Newest Literature Essays

Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, is filled with symbolism and messages that relate to human behavior and the effects of that on the world. This is shown in Chapter 87 ‘The Grand Armada,’ which takes place while the Pequod is traveling through straits....

The original Bhagavad-Gita was written somewhere between 400 and 200 B.C. Despite its age, it is still a relevant Hindu text that is studied and lived by today. It can easily be applied to one’s everyday life, even for one who is not Hindu. The...

In David Mamet's Oleanna, John, a university teacher, attempts to explain to his student Carol how he himself struggled with education as a child, in order to make her feel better about her own hardships and create an emotional connection with...

Representing a powerful reaction against Puritanism, an English Protestant literary movement based upon the rigid and logical belief in a God is ready and willing to Punish his followers, Romanticism challenged virtually all major Puritanical...

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence...with very little to distress or vex her.” (Emma, V.1,Ch.1)

This opening character summary of the...

The choice between conforming to societal standards and pursuing a personal desire is a conflict many youth must face. Arjie, in Shyam Selvadurai’s “Pigs Can’t Fly,” initially experiences the joys of living a carefree childhood life through his...

Guilt and remorse are two main feelings that people may understand differently, whether on account of past experiences, learning tactics, or an opinion on religion. In the narrative A Summer Life, the use of religious allusions, contrast, and...

The play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen centers on a woman named Hedda, the daughter of General Gabler, who is married to George Tesman - a person in the middle class. In the play, Ibsen has described the set in a way which makes it very distinct;...

How many different interpretations can be derived from one source? Due to the ubiquitous distinctions that exist within each person, the result we perceive from an event changes with each individual perception. Out of the various editions of...

Many film adaptations of William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of “star-crossed lovers” have been made, both in the original setting and more modern ones (Shakespeare Prologue. 6). Two movies that exemplify this are Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and...

Considering divinity, destiny, and the existence of free will is not a concept that is exclusive to Greek Literature; in fact, whenever there are predetermined, all-powerful entities that guide the actions of lesser beings, it is quite natural to...

Perhaps one of the most influential elements of literature, a setting may potentially dictate the plotline of a story, establishing culture, tradition, and a backstory. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart sees an African world that largely revolves...

Aeschylus’s play “Agamemnon” seeks to show his audience that revenge only leads to more violence. This is shown prominently through the character’s central beliefs and motives that are encouraged through the actions of others, which inevitably...

Life, on the basis of modernist fiction, is meaningless. In a sea full of people, a single person is just a speck. A small, insignificant part of a larger heterogeneous group in which our life has no value. Using his short story “A Clean,...

The novel The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro examines the different facets of dignity. The protagonist, a butler named Stevens, adamantly seeks to become a great and dignified butler, a task that he believes only the most imperturbable can...

In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Milkman’s progression from an immature teenager to an adult possessing moral rectitude is displayed through encounters where Milkman learns about and pursues knowledge about his past. We first meet Milkman as a...

Candide journeys through life with a childish naivete and shies away from making his own philosophical proclamations, often allowing others to do his thinking for him and serve as his surrogate brain. Instead of stepping back and truly pondering...

As proposed by Immanual Kant, the Enlightenment consisted of having “the courage to use your own understanding,” and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Descartes’ Meditations, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote collectively provide instances that both affirm...

In Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin discusses the power that can be found in secularity and in religion. The novel starts with John Grimes waking up to his fourteenth birthday in Harlem, 1935. The entire novel spans a few days, but as the...

Both Karl Marx and Charles Darwin used classification to enhance their ideas; human classification in particular. Marx classifies humans in a society as either part of the bourgeois or the proletariat while on the other hand, Darwin classifies...

In T.C. Boyle’s transcendent short story “Greasy Lake,” the eponymous lake reflects the evolution of the boys from naïve greasers to enlightened, mature teenagers. At the start of the story, the boys relish their bad boy image as they drive up to...

Joseph Mankiewicz’s All About Eve explores the inability of women to find fulfillment in the roles offered by the theater. For a “true star” like Margo or simply a “carbon copy” like Eve or Phoebe in the harsh world of the theater, Mankiewicz...

Natural decay directly influences moral decay in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and John Hillcoat’s film adaptation by the same title. The end of the world in this narrative is so severe because of the loss of nature. When humans see the end of their...

Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet (1991) is a fantastical and vivid exploration of the lives of the 20th century ‘Aussie battlers’ whose reputations fabricated the Australian identity present in today’s society. The novel resonates the idea that this...