Newest Literature Essays

This essay will address the power of language and literature in relation to some of the contemporary issues that Jeanette Winterson discusses in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? In it she reflects on her tragic and traumatic...

Through scenes of indirect action involving comically forlorn and hopeless characters, Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya addresses three predominant themes: work, love, and misery. The two central male characters in the play, Vanya and Astroff,...

It was a pleasure to burn. Yet the ice in Montag’s heart was the only reason he set the books to flames: the feeling of emptiness, of no meaning in life. They all went away as the paper burned to dirt black ashes and a beautiful puff of smoke...

Thomas Hardy, the author of The Return of the Native (1876), is generally known as ‘the last of the great Victorians’. In his early novel, The Return of the Native, the life-like characterization is well-admired to date. The characters of Clement...

Throughout Macbeth, the character of Banquo is continually presented as a contrasting foil to the character of Macbeth himself, as a noble and perceptive ally of the Scottish royal line. His presence in the play is felt in contrast to Macbeth’s...

In chapter XXVIII of The Voyage of Máel Dúin’s Currach, Máel Dúin and his shipmates stumble upon an island populated by a queen and her 17 young daughters. Surprised by her position of power, Máel Dúin does not treat her with the respect she...

Many writers use a setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the setting may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Using the novel The Rent Collector, write an essay in which you analyze...

The plot of the 2010 film Inception relates to entering dreams, intercepting dreams, and implanting ideas in dreams. Dreams are a window into the subconscious, both in the film and reality, a place where thoughts we didn’t even know we’re having...

In Decline and Fall, Waugh uses satire to mock and portray 1920s British society as largely corrupt, undisciplined and twisted. Waugh satirises various aspects of society, including social classes, religion and racism, as well as education. The...

With the publication of his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Places, author Joseph Campbell changed the world forever. In the book, Campbell argued that virtually all of the stories told by humans from the beginning of time share something in...

In Ichot aburde in a bour ase beryl so bryht and The Miller’s Tale, both authors use figurative language to convey their belief that women serve to please and nurture men. As demonstrated by the jewels, birds, sweets, and medicine they’re...

When Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) was in development, only one movie studio dared to touch it. That movie studio was Paramount, who released the film after a lengthy pre-production process. Still, Warner Brothers was quite...

In The Uncanny Sigmund Freud argues that the uncanny is not only that which is new, but that "the "uncanny" is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar" (Freud 1). In Nathaniel Hawthorne's...

The 2017 film "Get Out", directed by Jordan Peele, is both a racial satire and a racial horror film. The story focuses on African-American Chris as he travels with his white girlfriend Rose to meet her parents for the first time. While there he...

In her novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë interconnects the real world with the dream world, in a sense merging allegory with realism. This essay will explore how the dreams that Brontë’s characters experience give more meaning to the real...

“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 “...