Newest Literature Essays

The character’s aspects presented by an individual in order to be perceived by others are known to form his persona. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung identified this as a psychological component of the individual himself, “a kind of mask, designated...

The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem telling the story of the last 50 days of the ten year long war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Although the poem is attributed to Homer, it is a compilation of the long-standing tradition of oral...

Synecdoche, New York (2008) is Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut film. The film explores themes such as death, neurosis, existentialism, postmodernism, etc. from the perspective of the aging theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Hoffman)....

War, perhaps one of the most destructive concepts established by society, is something that will continue despite the atrocities war brings to society. Once and Future King, a novelwritten by T.H.White, follows the journey of a young boy (Wart)...

Life for Americans during the early twentieth century was difficult. During this time, President Theodore Roosevelt was shot, the Titanic sank, and the United States entered World War I. To distract their minds from the great horror of their daily...

Anne Bradstreet, the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished writer from the New England colonies, is still broadly considered to be an important early American poet. Her work was first published in London in 1650 and achieved popular...

Harriet Jacobs was the first African American woman to author a slave narrative in the United States. Her autobiographical novel, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was originally published under the pseudonym Linda Brent. The story follows ‘...

Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” is popularly heralded as early feminist literature because the short story features two female characters who are able to solve a murder the male investigators cannot. Mrs. Hale, the narrator of the story,...

How does one define captivity? Is it the physical restraint of a person through threats and violence? Could one be captive of their society due to the roles and expectations assigned to them? Both of these questions pose possibilities when it...

How often should one focus on societal norms? According to the works of Frank Bidart, people should try to avoid these norms and the standards that the public creates at all costs. Through pieces, like “Ellen West”, Bidart shows his distain for...

Douloti the Bountiful is one of the three short stories in Mahashweta Devi’s book, Imaginary Map which delves into the unglamorous lives and unattended issues of tribal life in India. The novella conjoins the evil practice of bonded labor and...

‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is set in New Orleans in the late 1940’s, just two years after World War Two ended; resulting in the setting and context of the play being rich in history and culture, as New Orleans often is. It was seen as a melting...

What really matters in a poem, the form or the content? While many may assume that the content reigns supreme, it actually takes both form and content to create a poem that performs properly. This is because the form is not simply a device that...

Loving someone involves unearthing them: getting to know someone intimately, from their strengths to their weaknesses. Margaret Atwood explores this perspective on romance in her poem, “I Was Reading a Scientific Article” which portrays a speaker...

In his novel, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe masterfully uses his characters to convey larger human truths as well as to drive his plot. Things Fall Apart is about the colonialization of a Nigerian tribe called the Igbo, following the characters...

The film, The Queen, directed by Stephen Frears in 2006, talks about the whirlwind events that happened after the Princess Diana’s death. The Queen’s adherence to protocols and the royal family’s insistence on not appearing to make a statement...

American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated, “Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.” While many would agree with Emerson’s claim that materialistic gain is insignificant without core values and a strong moral compass, the community of...

The poem “Daphne with her thighs in bark,” written by Eavan Boland in Night Feed, takes its title from the first line of the poem “XII” from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, by Ezra Pound. In Pound’s poem, this first line is a translation from Le Château du...

“Imagination is the only weapon

In the war against reality.”

- Jules de Gaultier, French Philosopher

Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are literary works related by the common...

The poems “West London” by Matthew Arnold and “The Architect and the Vagrant” by K. Sello Duiker offer readers a criticism of a society that separates the social classes. Both poets emphasise the segregation of the wealthy (the group that society...

Set across post-union, pre-apartheid South Africa, Down 2nd Avenue follows Eseki – Es’kia Mphahlele – as he recalls the days of his youth. Throughout the narrative, focus is placed on gender, femininity, and masculinity. This focus, however, is...

Within Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples, the notions and ideologies of Afrikaner identity is perpetuated through hegemonic masculinity. This asserts that “between [Frikkie, Johan and Marnus] the secret [of Frikkie’s rape] will always be safe”....

Although the law is meant to be clearly defined, most of the time, it can be interpreted differently. In his essay, “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,” Jonathan Lethem emphasizes the law’s unclear definitions and the way people use them for...