Newest Literature Essays

In her Slouching Towards Bethlehem essay, Joan Didion vividly constructs her view on the hippie movement in San Francisco through her anecdotal experience in 1967. Her belief captures a strong disliking of this social movement, as her experience...

Sexuality does matter. It does not matter according to the theoretical, the moral, the logical and sensible definitions of meaning, but it does matter. For those who do not identify as heterosexual, and sometimes even for those who do, liberation...

'"Passion...can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created'" (Shaffer 109). Alan Strang is alone. He lives in a world of his own creation, born of mental illness and isolation, untouched and not understood by the rest of society. The only...

Love is inherently linked with madness. All of history has proved love to be not only blind but deaf, and yet it stubbornly persists as one of the most defining characteristics of the human condition. It certainly perseveres throughout Junot Díaz’...

The notion of guilt is very strong in Owen’s poetry. He uses guilt in his poetry so as to highlight the indifference of those back at home as well as the authorities. These should feel guilty for sending their youth to die but they do not feel so....

Owen means to present to his readers the true victims of war – those who lived and not the dead. In doing so he seeks to bring out the truly horrific aspects of war. These aspects lead their victims to end up in varied severe dispositions. We can...

Owen conveys his views on organized religion through his poetry. The altruistic values usually associated with religion are tarnished so that the latter can be a means of propaganda to promote patriotism and war. This inappropriate converging of...

Manhood in A Gathering of Old Men In his novel, A Gathering of Old Men (1983), Ernest J. Gaines writes about a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s. The plantation’s white, Cajun work boss is shot and seventeen old black men and one white...

Trauma plays an extremely significant role in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel A Pale View of Hills. Not only is the novel set in the time after the bombing of Nagasaki, but each character has also lived through different traumas that have distinct and...

Right from the start, children have been taught to make friends. As they slowly grow up, people begin to really treasure and appreciate their friends, and understand the true meanings of friendship. In the novel Immortal by Gillian Shields, Evelyn...

''To account for life is one thing; to explain life another'' – Coleridge (Norton p.596)

One of the most easily definable of Coleridge's Mariner's losses is his loss of a concrete existence. Coleridge's mariner exists in a liminal space in 'The...

Famous poet and literary critic, Matthew Arnold was born on 24th December 1822 as the second child of Mary Arnold and Thomas Arnold. He began his career as a poet, getting recognition since his youth as a student at the Rugby School, where his...

In The Perseid, the second novella from the novel Chimera, Barth intertwines gender roles in his postmodern portrayal of the myth of Perseus. The Perseid, akin to much ancient Greek mythology, is unabashedly male-centered as the eponymous narrator...

Emily Dickinson, in most of her poetry, proves to cherish ambiguity. Some of her poems can be perceived in multiple different ways of which none are right or wrong. Depending on how the reader sees and interprets the poem, the meaning is twisted...

Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People” mocks modern philosophy and those who follow it by suggesting that those who turn away from God will be taught, in one way or another, that God is real. The story, which takes place in the...

Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” a narrative extracted from the novel Invisible Man, portrays the story of a young African American man who has been chosen to receive a scholarship and give a speech at a gathering of the town’s white male citizens....

He has dark secrets and regrets. The mystery to solve is not only that of John Wade, but that of the narrator of the story himself. Throughout the novel In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien, the narrator uses the case of John and Kathy as way...

William Dean Howells’ short story “Editha,” published in 1905, revolves around ideals about war and the romanticized vision of it. Through each character, Howells presents a contrasting view of war. Editha, and her view of God-intended glorious...

Absence is an exceedingly powerful thing. Absence is not a brief silence, or an easily forgotten moment, or a matter of little or no consequence. It is a feeling of perpetuity, a constant gnawing in the stomach and at the back of the mind. Absence...

Social hierarchies function to elevate a group of elite citizens to a superior position, thus resulting in the disempowerment of groups that are below them in rank. William Blake was one of 18th century Britain’s most prolific Romantic poets,...

In a futuristic world, what part will technology and nature play? Back in the 1950s, during the Cold War, Ray Bradbury published a story about life in 2026. In the story, Bradbury describes a day in a house full of technology but no humans....

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” is the story of Dexter Green and his pursuit of Judy Jones. Dexter wants Judy to be untouched by time, and his dream is the dream of being with her. Fitzgerald, through his writing, endorses the idea of the...

It has been inferred by researchers for decades that Shakespeare used the plots and characters of his theatrical works to comment on the current political climate of England’s monarchy at the time. During the late 16th and early 17th century,...

Life, in essence, is a search for belonging, purpose, and meaning. However, humans often do not possess enough wisdom to determine what is of worthy pursuit in life. While double-digit years of life experience may appear a period of time long...