Newest Literature Essays

The name Salem or any mention of the Salem witch trials almost always turns heads, and usually this sudden attention is not due to a reputable history. Most people think of the Salem witch trials and begin to picture an out of control environment....

Youth is malleable. A child’s surroundings, after all, shape the person that the child becomes. Leah Price, who witnesses the most dynamic shift in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible, consistently challenges the established culture of...

Life is filled with dualities and opposing figures: love and hatred, light and dark, male and female, life and death. Aristophanes addresses a duality in the context of love in Plato’s The Symposium. The Symposium raises the question of what love...

How should we fight against evil? The question is an eternal one, one which will have bearing on life during all ages. Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry is a good example of this because it crosses the lines of multiple time periods - it is...

Death is not the only way to lose a person. Often in life, people are lost to their career, to their friends, to their struggles, to their countries. Death is the physical end of one’s life, but people sometimes speak of losing a person who is not...

In “She Wasn’t Soft”, T.C. Boyle uses dynamic and static characterization in his portrayal of an unhealthy relationship. Dynamic characters are characters who change throughout a story, the dynamic character in this story being Paula, while static...

In his preface to Lyrical Ballads,William Wordsworth describes good poetry as being “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (6). The style of confessional poetry seems especially fitting to this description; to think that confessional...

“‘I wouldn’t be in that orphan’s shoes for anything” – The Rejection of Maternalism in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

Maternalism is a huge theme in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables; however, not in the usual way. Typically, women...

Peter Pan, the 1911 novel by J.M. Barrie, has been a popular read for over a century. In the one-hundred and six years of its existence it has inspired numerous adaptations for film, stage productions and other works. Among the film adaptations...

Within the span of British literature, it should come as no surprise that the themes and motifs which appear in written works evolve in nature. Times, cultures, and peoples change, so it is only natural that the things they write down change as...

In William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, first person narration is used in order to focus on Emily Grierson, a recluse who has captured the attention of the townspeople, and dictates the conversation, gossip, and action of the city. Faulkner uses a...

Throughout the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the protagonist, Pi Patel struggles with survival yet manages to maintain a level-headed outlook on his situation. He does not lose his belief in God, in whatever form He may take, although...

"I want my writing to present Caribbean people as real people, with dreams and hopes and fears and courage..." -Olive Senior. In the first section of her poetry collection, Olive Senior explores issues of migration and diaspora in an attempt to...

As time passes, plants grow, people age and eventually the ones who hold most dear will leave your side. In the myth of Ceres and Persephone, the God of Harvest loses her matured daughter to the King of the Underworld. The tale continues on to...

"The Lady of Shalott" was published in 1832, during the early Victorian epoch. It explores a series of themes that trigger the reader to question the societal prejudices that occurred during Queen Victoria’s reign. In order to stimulate thought,...

One might say that Dante’s meeting with Lucifer is an anti-climax because of the contrast between it and the trials he has faced throughout the rest of Hell. Having been shut out of the city of Dis and only allowed in through the intervention of a...

Symbolism is a reoccurring theme in the Iliad; one commonly takes note that after the death of Patroclus, Achilles’ old armor transforms from representing “divine Achilles” to the symbolism of death, or Patroclus symbolizing the sacrificial...

Fifth Business fixates on Dunstan Ramsay, a man stricken with profound guilt that stems from a childhood accident. At only ten years old, he dodges a snowball aimed at him, that instead strikes Mary Dempster, the young, pregnant woman next door....

Religion plays a huge role in many of the works of the Middle Ages. This is certainly true in Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies. De Pizan knew that in order to get through to men, using God and the Bible was the best way. Through...

All four gospels of the New Testament share the news of Christ and his life on Earth. Simply, this news is that through Jesus Christ, those who believe in him can eventually enter the kingdom of God. Jesus states that the commandments from the Old...

The innate innocence of individuals can sustain an optimistic outlook, despite the exposure to conflict and corrupt realities. Through the manipulation of truths, one's innocence is preserved in order to protect and provide an escape for an...

North by Northwest explores contextual concerns of the Cold War Era by the deliberate depiction of domestic law enforcement agencies as corrupt and suggested that law enforcement agencies are imbued with evil. By capturing the social and political...

William Blake, in his work There Is No Natural Religion, and William Wordsworth, in his poem 1799 Prelude, challenge John Locke’s understanding of the nature of the self by offering alternative theories as to the ways in which we as humans...

There are many things that children do not understand. Their lack of experience makes them ignorant to what is happening around them, and even oblivious to the presence of death. When someone a child knows dies, it is a really rough transition:...