Newest Literature Essays

2007 American literature novel, Flight, is the story of a foster kid with zero hope, however Sherman Alexie’s (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene) unique approach makes it anything but an ordinary bildungsroman. Unlike in a conventional coming of age novel...

Patrick Hamilton represents women in such a misogynistic manner in Hangover Square that we do not get insight on a single positive portrayal of a woman that George, the novel's protagonist, meets on his journeys. Instead, we only hear a remotely...

Beauty is a part of the human condition; we are attracted to what we find appealing and repelled by what we find unappealing. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scholars captured this concept and put into words what it means to experience...

Spiritual autobiographies, or conversion narratives, were popular forms of literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with Americans and Europeans alike. Daniel Shea explains a spiritual autobiography is “primarily concerned with the...

Societal oppression persists in many facets of life and forces individuals into imposed roles that drastically determine their mindsets and identities. Those oppressed are not accepted into such societies and instead forced into subservient...

Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez, boldly addresses multiple sociological themes that embody the entirety of the story. Rodriguez’s social construction of reality was predetermined by society’s expectations on him due to his race, socioeconomic...

Adichie’s collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, is a powerful testimony of Nigerian culture as resonated within each and every Nigerian in their homeland and in America. Intertwined with several aspects of culture, she explores...

Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of short works that explore and examine issues of identity and assimilation between Indian and American cultures. Weaved into and between each story and each struggle is the presence of traditional...

The birth of the novel occurred in in 1719, with the publication of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. This literary form quickly became the most accessible and enjoyable style; therefore, novels began being published rapidly. With nothing for...

Inferno narrates Dante’s journey through Hell which is guided by the Roman poet Virgil. During their travels through each of the nine circles of Hell, Dante and Virgil witness contrapasso, or the law which ensures that each sinner is punished with...

The epic poem Beowulf highlights the role of God as a guiding protector who provides earthly wealth and well-being to the people of 6th century Denmark and Sweden. Beowulf and his people worship a pagan god who serves to keep humility and peace....

Beroul’s The Romance of Tristan exhibits the inevitable, predetermined relationship between Tristan and Yseut. Neither Tristan, Yseut, nor Mark is able to interfere with the lovers’ relationship, suggesting that fate takes away choice and freewill...

Dutch humanist and scholar Erasmus defines free will as “a power of the human will by which man may be able to direct himself towards or turn away from what leads to eternal salvation” (Erasmus 6). Many literary works of the Renaissance debate the...

The Mesopotamian epic, Gilgamesh, translated by David Ferry tells the tale of loss that has been so prominent to even stand around until this day and time. This concept of loss has especially been nurtured in the Mesopotamian time period because...

In Zora Neale Hurston’s work, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,"the author pulls from personal experience, and writes about, not only her cultural experience within the negro community, but also her experience outside of her own culture. The work is...

Lord Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’ was inspired by Mrs Wilmot, his cousin, Robert Wilmot’s wife. Byron’s glimpse of Mrs Wilmot, as well as the environment that surrounded them, contributed to the images of darkness in ‘She Walks in Beauty,’ from...

Words with the root “obedient” or “obedience” appear thirty-two times in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, while the root word “loyal” appears only four times. Nevertheless, ties of loyalty are central to the narrative of man’s first fall. Questions...

In the first two books of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserts that the function of humans is to practice rational activity, which completed over a lifetime makes a good life. Aristotle first explores the function and ends of all actions and...

Both Webster in ‘The Duchess of Malfi,’ a Jacobean revenge tragedy, and Williams in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ a 20th century modern-domestic tragedy, use entrapment as a pivotal focus for chief dramatic moments. The playwrights especially focus...

Although it is commonly understood that God created the natural world, Nature is often depicted as a force working in opposition to God and His creation. In lyric 56 of the poem In Memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson, Nature seems to have conquered...

The Romantic period was one marked by turmoil and deep unrest within England. The morality of the slave trade was questioned, the Industrial Revolution deepened the rift between the working class and aristocracy, and the French Revolution was on...

Who doesn’t want to be a good human being? Being good could bring one to happiness, joy, faith, and grace. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor, however, reveals a satiric reality in which not many people fully understand the...

Throughout the novel, Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, the search for identity and meaning in life is explored through different aspects of the novel, specifically the characterization and development of the narrator. When the readers first meet...