Newest Literature Essays

Cormac McCarthy’s ‘All the Pretty Horses’ exposes the futility of clinging to “phantom” dreams which are ultimately “falling away” as a result of the inevitable progression of society. McCarthy emphasises that protagonist John Grady Cole is unable...

In his novel ‘The White Tiger’, Avarind Adiga explores the corruption and extreme poverty that plague modern India. Through an allegorical depiction of the enormous divide between rich and poor, Adiga condemns the oppression and hopelessness...

Turning 21 defines a threshold into adulthood where an individual’s actions define them further in life. By allowing leniency and the assurance to make mistakes and learn, 21 year old’s live free of obligation and constraint. Both “To Sir John...

F. Scott Fitzgerald writes The Great Gatsby as a manifestation of the literary Inferno, a metaphorical world filled with a lack of grace and love. For example, the relationships throughout the book are marred with romantic affairs and the...

Much as his name suggests, Owen Warland wages a battle on society in The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Throughout the story, he strives to create the Beautiful, a lifelike butterfly, and overcomes many setbacks to succeed...

William Faulkner uses his short stories to tell a tale of corruption, especially through the acceptance of white culture, and “A Justice” is no different. He writes his protagonist, Doom, as growing increasingly evil at the same time as his...

‘Her reality is magical. She has a heightened awareness of the natural world, of smells and sounds, of colour and light. And she renders palpable this world, at once strange and familiar, in prose of sinuous beauty… A small wonder of style and...

In today’s society, mental illnesses are slowly being recognized as serious health problems that require some sort of treatment, whether the treatment is therapy, medication, or both. In the 1700s, however, mental illnesses were not acknowledged...

Remembrance of historical events shifts over time, as details are purposefully excluded, occurrences go undocumented, and oral tales change with each retelling. Some historical institutions, such as slavery, are so traumatic and affected so many...

Shakespeare’s works revel as masterpieces centuries after their debut, influencing generations of writers including 20th century author Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s 1932 novel, Brave New World, stands as a distinct reincarnation of Shakespeare’s The...

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus outlines his philosophy of attaining happiness and details the proper attitude that Epicureans should have toward the gods and toward death. In reference to the latter, following his Sense-Experience Argument...

In Hughes’s poetry, “racial memory, animal instinct and poetic imagination all flow into one another with an exact sensuousness” - Seamus Heaney

“The Horses” and “The Thought-Fox” are two of Hughes’s most powerfully symbolic poems, introducing the...

At a glimpse, it might seem quite uncanny to compare two such seemingly dissimilar works as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Apart from disparity in their length and structure (Heart of Darkness: a...

Duffy explores ideas, thoughts and feelings about love in Valentine and Havisham by commenting on societal expectations of the outcomes and portraying love as unstable, dangerous and likely to cause hurt.

Firstly, Duffy explores the expectation of...

It is said that only total and complete trust in the government will provide equality and prosperity for their people. No man ever not able to feed his family, no man homeless, no economic and political freedom, constant economic growth, and...

“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself--on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of...

The ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres are often held as two separate entities, both representing opposing positions of social freedom or restraint. Whereas the public realm is the more conformed-to and socially hegemonic of the two, the private is...

Duffy presents gender in the poems Litany and Havisham through society’s views and expectations of women, and the effects it has on them show how being female was harmful to their wellbeing.

Litany creates an example of the ideal, successful...

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Vladimir Nabakov often told stories of men and women destroyed by unknowing forces and desires...

Malcolm X and Fredrick Douglass both lived through social disadvantages and found the road to freedom. While Malcolm X faced seven years in prison in a literal sense, Douglass spent several years as a slave in his master’s house, which makes his...

This chapter from the novel ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker includes an abundance of conventions typical of the Gothic genre, primarily employed here through Stoker’s characterisation of Johnathan Harker, Count Dracula and the three seductive women....

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells features horrific creatures from beneath the earth that enslave helpless humans, yet it is rarely if ever described as a horror novel. The tale features an adventurous leading character who manages to find a little...

In A Man for All Seasons, religious faith is an important factor to both the plot and the presentation of characters and their beliefs. Moreover, playwright Robert Bolt’s almost comical, ironic approach adds to contrasting characters and bringing...

In literature, the presence of alcohol can play a fundamental role in guiding the themes and perspectives within a given narrative. The characters in the story “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, for instance, were heavily...