Newest Literature Essays

Christopher Marlowe’s play entitled, Doctor Faustus, tells the story of a curious and ambitious man who has grown tired of focusing on all of the traditional areas of study, and wishes to learn something less known by others. Faustus is intrigued...

In the play, Death and the Maiden, Ariel Dorfman employs symbolism through the characters and their actions to reflect aspects of the corrupt Chilean society that Dorfman himself lived through. Act II, scene i illustrates the symbols quite well,...

Both Han Kang and Anne Finch present the idea of impending death that cannot be avoided, however, both authors present the ideas in different ways as they are using different forms of writing to do so. In addition, both Kang and Finch use death...

The final glimpse given to the audience of the character Carolyn Burnham in Sam Mendes’ 1999 film, American Beauty, is a point-of-view shot taken from her husband’s perspective on a fast spinning carnival ride. Carolyn is thrilled and bursting...

In Fiela’s Child, the two families, the van Rooyens and the Komoeties, have a strong connection with animals, albeit not always a positive connection. The van Rooyens have a problem with elephants in the forest. The Komoeties’ ostriches give the...

In taking on the colossal notion of American culture, it would be ideal to begin with its inhabitants. The questions of what defines us and what we give value to are inherent challenges in themselves because the country is split by several...

“Postcolonialism can be seen as a theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia to the colonial aftermath. It is a disciplinary project dedicated to the academic task of revisiting, remembering, and, crucially, interrogating the colonial past”...

The mistaken identities of twins Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse, and their slaves Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse, facilitate the comedy upon which Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors pivots. A common feature of...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) composed the semi-autobiographical epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther at the young age of 24 and under the timespan of two months. This highly riveting “Briefroman,” as the genre is called in...

“A Summer Evening’s Meditation” is a poem by Anna Letitia Barbauld that was published in 1773. The poem details the expansive thoughts of the speaker who is reflecting and philosophizing upon a summer evening’s sky. In this poem, Barbauld carries...

With the imminent threat of global war looming over Europe, fear and hostility came to cast a shadow over the continent. A war that would almost decimate a generation of young men, became the reality for writers, poets, scholars, and artists who...

In the Southwestern United States, one doesn’t have to look far to find the damage done to the environment during the Anthropocene. It is apparent in droughts, dams, and heat that gets more extreme by the year. Some contemporary writers have found...

Guillermo Del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five mirror each other in that fact that both feature a main character who struggles to accept the realities of war, but the works vary in various ways. Details from both...

In the Russian novel A Hero of Our Time, translated by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov, author Mikhail Lermontov relates the travels of the alienated and manipulative Pechorin, an upper-class military officer struggling with fate in his attempts to...

"I already know a thing or two. I know it’s not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction or costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. I don’t know where. I only...

In a world where happy stories become sad stories and sad ones are transformed into happy ones, where “once upon a time” begins a tale of a police decoy on a drug bust, inversions of what is considered normal come to be expected. This world is San...

Gender roles of 18th century British society were seemingly set in stone. Men, who were presumed to be the superior of the sexes, were to hold all the power, both politically and domestically, and they were expected to exist, to some extent, in...

Sunset Boulevard: A Fresh Avenue for a Familiar Genre

In Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard, an unwitting male protagonist, played by William Holden, falls into the grips of (and is eventually murdered by) a dangerous and scheming former...

The purpose of a myth is to promote an ideology and to set standards for society. In this way, according to Bidney, the myth is the source of morality and religion (Myth, Symbolism, and Truth 22). This would explain the various connections between...

“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could only be given to traveling: namely, the strange” – Jane Jacobs.

In both The Roaring Girl and The Witch of Edmonton the figure of ‘the other’ emerges through the female characters...

In the 16th century, Niccolo Machiavelli stated on "The Prince" that leadership came mostly from theatrics. That is to say, to be a good leader one must first be a good actor, or at the very least be convincing enough to get the loyalty of the...

With the twentieth century now receded, students and scholars will return time and again to contributors of this century’s literary canon. In the realm of poetry, there are several candidates to consider, but one forceful contender for the list of...

Often criticized for its sensationalism, melodramatic qualities, and its play on the supernatural, the Gothic novel dominated English literature from its conception in 1764 with the publication of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole to its...

A soundtrack is essential to any movie, music is used in various ways by a director - to portray emotion, create and introduce relationships and to also make references to the time period. In Clueless music is mostly used to highlight the major...