Newest Literature Essays

Macbeth has been performed by many different groups and companies throughout the years because it is perhaps one of the most potent political statements in Western drama, and perhaps one of Shakespeare’s best scripts. Though the PBS and RSC...

According to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, ‘man is an enigma to himself’.[1] In his seminal work The Undiscovered Self, Jung notes how man’s world revolves around what he believes himself to be, what he thinks is right and what he believes he is...

One boy. One gun. That was all it took for the tragic events of April twenty- second. Author Walter Dean Myers explains all of the details leading up to the shooting incident in the novel Shooter. The story is made from mostly interviews with...

Does following orders and laws justify allowing the mass persecution of a race? Is protecting one’s family a viable reason to tolerate the mistreatment of the Jews? During the Nuremberg trials, judges ruled simply following orders was an...

The story of “Little Red Riding Hood” contains many aspects that surprised me upon reading the tale again as adult. In fact, taking a look at most of the classic fairy tales that are told to children at a later time in life often reveals different...

"Promises like Piecrust" by Christina Rossetti relates a narrative between a speaker and beloved in regards to the other’s romantic attraction towards the speaker. The title of the poem is taken from the expression ‘Promises are like pie crust,...

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are — that is the fact. - Jean-Paul Sartre

In the novel Giovanni's Room, author James Baldwin invites his readers to journey to Paris post-World War II. The San Francisco...

“The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.” - Paolo Bacigalupi

Czeslaw Milosz and Osip Mandelstam are two poets who have survived many tragedies during their...

Whether it be a gender hierarchy or a power system organized by income, human society has frequently fallen back on some form of an unequal power dynamic. Unfortunately, this type of structure can be extremely damaging to those at the bottom of...

The autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis follows the journey of Marjane Satrapi’s life as she experiences the dangers of the Iran war. Satrapi’s narrative provides a personal look into life during the Iran war, following her throughout not...

“I Grieve, and Dare Not Show My Discontent” is a three-stanza poem written by Queen Elizabeth I that allegedly features Francis, the French Duke of Anjou as her beloved. Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth I entertained many suitors to get what...

Watching friends die, being shot at, and dealing with the fact that death is looming around every is a reality for soldiers regardless of what side they are fighting on. Vietnam was an extremally controversial war, and much of the nation was...

Several of the most famous stories told to young children were Aesop’s fables, creative stories designed to teach valuable life lessons. One of the most memorable to me was the fable about the lion that spared a mouse’s life and was later rescued...

Throughout both Shakespeare's Hamlet and Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, the disparity between how things seem and how they really are is a constant underlying motif; the depth in which both plays examine the concept of appearance and reality...

Nonfiction novels are a genre of book that employ all devices of a fictional piece, however all of the information is completely factual. Though legitimate, the integrity of the writer still can be called into question, depending on the portrayal...

Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor, once said that "Monsters exist, but they are far too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act...

In the novel Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong,the shifts in the government, cultural, and social factors in Vietnam under the implementation of communism are illustrated through the use of symbols, such as sticky rice.In the beginning of...

The disregard for all ethical expectations of humanity can be a result of the pressure to execute one’s job regardless of the consequences for those in one’s vicinity. This was often the case in Europe during the 1900s when the death sentence was...

In the grace period of Australia’s colonial development, many cultural assumptions and ideas were created in response to the increase of British immigration. Australia was a home away from home, a land of opportunity and adventure that allowed the...

In the poem ‘The Map Woman’, Carol Ann Duffy uses the extended metaphor of a map being printed on a woman’s body to explore ideas surrounding hometowns, childhood and nostalgia. This is immediately introduced in the first line where the reader...

When Laila is introduced at the beginning of part two, the reader recognises that she represents the new, modern ideals that stem from the communist revolution in 1979. From being called ‘Revolutionary girl’ by her teacher, due to her being born...

The American Avant-Garde poet Gertrude Stein once commented that “You are all a lost generation!” in reference to post-World War One society. Immortalized in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the phrase has come to symbolize a unique generation in...

The novelist of Brighton Rock, Graham Greene, is said to always have been interested in the metaphysical questions involved in Catholicism and its doctrine: what is the essence of survival and existence; what is the real purpose of God and the...