Newest Literature Essays

‘I started getting interested in the language, in trying to get through the opaque screen that a translation can’t help being to see what Seneca had actually said’ (CARYL CHURCHILL on her translation of Thyestes).

Translations of a text that has...

“Of the four characters in the play, George is the character most adept at ‘doing things with words’” How far do you agree with this statement?

The phrase, ‘doing things with words,’ can be interpreted in different ways; one effective way to...

Throughout both The Rape of the Lock and Gulliver’s Travels, Pope and Swift both place the faults and vices of 18th Century Britain at the thematic forefront of their writing, with a particular focus on satirizing the upper echelons of the...

Henry James’ popular novel The Turn of the Screw is often subjected to re-examination because the writing is saturated with ambiguity preventing the reader from deriving a definitive resolution. This ghost story provides both faith in and distrust...

In Jostein Gaarder’s philosophical novel Sophie’s World, Sophie learns about the history of philosophy, concluding with the truth about her own existence. Throughout this, many motifs are prevalent—the mirror, the boat, dreams, constant...

Living in a world surrounded by people whom function in a different way could cause one to feel left out, but finding another person, fiction or non-fiction that shares similar characteristics can help solve that issue. In Mark Haddon’s The...

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006) by Maggie O’Farrell presents the powerlessness of women through Esme’s fate in the institution after her refusal to conform to married life, and also via Kitty’s expectations to become a wife and mother (and...

A commonality among most of the human race is the fear of what aging does to the body. Crafting a character famous for a sharp mind, not for bodily infirmity, Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes to life and into the homes of many through...

Playwrights, unlike the authors of novels and other forms of literature, employ the use of production elements and stage designs in the development of their works. These additional aspects present within the creation of theatre grant playwrights...

Cyclical Time Structure in One Hundred Years of Solitude Narrative structures vary from novel to novel as a technique that aides in the advancement of the plot and enhances the clarification of the literary devices employed throughout the story....

Noah David PerryMrs. WellsAromatic Symbols In Time Within a novel, authors incorporate and implement symbols into their works in order to transfer more detailed ideas and deeper meanings through to the reader; ideas richer than what they actually...

Scent and hatred in the novel Perfume Everyone has characteristics that define or individualize them. Without these characteristics, it becomes difficult for one to be considered unique. The novel Perfume, by Patrick Suskind, presents a character,...

Bildungsroman novels are identified by the grueling quest a protagonist undergoes in his search for place in society. The experiences the protagonist undergoes within this search contribute to their moral and psychological growth, building to one...

In his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn illustrates the struggle for survival zeks faced within the GULAG. He elucidates this effectively through the portrayal of a day’s experiences in the life of Ivan...

Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, which follows Rasselas and his companions as they search for the choice of life that generates the most happiness, influenced Johnson’s generation so profoundly that the period from...

A theme that is immediately apparent in Pushkin’s The Shot is “the noble man with a romanticized view of life”. This theme was common during the Romantic Era, the period in which Pushkin wrote, but is important for more than historical reasons; in...

In Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Lady Russell convinces Anne not to marry Frederick Wentworth as she finds him unworthy of Anne. Similarly, in Hedda Gabler, Hedda herself conceals her knowledge of and destroys Eilert’s manuscript in order to end his...

“V” is a poem in which Tony Harrison illustrates the working class hostility towards the political establishment and Margret Thatcher’s government during the 1984 miner’s strike. However, it also focuses on the unity between himself and his “woman...

Myths are essential to the human race. The Greeks and Romans used them to explain nature, life and death. Abrahamic and Eastern religions use them to modify behavior and mollify human anxiety about what happens postmortem. In order to keep a myth...

After WWII, many soldiers returned home to a new world. As more and more females joined the workforce, the American identity shifted from a primarily male dominated society to an integrated society between men and women. The burdens of everyday...

The popular children’s book The Giving Tree tells the story of a tree that loves a boy so completely and selflessly that it is willing to give up everything it has for the boy. Gilbert Grape is a realistic version of just that—a young man who...

The facade of Bentrock, Montana, is the idyllic, but dull, American frontier town. Ordinary people working long hours in the fields each day to provide for their families. To strive for, and eventually live the American Dream, is the essence of...

When reading a book as brilliant as The Brother’s Karamazov, one wonders where Dostoevsky’s inspiration came from. According to Sigmund Freud, the novel must not be studied as a fiction but as a science, that being psychology. It seems that the...

In his play Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov uses many writing techniques to convey a sense of breakdown in communication. While his play has elements of humor in it, making it seem almost farcical at times, Chekhov was truly concerned about the lack of...