Newest Literature Essays

In her poetry, Adrienne Rich employs a rather sophisticated approach and continually redefines the representation and depiction of loss. Rich, rather than upholding the traditional elegy, she unswervingly intrudes upon its traditional definition...

“Aspern Papers” lies at the boundary between the Romantic period and an emerging Modernist perspective in the fin de siècle of the 19th century. Written in 1888, James’ “Aspern Papers” holds at the crux of its content a significant message...

Emily St. John Mandel explores two different interpretations of humanity in the post-apocalyptic novel ‘Station Eleven.’ The author examines how humanity is capable of both goodness and evil in the face of catastrophe. Survivors often wonder why...

At the start of the fourth act of Shakespeare’s Henry V, there is a famous soliloquy in which King Henry ponders and laments his role as king. In the soliloquy, he complains of his big responsibility of having the weight of all his people on his...

In Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Blackberry-Picking”, an interpretation of the poem could lead one to believe that the poem is elegy to the children who will grow up and be made rotten by the world over time. The message is captured in Heaney’s feelings...

In Seamus Heaney’s poem, The Forge, an interpretation of the poem could lead one to believe that the poem is a commentary on the uncertainty of what lies ahead in the relationship between a person and religion. The mystery of what lies ahead is...

Claude McKay’s poem “Outcast” explores the fight within oneself to belong, the longing of the persona to be linked to his people, his roots. The poet employs the uncomplicated and unsophisticated sonnet fabrication as he explores the persona’s...

The Last Samurai was released in cinemas in the USA on 7 December 2003, and was directed by Edward Zwick, who cast Tom Cruise to play the protagonist. Cruise’s character – Nathan Algren - is an American Civil War veteran, who is sent to Japan in...

Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market deals with issues of sex and rape, in spite of the fact that as a Victorian-era poem, it cannot talk explicitly about any of those things. Instead, Rossetti creates an extended metaphor of monstrous goblins...

John Keats’ poems “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” and “When I have fears that I may cease to be” both revolve around the topics of death and the fragility of life. He writes of his desire to stay in his present state, afraid of...

In any creative pursuit, sometimes advice is given to put the project at hand down and revisit it later. In Calamities, despite struggling with writer’s block, Renee Gladman proves that she has no ability nor desire to construct boundaries in her...

The purpose of this essay is to examine to what extent Boccaccio’s insistence as to the necessity of hierarchical societies is undermined by his continual consideration of the flaws of established societal norms; as well as the motives for this...

Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei – the great collaborative work of Marx and Engels – is in its essence the propagandistic synopsis of the communist ideology as it stood, prefaced with a detailed and condemning account of human socioeconomic...

The purpose of this essay is to evaluate to what extent Machiavelli presents an adaptability of nature and a willingness to enact change as the key contributors to achieving and maintaining power and glory in politics in Il Principe. Contrary to...

A dark and peaceful night at the United States Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, turned into a life changing situation for Private First Class Louden Downey and Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson. The two men shown are personally given an order from...

Paris is Burning, a documentary by Jennie Livingston, focuses on the lives of New York City drag queens by providing insight into their unique culture by the use of an untraditional aspect of a documentary- she breaks the fourth wall. Livingston...

In Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach, supernatural plot elements entwine with Lisa’s development through adolescence. Under the neo-colonial Western view of the supernatural, these explanations would hardly seem satisfying to the hard line empirical...

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi uses several different points of view to narrate the story, including those of Miranda, her girlfriend Ore, Miranda’s twin brother Eliot, and with slightly less frequency, the house. The house is, in this...

Have you ever noticed that no matter what the context, you automatically associate the woods with creepiness and assume that the hero will rescue the damsel in distress? This is because the woods, damsel in distress, and hero are all examples of...

Novels are able to use both physical and psychological events to help shape a character or theme. They often act as building blocks for the meaning of the writing as a whole, and they are often thought invoking. In the novel, A Lesson Before Dying...

The movie Babel consists of 3 different stories, all interconnected by themes and ideas that are shared by the different stories. The three main themes that connect these stories are the loss of innocence as someone gets older, the idea of...

Johnathan Swift was an expert at satire, using irony and sarcasm as mediums to expose people’s stupidity and foolishness. The main targets of his irony were usually government and society. By writing Gulliver’s Travels in an adventurous style, he...

The ocean has provided a landscape for the unknown for centuries. Prior to the mapping of the world at the end of the 1700s, little was known of its vastness and conditions. Coleridge capitalizes on this notion of the ocean as a treacherous,...

The depiction of the Seven Deadly Sins serves a vital role in understanding the contexts through which works of literature explore religiosity and morality. Within both Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, the portrayal of the...