Newest Literature Essays

The nature of power within Looking for Richard both reflects that which is represented in Richard III and extends or alters it to be incorporated into a modern context, appropriate for a wider, contemporary audience. Richard III is a Shakespearian...

The famous Italian priest Thomas Aquinas once said: “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” How does the loss of a friend affect a human being? In Herbert Mason’s retelling book Gilgamesh: A verse narrative, the...

Discoveries that challenge what one does in their everyday lives and what one sees as acceptable allows them to reassess their place in the world and forces greater understanding of it. Through viewing the world through fresh eyes, one offers...

Composers undermine institutions of power to show the unethical values of government with strict systematic control while also conveying how this influences the behaviors of society through creating a lack of individualism. Aldous Huxley’s novel ‘...

The Battle of Maldon uses linguistic tools to glorify the military capabilities of the Saxons, who are in reality the losing side, while minimizing the victory of the invading Vikings. Through use of language the poem eternalizes both individual...

Aravind Adiga’s Epistolary novel “The White Tiger” is, at its core, a tale of “rottenness and corruption,” told through the eyes of Balram Halwai, a man born to “the darkness” of India. The narrative comments upon the vast inequalities of...

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here" reads the Gates of Hell in Dante Alighieri's The Inferno. After awakening at the bottom of a hill, Dante learns that he must descend through Hell, the Inferno, to reach Paradise. Virgil appears to Dante as his...

The state of nature and the emergence of the human capacity to reason has been a common interest for writers throughout history. John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke, all address these issues in their works, "On Liberty" ,...

In Ridley Scott’s 1982 film “Blade Runner” a strong element of oppressive slavery pervades throughout the film. The people of earth, set in the year 2019, have developed a human like species in which they refer to as ‘Replicants’. These creations...

The Trial is the most well-known novel of Franz Kafka, published in Berlin in 1926. The original manuscripts were collected and prepared fo publishing by Max Brod, Kafka’s closest friend, two years after the author’s death. Brod says that the...

In a dichotomy that continues to plague media representations of female sexuality to this day, biblical women have a strong history of falling into one of two unflattering characterizations: victim or villain. Particularly where sexuality is...

History is written by the victorious, the dominating nation, the ruling class, and subaltern voices are overpowered and unheard. Jean-Francois Lyotard, in his The Postmodern Condition, critiques the historical master-narrative, the vision of...

Barbie doll as a popular icon in American culture has been carried with a long history. However, it is also a controversial toy that often critic by its unrealistic body image and the women stereotype imposed on her. Marge Piercy’s poem presents...

Benedick as an Entertaining Outsider

One of Much Ado About Nothing’s most beloved characters is Benedick, a willful and theatrical lord who vows to never be married. Throughout the play he demonstrates himself to be an entertainer to such an...

George Carlin famously said “When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts”. This quote couldn’t be more relevant in Dave Eggers novel The Circle...

Whilst identity in the modern day setting is seen as a fundamental right, in the seemingly dystopian society of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, identity is robbed by the government to create a subservient society. As is common with...

When it came to modernist poetry, imagery was important to flesh out the lavish artistic style said poets loved to express, which in turn allowed them to declare themes and concepts clearer. T.S. Eliot, consider among the great poetic modernists,...

‘The Coquette’ by by Hannah W. Foster is about a young woman, Eliza Wharton, who has an inclination towards coquettish behaviors. The story is a series of letters that warns Eliza about the danger of her life choices, which is primarily a choice...

Throughout the many relationships in Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things, love, both familial and romantic, is presented as a beautiful, cruel, unjust, and empowering aspect of life. The story, told through the eyes of the young twins,...

The Last of the Mohicans is a novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826, set in upper New York wilderness in 1757, the book focuses on the French and Indian War (1754 – 1763). The book follows Alice and Cora Munro, Hawkeye, Chingachgook,...

Even without reading the acknowledgments in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, it is extremely apparent that she derives her inspiration from E. M. Forster’s Howards End. From the first line, the reader is able to start drawing parallels between the two...

Early in Hard Times, Dickens develops the portrait of Gradgrind in the classroom delivering a lesson centred on horses at his model school to his model students. Dickens carries Gradgrind’s factual theories, utilitarianism and educational system...

It is not difficult to see the parallels in the lives and works of Christina Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Both poets suffered bouts of depression, both were involved in the Tractarian movement – with Hopkins converting to Roman Catholicism...