Newest Literature Essays

The Grand Inquisitor

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

- John Milton

The questions proposed in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor challenge the very essence of human existence. The idea of...

The Gorgias by Plato has long been considered a disparaging dialogue that denounces both rhetoric and its practitioners for the unethical wielding of eloquence. However, numerous scholars have agreed that Plato's account of rhetoric is both...

Margaret Mitchell's romantic epic, Gone With the Wind, owes its remarkable popularity to the climate of sudden self-destruction and dreariness the Depression created. The Old South's grandeur, coupled with its Civil War-era decadence, provided...

The shape of American drama has been molded throughout the years by the advances of numerous craftsmen. Many contemporary playwrights herald the work of Anton Chekhov as some of the most influential to modern drama. Tennessee Williams has often...

In Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden-Party", the socioeconomically-derived false consciousness discussed by Michael Bell in "The Metaphysics of Modernism" initially blinds the protagonist Laura from viewing the world in any context outside of her...

In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche details the shortcomings of the Judeo-Christian tradition. He focuses on the fact that the followers of this tradition have developed in such a way that impedes happiness and the normal will power of a strong...

...books, books. Tall cases lined three walls of the room, filled to and beyond capacity. The overflow had been piled in stacks on the floor. There was little space left for walking, and none whatever for pacing.

-J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

As...

Too much exercise destroys strength as much as too little, and in the same way too much or too little food or drink destroys the health, while the proportionate amount increases and preserves it. The same is true of temperance and courage and the...

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein curdles readers' blood not merely with dreary nights and gruesome murders, but through a tale of man's most morbid undertakings. While the monster itself constitutes the most concretely catastrophic effect of...

"The Glass Menagerie" is fundamentally a memory play, in that both it's style and content are shaped and inspired by memory. The lighting effects emphasise these incessant reminiscences, as do the unique stage directions and screens, which appear...

From Aristotle to modern times, the faculty of human reason has been the subject of contrasting depictions in literature. In Crime and Punishment, for example, Fyodor Dostoyevsky emphasizes the tragic outcome of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov's...

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead showcases four men who exhibit varying strength of character, resolve, and ethics to create a concise illustration of the distinct levels of objectivity that pepper the spectrum of the human character. The obvious...

In her historic novel, The Fountainhead, author Ayn Rand presents one man's struggle to reconcile his desire for success with an admirable vision of morality. One can define both success and morality in a variety of ways. On the one hand, success...

Howard Roark's character in The Fountainhead is unwavering and beyond the effects of time, people, and mass opinion. Much of Roark's effectiveness and integrity is drawn in contrast, a contrast to the ever-changing beliefs of those around him....

Throughout Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan struggles to assign some value to human life - specifically, to his own life. This struggle reveals a weakness in Jordan's cold, calculated nature, a weakness that Hemingway...

In Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the recurring images of the horse and the airplane illustrate one of the major themes of the novel. The novel's predominant theme is the disintegration of the chivalric order of the Old Spanish World, as it...

In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," a lively family embarks on a trip fueled by foreboding images. Masterfully, O'Connor displays a crisp slice of Southern life. However, this picture of 1950s pastoral America is tainted with...

Throughout the history of black American culture, the pursuit of dreams has played a pivotal role in self-fulfillment and internal development. In many ways an individual's reactions to the perceived and real obstacles barring the path to a dream...

The genesis of the Russian radical movement is portrayed in Ivan Turgenev's classic novel Fathers and Sons as a shock which resonated throughout the Russian public sphere, effecting change within both families and society. Indeed, historian Daniel...

In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, love and intoxication are closely tied to the even grander theme of escape. Although escape is a greater driving force, it exists in its connection to these other themes. This complex relationship is found...

The romance between Frederic and Catherine in A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway parallels humanity's struggle between superstition and religion. Their relationship starts merely as a façade based on physical attraction, but quickly grows into...

War, deeply intertwined with human existence, overshadows action with impasse and ideals with sterility. Although war results in the facade of victory for one side, no true winner exists, because under this triumphant semblance lies the true cost...

Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) uses nature to structure the novel and provide symbols that replace human emotions. Nature serves as a basic structure for the plot and the actions that occur. It also emerges as a source of...

The desire to make history to discover what remains undiscovered, or to know what remains unknown is a timeless human goal. Although many have failed to realize this dream, a very few have been wildly successful in its pursuit. The immortality...