Newest Literature Essays

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes the disagreeable actions of the people encountered by Huck on his adventures in order to accentuate the hypocrisy exhibited in these actions. Such actions, unfortunately, are commonplace...

To battle against your own family members to the death over a political dispute seems unfathomable, but has been a reality of history. The Irish Civil War began when the Irish had to decide if they wanted to accept partial freedom from Great...

The concept of war is both gruesomely tragic, and deeply absurd. Through their respective texts, Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five, authors Joseph Heller and George Roy Hill capture the very essence of war, and it’s tragic absurdity, though...

Throughout their poems, authors Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Bronte convey their ideas regarding the despair they have felt throughout their lives, and in particular the concept that ‘thing fall apart’. Through a range of engaging...

Lantana, directed by Ray Lawrence, is an Australian film that follows the lives of a group of people living in Suburban Sydney, as they attempt to navigate their relationships with the ones they love. The film explores intense themes of betrayal,...

Fly Away Peter, by David Malouf, details not only the horrors of war, but the beauty of innocence found in Australian wildlife. In essence, Malouf expresses the concept of binaries, in particular the contrast between innocence and experience, and...

When viewers deconstruct the exaggeration, grandeur, and boldness of Baroque art they usually focus on overly exaggerated and unrestrained representations of lighting, motion, and surrounding decoration. By contrast, the themes of literature seem...

To consider the social function of art is to endeavor to contemplate a question that has haunted great literary critics since the Greek philosophers Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Two minds that both considered and offered explanations to this...

Algernon is a comic to a contemporary audience because of his dandyism, his enjoyment of self-gratification, his inverted morals and his double life. Wilde presents Algernon as a dandy figure who is more concerned with style over substance;...

In American culture today the pressure to fit into the societal norms is more prevalent than ever. By establishing very clear standards for “fitting in”, the dominant culture makes the idea of approval seem easily achievable. However, unknown to...

I encountered a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself. - James Baldwin

James Baldwin's writings are most famous for their complexity of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies during 20th century America. His...

Imperfection, like mortality itself, is an integrated aspect of being human. Most people, however, try to mask theirs through self-importance and ambition. Self-importance and ambition help to promote self-confidence and the illusion of perfection...

"For what it's worth: It's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Every year, hundreds of thousands...

In the play ‘An Inspector Calls’, the character of the Inspector is used as a dramatic device in a number of different ways which all help the play to become more interesting and gripping. In this essay, I shall aim to analyse and explore these...

“It’s worth everything, isn’t it, to keep one’s intellectual liberty, not to enslave one’s powers of appreciation, one’s critical independence?” (164). Questioning the concepts of true freedom and liberty, the overall theme presented throughout...

In life, reading is a gift. Reading often remains an instrumental component of growth, change, and influence. At times, reading literature delivers a magical power that can reveal new worlds and perspectives to people. Beginning in 1966, The...

In “The Woman Question,” Stephen Leacock uses empty stereotypes that he cannot support with evidence to argue why women are unable to progress in society. He does not have any evidence because women have never been given the opportunity to prove...

Mentors play an important role in shaping the values and morals of the individuals they guide; however, the impact of their contribution ultimately depends on their understanding of the individual’s inherent characteristics. Both Elia Kazan’s film...

Hardy’s novels are grounded in a realist portrayal of a society defined by constant advancement. The preceding Enlightenment era developed a sense of shedding traditional values in pursuit of intellectual evolution, and this only accelerated into...

Both Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Rebecca are texts in which social class proves to be a factor in the relationships between lovers. Tess is born into a low class poor family, which significantly alters the outcome of events in her life....

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) is a novel of society and manners, following two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, in their bids for love and marriage. Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth (1905) focuses on New York’s high society and...

Trauma survivors often cope by investing their entire energy into silencing and suppressing the harrowing events of the past. One such survivor is Anton Steenwijk, the protagonist of Harry Mulisch’s 1982 novel, The Assault. Especially in the first...

Asian Americans began immigrating to the United States in large numbers in the 19th century, during a time when xenophobia and nativism were rife. The arrival of the so-called “yellow peril” led to discrimination and racism against these new...

In both Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje and The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp, the male protagonist is deeply affected by a problem-drinking father. In The Lesser Blessed, Larry Sole’s father becomes physically and sexually abusive...