Newest Literature Essays

Edward Abbey’s second novel, The Brave Cowboy, is intensely critical of modern life. The book celebrates wide-open spaces and freedom through consistent comparison to an adjacent reality: the hustle and bustle of the city. As the novel continues,...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a committed abolitionist who viewed slavery as an abomination and the Civil War as a just cause for the Union, as long as it resulted in an end to slavery and subsequent reconciliation between the North and South. “...

A melodrama is a film which appeals to the emotions of its audience, on a higher level than the simple “drama” genre. The characters of a melodrama are often stereotyped and exaggerated to indicate something about the culture of the times, making...

Jamaica Kincaid has portrayed troubled mother-daughter relationships extensively throughout her work, but her 1978 story “Girl," from her first short story collection At the Bottom of the River, remains her most succinct depiction of this theme....

In the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the main character, Gogol, is forced to adjust to many different environments as he ages; including Calcutta, the different apartments he occupied throughout college, and his ex-girlfriend Maxine’s...

Written during The Year Without Summer of 1816, Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness” reveals a world of chaos and pervading death due to the unremitting darkness and cold from the blocked out sun, the result of the dust in the air from a...

J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings is one of the bestselling books of all time and has captured the imaginations of readers for decades. The story became even more popular when in 2001 director Peter Jackson released his...

First acknowledged by Francis Galton in 1874, birth order remains a psychological theory within social sciences today. The theory itself states that the order of the birth of siblings establishes certain predetermined traits for each child....

Why would a writer choose to write a Christian allegory? It is not a new concept, nor is it easy to create a presentation of the Christian allegory with new and interesting insight to captivate readers. Bunyan wrote his Christian allegory, The...

In the memoir Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf reminisces on a sailing trip she experienced when she was younger. She is walking in the boring streets of London when she thinks of something that was more exciting. Afternoon sailing is revealed to...

Edward Albee’s The Goat and Sam Shephard’s Buried Child are both twentieth-century Pulitzer prize winners, two compositions which reveal challenges to conventional norms of family, love, and relationships. Both of these plays display numerous...

Humbert Humbert, Nabokov’s protagonist in his masterpiece Lolita, will rarely miss a chance to prove to the reader that he is as smart and well-read as they come. The references are vast, from Poe to Joyce to Freud... and one element that seems to...

In Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment he shows through Svidrigailov that there is potential goodness in even the most vicious men. Svidrigailov’s redeeming quality in the novel (similar to Raskolnikov with Sonya) is the pure female character that...

In a certain Nobel Prize acceptance speech delivered in Stockholm in 1950, William Faulkner famously declines to accept the end of man. Elaborating, Faulkner goes on to promise that “man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” This faith, he...

In Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is a text that begs to be understood from some of the philosopher’s more well-known concepts including the categorical imperative, which is introduced in the book as a way of evaluating...

In his essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Stuart Hall argues that “identity is not as transparent or as unproblematic as we think.” He goes on to suggest that we “think… of identity as a ‘production,’ which is never complete, always in...

Autobiography has often been a response to moments of historical crisis. Diaries such as those of Anne Frank who wrote about the hardships of living in Nazi Germany as a Jew, the Bronte Sisters who wrote of the era in which they lived, and Nelson...

Longfellow first published his poem “A Psalm of Life” in 1836 in the literary magazine The Knickerbocker. As one might intuit from the name of the publication, that magazine was New York-based and Yankee-centric. A much wider readership was...

In the essay “Poets and Personal Pronouns," Augusta Webster discusses the amount of personal expression that a poet inserts into his or her own work. She delves into the differences between a novelist and poet and elaborates on the importance of...

Through history, civilizations and cities have typically put men in positions of authority, showing their dominance in society and giving them all the power. Ancient Sumeria was a refreshing sight in contrast to this. Evidence from literature and...

John Keats’ canonical Romantic poem “Lamia” emphasizes natural malevolence despite intention. Within “Lamia,” the reader is told of the titular character Lamia’s desire to have Lycius love her. Although her way to human form is not necessarily...

The theme of death in the Harry Potter series provides researchers with a substantial amount of material to absorb, as this topic is of great importance for understanding J.K. Rowling’s message clearer. However, past critics concentrated...

“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning is a Victorian poem that demonstrates the power of voice. This poem is narrated by the Duke of Ferrara who uses his voice to gain control of those around him. He even speaks for his deceased wife, only...

Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” is a heartwarming and inspiring narrative. Welty takes readers on a dangerous, vulnerable, slightly thrilling, and heartening journey that works to remind people of the power of limitless and unconditional love. Welty...