Newest Literature Essays

“Train” and “Dolly” are two of the short stories from Alice Munro’s novel Dear life. Jackson, the protagonist in “Trian”, and the unnamed narrator in “Dolly” seem to lead a very different life, yet careful analysis reveals a high resemblance in...

Homer's Iliad is full of epic battles and massive deaths, so, unsurprisingly, many audiences turn their main attention to the description of the direct combat between the Akhaians and Trojans. Even though the war mostly takes place during the day,...

Flannery O'Connor's short stories are notoriously filled with religious subtext and symbolism. In her final collection of stories, published after her death in 1964, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, much debate among critics and scholars...

In Guigemar, Marie de France uses the swift, silent ship that carries the knight Guigemar to and from his beloved lady to symbolize fate and the lack of control humans exercise over their passions and life choices. The ship may seem a positive...

John Galsworthy, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in England. He came from an upper-middle-class family and having observed the social differences prevalent in the society at that time, his works naturally revolved around these...

Alden Nowlan’s poetic account of young Kevin O’Brien’s coming of age in The Wanton Troopers is a beautiful yet tragic narration mirroring that of Nowlan’s own life. The book develops around the relationships and discoveries Kevin makes about...

It was George Lucas who in 1977 (with the release of Star Wars: A New Hope) reintroduced the world to Joseph Campbell’s works, particularly the ideas expressed in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces and a concept he discussed therein called “...

Overall, sociology is the study of the causes and consequences of human behavior in the world around us. Sociology can be related to anything and everything around us. For example, if you think about how you may do something and another person...

New Zealand-born director Taika Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) tells the story of Ricky Baker, a young boy who is sent to the farm of a couple named Hector and Bella. Ricky is an orphan who has gone from foster home to foster home,...

In Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine, the boy’s life changed drastically due to his time in the internment camp. The boy was seven when he and his family boarded the train to their internment camp. He was a sensitive young child at...

The isolation of individuals often leads to the loss of motivation to fight against corrupt systems within a world of upheaval, but when individuals unify, they are able to maintain the hope and aspiration necessary to confront these systems. Kurt...

The term “film noir” usually evoke images of the 1940s and 1950s – a simpler, more black-and-white time in which one or two or three classic film noirs were released seemingly every year. After the 1950s, which is widely considered to be the...

Manto creates moments in certain stories where he establishes empowered female characters that challenge gender construction, which are enforced most times by the male characters, only to either kill them off at the end of the story or creates...

The Gathering is a postmodern novel published in 2007, by Anna Enright. According to Liam Harte, “from the start, Enright’s fiction announced itself as [...] postmodernist” (Harte 218), and The Gathering is no exception. One of the main...

In Ruth Forman’s poem, “Poetry should ride the bus” (1993), we get a feeling of familiarity throughout the poem along with a sense of home, as well as nostalgia. Forman portrays a lifelong story throughout each line of the poem giving the reader...

Interstellar (2014) follows an earth’s society plagued with various forms of famine, drought and global disasters. It is set in the American Midwest, where a team of scientists - including Joseph Cooper (referred to in the film as Cooper and...

Memento is a film directed by Christopher Nolan, a thriller which tackles the epistemological issues of identity relating to memory. The main character, Leonard, lacks the ability to create short-term memories and struggles to self-identify after...

Tithonus, written by Lord Tennyson in 1833, is a poem about a Trojan prince who is granted immortality. Tennyson wrote this poem as a dramatic monologue so that any criticism of his Romantic style would be directed to the characters themselves....

Universal suffering and pain is the ultimate aftermath of war; this is the fundamental message Euripides strives to display in his tragedy, ‘The Women of Troy’, performed to an audience of Athenian men in 415BC, a year progressing the atrocities...

Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse illustrates the dark Canadian history of residential schools and demonstrates the lasting effects that forced enrollment had on its protagonist, Saul Indian Horse. Indian Horse emphasizes the psychological trauma,...

In the poetry of Thomas Hardy, one can note that the poet conveys a deep sense of sadness. Throughout his poetry, the Going, for instance, Hardy makes use of authorial methods in order to heighten the tragedy, and thus, allow his poems to convey a...

One of the most influential devices since the primordial times has been literature. Books, essays, journals and articles are just a few of the things used to gain knowledge. But, what makes these elements so effective? As a contemporary American...