Newest Literature Essays

In his treatise Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud makes an interesting statement about advanced society. He argues that “the price of progress in civilization is paid in forfeiting happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt,” to...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, made waves in the German literary scene almost immediately upon its publication in 1774. Just five years later, the novel was translated into English, attaining a...

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, art is viewed as the extension of one’s soul. Through painting, writing, or any other art form, Hailsham students are able to surpass their identities of clones and express their true selves. The art that...

Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb presents us with a fascinating satirical snapshot of the Cold War. It reflects back at us the absurdity of US (and to a similar extent Soviet) nuclear...

James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk and “The Man Child” are both texts that demonstrate how the isolation of characters can yield overtly violent outcomes. Though the perspective from which Baldwin challenges dominant forces differs between...

If the entire world were experiencing hardship, one is forced to wonder, would it be equal? If the entire world were experiencing joy, one is forced to wonder, would it be equal? If the entire world were to experience any one specific event--any...

Both Hesiod’s epic poem Theogony and the early chapters of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible offer unique creation stories for their respective religions. Though these two religions are vastly different, one being monotheistic and the other...

“Love found me altogether disarmed,” declares Francis Petrarch in one of his highly acclaimed sonnets, referring of course to his dearly beloved yet unattainable Laura (Petrarch 2068). This is perhaps a bit of an understatement. Both Francis...

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore -- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over -- Like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load. Or does it...

“Mere “modernity” cannot kill.” The year is 1897, and European culture is changing. Skepticism about both Christianity and the introduction of Darwinism into common thought is current, and the concept of what we now call “feminism” is planting its...

Within the Puritan society of the seventeenth century, the fear of the Devil fueled the actions of individuals; this idea is reflected in two significant works of literature, A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and The Crucible by Arthur Miller....

‘Mrs Midas’ is a revisionist version of the King Midas story told from the female perspective: traditionally, this ancient Greek myth was about a man who could turn everything to gold with a touch. This poem explores the sadness Mrs Midas feels...

As one of the most widely read female poets to this day, Emily Dickinson has been analyzed for generations. Her poems touch on profound human issues such as death, religion, and, perhaps most subtly, gender. While Dickinson’s predominantly...

Exclusively raising opposition to commonplace phenomena can only go as far as just that: talk of a new contrary, and usually unwanted, opinion. The crucial ingredient in making a significant impact with a foreign idea is to make a claim so...

Giorgio Bassani’s novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is told from the perspective of an unnamed speaker who is recalling his time spent with the Finzi-Contini family prior to the family members' deaths in the Holocaust. This is an Edenic time,...

Human nature has a tendency, a fad if you will, to display traits of selfishness and a "me first, you later" attitude. This sort of thinking often leads people to do unjust or politically incorrect things, and it gets them in trouble with the law,...

Apocryphally labeled a novel confined to the voracious appetite of mental illness, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath truly explores the societal ills in the role of young women in the 1950s. Despite the inevitable and universal recognition of internal...

Beginning at the time of early settlements in the 5th century and spanning until 1150 A.D., the English language and that spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons during this time is referred to as Old English or simply, Anglo-Saxon. The influence...

Though they were written centuries apart and in completely different societal conditions, Plato’s Phaedrus and several of William Shakespeare’s sonnets share distinct similarities. The more obvious, surface correlation is that they each describes...

In Drown by Junot Diaz, there are decisive spaces for men and women within the text. Yunior and his mother demonstrate a compelling and complex dichotomy between a dependent maternal figure and an independent male figure. These two figures are...

The life expectancy in the United States is about seventy-eight years. Zambia’s life expectancy is roughly thirty-three years. Does this mean it is impossible for a person in Zambia to have a more fulfilling life than a person in the United...

Artists often use their work as an expression of their innermost thoughts and feelings. In his poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” W.B. Yeats describes a metaphorical journey to Byzantium, an ancient city filled with timeless art, that the poem’s...

The Marxist communist ideology is possibly one of the most misunderstood political dogmas of modern times. It is a theory in which, through the historical events and practices of his time, Karl Marx had predicted the next steps towards communism...

The Scarlet Letter, perhaps the most notable work of prodigious American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, was first published in 1850 and has since been subject to a plethora of literary criticisms, including those from psychoanalytic, new historical,...