Newest Literature Essays

Although she only lived to forty-one years of age and published a mere six works, Jane Austen was one of the most profound authors of the nineteenth century. Her first published work, penned when she was but nineteen years old, was Sense and...

William Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra and Samuel Johnson’s exploration of Shakespeare’s techniques and his verity within theatre in ‘The Plays of William Shakespeare' both engage the topic of the representation of reality. The play...

Despite the fact that Kurt Vonnegut ends the novel Slaughterhouse Five in a manner that provokes the reader to believe it shows that the conflict has reached closure, the very end of the novel represents a new beginning. The author uses the last...

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Douglass documents his life as a slave and eventual escape. Although he does not offer a timeline or name the people involved in his escape, he describes his feelings regarding...

The famous philosopher Aristotle formally defined the parameters of the tragic hero in his work On Poetics (335 B.C.). Aristotle based his tragic hero model on Oedipus, a king from Greek mythology. He defined the tragic hero as a man of noble...

In the 1950's and 1960's, the concept of the nuclear family was a personification of the American dream, the illusion of the perfect life, the perfect wife and the perfect children, all living in a model community. With four staccato shotgun...

The Criminal Psychology of Mrs. Wright Murder in human history dates back to the biblical story of Cain and Abel, the first descendants of Adam and Eve. Cain killed Abel out of jealousy, and since then countless amounts of feuds have lead to the...

When tyrannical governments are in charge of societies, they must eradicate possible threats to their power at all costs in order to remain in power. Underlying dangers to the power of such governments can be as common as the relationship between...

The Irish Literary Revival has been about promoting a National consciousness, leaving the recurring English stereotypes of Ireland behind, and striving for new beginnings with a free Irish State. Ireland had oftentimes been subjected to two...

Not many Literary Figures have retained notoriety quite as splendidly as Oscar Wilde has. His illustrious body of work continues to be heavily debated to this day. Although renown for his plays and sole novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde...

“To listen is to simultaneously attend to what is present and what is absent”. In “Understanding the Sound of Not Understanding,” Jed Rasula analyses the impact of the spoken word on the understanding of poetry. Historically, poetry, and most...

Petrarch, a passionate poet exemplifying the ideals of “Courtly Love” in his sonnets, rhapsodizes Laura, a married woman he may never touch. Inspired by a Troubadour style of ode, his work is akin to an Hymn of Love, although unrequited. It is a...

Within Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend exist several separate worlds. The lives of the Boffinses are separate from that of Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap, which in turn is separate from the lives of the different members of the Hexam family. The most...

When Satan says “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n,” he becomes a true advocate for freewill. He has gone against what he considered a tyrannical leader, lost, and reemerges as a classical tragic hero reminiscent of the likes of...

Wallace Stevens is known for his philosophical meditations on the dual nature of existence throughout his poetry. According to Stevens, poetry should not be concerned with either the body or the mind, but rather “an interdependence of the...

A common theme in children’s literature is the presence of a strange, mysterious, alternate universe only accessible and comprehensible to children. This theme is often used to encourage young readers, especially those of twenty-first century...

Often people make decisions in life that may or may not result in the desired consequence despite their good intentions. In the urge to achieve the best, people become self centered and choose to follow their aspirations without considering the...

People may be self-centered and immature, however, the crisis of certain occurrences in life assists them in molding their personalities. Everyone in life goes through drastic life changing events such as marriage, starting college or traumatic...

Raymond Carver’s preferred method of delivering information to readers in his short story “Cathedral” is one that is entirely coherent with the underlying theme of the impact of alienation and isolation upon those who fail to master the art of...

Thoreau writes that “This curious world we inhabit...is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.” This seems to be a philosophy that Hemingway’s character, Santiago, would adopt....

Christina Rossetti wrote “For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.” Following the century of...

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is a film so completely embedded with intentionally placed symbolism and plot that it is difficult to pinpoint a single theoretical lense in which to tackle the movie with; put simply, there is just too much going on. Aside...

Bees making a commotion in somebody's brain, a bright red hat, and a water pump in New York City. There seems to be no connection between those objects, but they all in fact have something in common; they are all symbols in the book Chains, by...