle trauma that determines how they will move on with their lives. Bharati Mukherjee’s “The Management of Grief” discusses the bombing of a plane...

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

The Princess Bride is a cultural phenomenon at this point, as a loving satire of the fantasy genre. The movie catapulted this story to its popular culture status, and...

In literature, different settings are often used to explain the production of different types of characters with varied opinions, personalities, and morals. On top of this, the setting is often used to carry a specific idea or emphasize the goal...

Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino’s arguably most popular film, is a complex pastiche of popular culture. Its unique blend of dark humor, violence, and nonlinear and disjointed storytelling, as well as its willingness to throw genres together with...

Ambiguous text, written in such a way that the wording can be interpreted with multiple meanings, is used regularly in literature as a means of creating deeper significance in the passage. This is demonstrated in the memoirs Teaching a Stone to...

“The Poison Tree” from William Blake’s Songs of Experience is a poem that tells the story of one who is engulfed by the hatred felt towards a foe. This individual begins with telling the fury they experienced toward a friend who is told told of...

If a student tells his or her teacher that adhering to grammatical rules proves unnecessary to acceptable writing, the teacher would in all likelihood balk at the student’s claim and continue reinforcing the need for proper punctuation. If someone...

Ray Bradbury may have chosen Doug to be the twelve-year-old protagonist in Dandelion Wine, but I remain convinced that Bradbury took a pencil and paper to my childhood. Part of the reason why Doug’s character resonates with me so much stems from...

In America, according to the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”. Unfortunately, this previous statement was not completely accurate in many ways concerning American citizens. The term “equality” is reserved to a specific...

The book, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, written by an anonymous female, focuses on the social history during the capture of Berlin by the Red Army in 1945 and how it led to violent acts of rape against Berlin women. The end...

In his poem Hymn of Not Much Praise for New York City, Thomas Merton effectively describes a society governed by immorality, fueled by materialism, and spawning inhumanity. It is derived from a mindset focused solely on the achievement of wealth,...

The narrative of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is expressed in the form of a long, heartfelt from a dying father to his young son. Intended to be read after his imminent passing, John Ames III writes to capture his moral sentiments and life advice...

A fetish object assumes distinct, almost superstitious power and is often associated with sexual gratification, desire, and worship. As explained in “Sexualization in the Media," “Fetishization marks a cultural, psychological, and social technique...

Living in a major American city, we have no trouble identifying that those in need are all around us. People ask for spare change on the subway so that they can get a meal; people hold cardboard signs that read, “Anything helps.” Throughout...

The book The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil illustrates the change in societal values during the Wilhelmine Period of 1890-1914. Under Wilhelm the second, the German Empire was reined on ideals that were found on economic liberalism...

One of the deadliest wars in world history, World War I, lasted from July of 1914 until November of 1918. This was one of the first wars to be defined as a global war. This essentially means that all of the world ‘s superpowers were fighting and...

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, is a classic example of a traditional Gothic novel, despite the fact that it isn’t scary. Gothic literature received its name because many examples of the genre were set during the late-medieval, or...

Gender roles are learned mainly through social interaction rather than biologically. When people are born, they are supplied with very little knowledge of gender. Certain behavior is taught by means of social interactions and through relationships...