Newest Literature Essays

Of all the institutions satirized in Jonathon Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," one that has perhaps been less scrutinized is the destruction of the English language. Throughout the travels, language is the key obstacle in Gulliver's "understanding"...

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

Jonathan Swift

When Gulliver's Travels was first published in 1726, Swift instantly became history's most famous misanthrope. Thackeray was not alone...

Andromache, one of the few female characters in the Iliad, is part of perhaps one of the tenderest sections of Iliad. Along with Helen, she is the only other mortal woman to have any substantial speaking lines in the entire epic. Unlike women in...

Social class plays a dominant role in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In fact the title character is living proof that the American dream really exists. Readers recognize the importance Fitzgerald places on social class throughout the...

Throughout literature, there are countless characters whose only positive attributes seem to be the fact that they are utterly detestable - the reader loves to hate them. From Shakespeare's conniving Iago to Dickens' endlessly cruel Estella, these...

In his book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the psychology of love's fantasies and realities through the character of Jay Gatsby. During their five-year separation, Gatsby pines for his love, Daisy Buchanan, rearranging his entire...

Throughout history, the eye has always been an emblem of the deities. In the Egyptian pantheon, there is Horus, god of light, who is signified by his famous Eye; in the Roman pantheon, there is Juno, associated with the many-eyed peacock; and in...

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a shining example of the principle that the most powerful messages are not told but rather shown. Although the novel is written in the form of largely impartial narration by Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald's...

The figurative as well as literal death of Jay Gatsby in the novel The Great Gatsby symbolizes a conclusion to the principal theme of the novel. With the end of the life of Jay Gatsby comes the end of what Fitzgerald views as the ultimate American...

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is regarded as a brilliant piece of literature that offers a vivid peek into American life in the 1920's. The central characteristics of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920's society are shown through the decay...

To many Americans, wealth and happiness are inextricably intertwined. After all, the democratic ideals of our country are predicated on the notion of the âself-madeâ? man. Ironically, it is sometimes the striving for wealth or the striving for...

The Great Gatsby and "Babylon Revisited," both by F. Scott Fitzgerald, are stories about the emptiness and recklessness of the 1920s. Each story has its distinctions, but Fitzgerald's condemnation of the decade reverberates through both....

Renowned author F. Scott Fitzgerald became "the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed 'the Jazz Age.'" (Phillips 1). His fame grew in part from his widely published short stories, and also from the art of his novel, The...

The central theme of <I>The Great Gatsby</I> is the decay of the American Dream. Through his incisive analysis and condemnation of 1920s high society, Fitzgerald (in the person of the novels narrator, Nick Carraway) argues that the...

<blockquote>[G]audy ... primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. ... [T]he air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and...

In the first part of Dicken's Great Expectations, Pip confesses to his readers that "I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me" (63). During Pip's first visit to Satis...

The fledgling years of post-industrial Britain were tumultuous ones, as are the beginnings of all eras that dismantle century-old beliefs and traditions. It was the advent of capitalism, signifying endless opportunities for wealth through industry...

"We have no choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions. We are not free to follow our own devices, you and I." (265).

The question of self-determination is central in Great Expectations. Dickens struggles to determine and express to what...

The forms that stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.

--Darwin, The Origin of the Species (1859)

Christopher Ricks poses the question, in his essay on Dickens' Great Expectations,...

It is difficult to classify the personality of any one person as being entirely one way or another. So, too, it is difficult to classify a rich, round character like Pip in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations as being essentially passionate or...

One of the most important and common tools that authors use to illustrate the themes of their works is a character that undergoes several major changes throughout the story. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens introduces the reader to many...

The indefatigable spirit of unity emerges as the one unfailing source of strength in John Steinbecks migrant worker classic The Grapes of Wrath. As the Joad familys world steadily crumbles, hope in each other preserves the members sense of pride,...

Steinbeck's intercalary chapters in The Grapes of Wrath have nothing to do with the Joads or other characters of the novel, but help describe the story in different terms. They are similar to poems, offering different viewpoints of the migration,...

John Steinbeck wrote the The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 to rouse its readers against those who were responsible for keeping the American people in poverty. The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family, migrant farmers from Oklahoma...