Newest Literature Essays

In Victor Pelevin’s novel, The Yellow Arrow, there is an evident string of symbols and metaphors which represent the harsh conditions of the Russian people during the early 1990’s. One of the literally largest symbols in the novel was the train...

As Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein delves deeper into his search for the causes of life, he becomes consumed by his quest for the answer to his question as he toils over his creation – a decrepit but mortal form compiled of...

The question of what it means to be a woman has been floating through society for ages with any sort of permanent or universally accepted answer remaining elusive. It is a constantly changing definition in which traits appropriate to the time are...

The 1910’s and early 1920’s were littered with sob-stories about men who gave their lives for their country in the first world war. Poetry, songs, radio plays and indeed, many novels are dedicated to this subject. These stories nearly all centered...

Death is an inevitable factor of life, one which all of humanity must eventually face. What varies among people is how they handle this ‘coming of the end’. Some accept it with grace and tranquility, while others fight it until their dying breath....

Louise Erdrich’s novels Love Medicine and Plague of Doves are filled with a multitude of characters. These characters are different from one another with their own struggles and problems but are connected, not just by blood but by their shared...

Shakespeare’s “Richard III” mainly concerns itself with the royal court under the rule of the Yorks; however, occasionally, Shakespeare takes a break from portraying the lives of noblemen. These window scenes provide the audience with insight as...

A revenge tragedy is a genre of play, popularized in the seventeenth century, in which the protagonist pursues revenge for real or perceived abuses. Thee tragedies typically employ a number of the same conventions, such as escalating causes for...

The mind-body divide, or mind-body dualism, was a philosophical theory that gained popularity in the seventeenth century and flourished thereafter. In this theory, the mind and body are separate entities, and in literature, this meant that men...

Two opposite societies, one of luxury with severe conditioning and conformity, and another of liberty with savagery and sacrifice, coexist in a modern era. In the dystopian novel, Brave New World, author Aldous Huxley juxtaposes these two...

Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady presents the reader with a novel that uses literary form in an attempt to frame the life of its female protagonist; the very title – ‘Portrait’ – expresses a double meaning, referring both to the representation...

The rise of the novel is one of the most frequently debated literary themes in the history of literature. Scholars have always been divided in two factions that argue whether Beware the Cat by William Baldwin or Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is...

Ralph Waldo Emerson is generally remembered as one of the most influential writers of the American Renaissance. He is the father of the philosophical movement Transcendentalism, that is, the American equivalent of the European movement...

Literature is one of the best ways to understand a culture. Through literature, in fact, it is possible to analyze the customs and traditions of a specific society and to comprehend its way of life. While the Homeric poems, for instance, offer a...

Heda Margolius Kovály’s Under a Cruel Star recalls the social and political struggles in Prague between 1941 and 1968 that resulted directly from the Second World War and its aftermath during the Stalin era. Under a Cruel Star is a fantastic...

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late 14th Century, featuring several tales loosely linked together that revolve around typical medieval lifestyles with its many modern day parallels. Marriage was a popular theme for debate...

Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl communicates strong messages about both society’s expectations of women, and the way that certain things told to someone can have a large impact on them. The piece is written in the form of a continuous list. This style...

Discovery is the process of unveiling a fresh or renewed understanding of the world which may be the result of an unexpected journey or experience. While relinquishing societal norms can result in the most profound revelations which may be...

Distinctive representations of the symbiotic relationship between natural landscapes and people are reinforced through personal and socio-cultural contexts. Such representations can be brought about through travel, often renewing an individual’s...

Intertextual perspectives of personal and political ideals are often shared by composers, regardless of forms and contexts, due to controversial periods of history causing the historical paradigms to resonate with audiences. Fritz Lang’s film...

The representation of science is a trope often used in Gothic Literature. In this essay, I will compare how two Gothic texts, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and “The Stolen Bacillus” by H. G. Wells, represent...

Though at times confusing, using a contradiction strongly establishes and emphasizes a point and often inspires an emotional response. In George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell effectively delivers these contradictions, or...

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, explores the emotional and spiritual consequences of sexism in the early 1900’s. During this time, women were legally viewed as the property of their husbands, and were often shamed for things like sexual...

Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectation is recognized as one of the most important examples of bildungsroman, that is, a “novel of personal development or education” of its main character (Rau). In this novel, using a first-person narrative,...