Newest Literature Essays

Tom Stoppard uses theatre to portray characters whose existence solely revolve around Shakespeare’s Hamlet. They lack a defined identity and are indistinguishable, as would dictate the existential universe they are a part of.

In his play, Stoppard...

The female gaze characterizes Mustafa Sa'eed's self-worth in Tayeh Salih's Season of Migration to the North. As he conforms to stereotypes of Arab-Africans during his interactions with Western women, Mustafa assumes made-up personalities,...

In the ‘Hebrew melodies’ poems, Byron asserts himself as the founding figures of Romantic poetry. Through experimental form, structure and clever use of language, he creates undeniable masterpieces that flood with emotion, beauty and nature.

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Mary March, a kidnapped Beothuk woman whose capture and death are central to the plot of Michael Crummey’s River Thieves, symbolizes historical losses of Indigenous culture. By bearing similarities to the outcomes of other British encounters with...

A stoic man recalls an old memory. He’s a child running through an abandoned factory looking to hide a something before it is stolen by the gang of unruly, marauding kids that is chasing him. Eventually, when he’s an adult, he finds it hidden...

In the time period of Jacobean England, the King’s words and opinions were treated as gospel. The people’s steadfast belief in the Divine Right of Kings, where the King was said to be chosen directly from God, and therefore the King’s word was God...

Mohamedou Ould Slahi's connection to American culture is clear in Guantánamo Diary, where American audiences can read a firsthand account of the atrocities committed in Guantánamo Bay. Slahi successfully juxtaposes colloquialisms and shared...

Both The Iliad and The Republic present a form of hero. Achilles of The Iliad embodies the conventional idea of the hero: physically strong, warlike, and honor-loving. However, Socrates of The Republic, with his never-ending search for wisdom,...

The usage of animals to represent the innermost dilemmas and contradictions of the human-animal mind has been a commonplace practice since the tradition of storytelling. Despite the seemingly revolutionary implications that accompany the...

The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun communicates and explores both the struggle and overall sense of identity through the heavy use of motifs and symbols throughout the book. As the story progresses and elaborates, these remain consistent...

Moby Dick confronts us with problems of language before we encounter anything about whales. The first word in the book—after the table of contents—is “Etymology,” and the tale of the “pale Usher,” and Hackluyt’s quote, immediately raise questions...

Stephen King’s Carrie and Peter Shaffer’s Equus both centre around teenage characters who are torn between their emergent sexuality and the religious views of their parents. King and Shaffer use characterisation to portray lust as a sin, then use...

The subtitle of both of Claudia Rankine’s most recent books, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and Citizen, “An American Lyric,” frames these works as engagements with the relationship between an “I” and a “We,” understood as a political unit. The phrase...

Though different in many ways, the writings of Kant, Nietzsche, and Sorel all acknowledge the significant role of violence in man's political affairs. Violence is a powerful tool. None of these men belie its importance, and they all accept that...

There are a variety of cues which encourage us to take Stephen Dedalus’s performance of his theory of Hamlet as sophistry, and to cast Stephen as a sophist. Stephen has been compared to Gorgias in “Aeolus”: Socrates and Plato make a number of...

Fantasy bridges the gap between reality and experience in a child’s mind, becoming a crucial part of a child’s engagement with the world around them. The fantasy genre dominates children’s literature; entailing themes of magic, adventure and...

Considering the works of her scholars throughout the years, it seems evident that the relevance of Mary Wollstonecraft's pamphlet, A Vindication of the Rights of Men has mostly been overshadowed by her more famous later essay, A Vindication of the...

Oryx & Crake is a novel that touches upon many themes and elements including technology, human relationships, and the environment. The theme that sticks out most to me is the tampering with nature element because with global warming and...

The year is 1946 and the island nation of Japan is still reeling from a devastating loss in the Pacific Theater. While the fighting and violence may have subsided in the wake of the West’s domination, a war still rages on in the psyches and souls...

Since its release Steven Galloway’s novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo in 2008, has won numerous awards including, nomination for the International Dublin Literary Award and winning the George Ryga award for Social Awareness in Literature. Since the...

The reality and concern of human nature and experience is articulated through the universal engagement and timeless literary appeal of William Butler Yeats’ poetry. His poems -‘Easter 1916’, ‘When you are old’ and ‘Leda and the Swan’ - serve as...

Political theocracy is an inherently oppressive, autocratic system, rendering individuals ultimately powerless. A composer’s political and personal representation subjectively constructs an audience’s conceptual and contemporary opinion through...

A great deal of Edward Thomas’s poetry deals with the intersection between the natural world and the mental arena, often revolving around what he is able to divine from his interactions in physical landscapes. The relationship between these two...

When Ryan Gosling was asked to describe The Nice Guys, which tells the story of Gosling’s Holland March, a private detective who struggles to find consistent work in 1977 Los Angeles, California. One day, though, an old woman hires him to look for...