Newest Literature Essays

In his short stories, Ivan Bunin frequently showcases the inability to attain earthly happiness. This reality is often manifested in his characters' attempts to return to the past, when the evanescence of joy was still a mystery to the...

The title characters of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are difficult to fully understand due to their seemingly illogical actions towards one another. At times, they seem to be in direct opposition to each other's causes, yet still fully and...

Awakening via the Omniscient Narrator

In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Edna Pontellier transforms from a wealthy product of mid 19th century Creole society into an independent, beautiful soul that acknowledges none of the boundaries of societal...

The roots of republican government and democratic ideals are firmly planted in James Madison's "The Federalist No. 51, The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments." Written on...

Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment is one of the most memorable and substantial literary works in history. It deals with the psychological, emotional, mental, and physical struggles of several residents of nineteenth-century St....

The England of Charles Dickens was one plagued with disease, pollution, and poverty. This is the England that gave rise to the Salvation Army, the gin craze, and Benthamism, and it is no coincidence that Charles Dickens' Bleak House has much to...

"Hamlet is a tragedy without catharsis, a tragedy in which everything noble and heroic is smothered under ferocious revenge codes, treachery, spying and the consequences of weak actions by broken wills." In truth, this statement is not a...

"Feminist readings often discuss the "jobs" that are traditionally assigned to women, such as tending a home, caring for a husband, and bearing children, and the ways in which these jobs are used to keep women in a powerless position. Female...

Duality and Paralysis in "Two Gallants"

James Joyce's "Two Gallants", from Dubliners, is at first glance the tale of two men driven by greed to manipulate a slavey. Lenehan and Corley enjoy their mischievous banter as they stroll through Dublin,...

The English Patient has been referred to as "a poem disguised as a novel." Much emphasis is directed toward Michael Ondaatje's language, which "takes center stage, gliding and soaring, drifting into the hidden rooms of his character's souls,...

Inventor and scientific pioneer Albert Einstein once commented that "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." Though he was not referring to the industrialization of England during the nineteenth century,...

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a striking example of how Samuel Taylor Coleridge failed to attain his vision of perfect poetic unity. The work in question leaves the reader with unanswered questions regarding its stated moral, its failure to...

Canterbury Tales: The Power of Lust

Seven deadly sins. Eight tales. In Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer offers insight into human characteristics and actions. Of the seven deadly sins, lust remains a reoccurring characteristic in several tales....

Homer's epic The Odyssey is superimposed on the backdrop of a typical ancient Greek society. As the main character, Odysseus, and his companions travel from place to place on their way to their hometown of Ithaka, various people welcome them in a...

In his novella The Death of Ivan Ilych, Count Leo Tolstoy offers readers a glimpse into the life and death of a socially ambitious Russian gentleman, Ivan Ilych. During the story, Ivan's character is revealed in several different ways: firstly,...

In the voyage to Brobdingnag section of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the title character fits a common psychological profile over 150 years before the theory describing it was technically defined. The story manifestly presupposes the...

The word 'romantic' is derived from the medieval romaunt, which was a tale of chivalry, written in a romance language, that often took the form of a quest. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this idea of romance became an intellectual or artistic...

In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy primarily showcases man's inability to elude fate. Society's constraints highlight the futile nature of attempting to change the course of one's life, for the inability to transcend one's social classes...

In the novel Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev explores the inevitability of man's integration into society by implementing effectiv structural devices. The parallel trips of the central characters highlight their emotional and intellectual paths...

Mark Twain's masterwork, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has over time, created controversy proportionate to its tremendous literary worth. The story of an "uncivilized" Southern boy and a runaway slave traveling up the Mississippi River...

The debate over the fragmentary nature of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" has continued from the time the poem was written in 1797 to the present day. Some critics believe "Kubla Khan" to be a complete work in its totality, while...

Authors often use religious allusions to further the significance of a novel. It is when the reader recognizes and understands these influences that the importance of the novel can be truly understood. In John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath,...

In his novel Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding uses irony to express satire and offer social commentary. Irony "results when there is a disjunction between what an audience would expect and what really happens." The dominant form of irony in Joseph...

In an elaborate concoction of political allegory, social anatomy, moral fable, and mock utopia: Gulliver's Travels is written in the voice of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, an educated, seafaring man voyaging to remote countries for the purpose of...