Newest Literature Essays

In his philosophical treatise The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis delves into the theme of moral decay and decadence, positing that the acceptance of moral relativism, the belief that all moral values are subjective and culturally relative, leads to...

In such a popular and classic play as Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, it can be easy to overlook the work’s many naturalistic elements strewn throughout the story. Emile Zola’s late 19th century essay describes naturalism in the context of theatre...

Cyrano de Bergerac, the lead character in the play Cyrano de Bergerac, is a complicated person who is deeply motivated by his love for his distant cousin Roxane. Noble, talented, and beloved by many, Cyrano might have a chance to be with her if it...

Jane, the eldest Bennet sister who so many adore, is revealed to readers in a different way than the other main characters. Throughout the novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen typically reveals her characters’ personalities through their speech,...

In “Blowing in the Wind,” Bob Dylan uses a Q and A format. He poses questions about the challenges facing humanity and asserts that the answers to the challenges are "blowin' in the wind." The response appears as a refrain at the end of each...

"Zuleika Dobson", written by Max Beerbohm in 1911, is a satirical novel that explores the theme of beauty and its power to control those around it. The novel's protagonist, Zuleika, is a stunningly beautiful woman who arrives at Oxford University...

Does the Animal Farm narrated by Napoleon or Snowball would have been interpreted the same, or for that matter, Tomas’s narration or Tereza’s narration of The Unbearable Lightness of Being would have maintained the deliverance of equivalent...

The choices that can make one fulfilled do not always conform to religious and societal norms. This theme is explored in Donne’s “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” where the speaker attempts to persuade a lover to return his affection. The lover is...

Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under The Elms is a tale about love, possession, and revenge wrapped in an enthralling narration and closed with an unexpected ending. There are lots of powerful themes inside this play, such as Greek myth tragedies,...

Violence and spoken words are less deadly than silence. The people who are weak tend to hold back as they are afraid the truth will make them uncomfortable and open wounds that cannot be healed. Communicating about feelings allows individuals to...

Discipline is concerned with the maintenance of social norms and order. Discipline is defined by French sociologist Michel Foucault as a process of “uninterrupted, constant coercion, supervising the processes of the activity rather than its result...

In Powers of Horror Julia Kristeva brings up a subject of abjection and states that it is “positioned somewhere between the I, the subject, and the object” (Graulund). To put it in Kristeva’s own words, the abject functions in the “in-between, the...

The famous poet, Rumi, once said “Greed makes man blind and foolish, and makes him an easy prey for death.” The Hobbit has many instances of greed, all of which lead to their inevitable destruction. Almost all characters are guilty of greed here...

Otherness and alienation are significant features throughout Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Adichie’s “Checking Out” and Phillips’ “Growing Pains”, particularly regarding the race and social class of the characters featured within these texts. In this...

H.P. Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness tells the story of the strange discovery of a gruesome expedition by a group of explorers who traveled to Antarctica in September 1930. This expedition was divided into two groups, namely the group led...

In Jean Renoir’s 1937 film La Grande Illusion,[1] the complex discussion the director raises about war leads into an equally complex discussion about masculinity and, specifically, the different ways in which masculinity is performed based on...

What do an eight-year-old girl in boarding school and a grown veteran from the Vietnam War have in common? They are both featured characters in literature about Native Americans who left their way of life and faced crises in their new worlds. Two...

In the book All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (MacDonald), the author introduces the reader to an intimate portrait of his mother, siblings, and his community. The reader is drawn in to the specific neighborhood of “Southie,” or South Boston,...

The depiction of the past in film is among the most salient themes in the history of film – yet it is also among the most complex. After all, the critic Andre Bazin once referred to cinema as “change mummified.”[1] The depiction of the past in...

The Metamorphoses by Ovid centers around stories of transformation and change, and is particularly interested in the function of art throughout these tales. Art is a transformative process by its very nature, taking raw materials and using them to...

John Cheever’s story Goodbye, My Brother is a complex tangle of morality, reliability, truth and deception. The narrator is paired opposite his brother, Lawrence, as their core values clash during a family vacation on a picturesque island during a...

“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” Ansel Adams proposes that every...