Newest Literature Essays

‘Phenomenal woman’, being semiotic of a woman’s stability and security in herself is particularly important in Angelou’s collection given that the one of the recurring themes projected consistently throughout her poems is the idea of confidence,...

Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved provides another perspective on the holocaust and uses real-life stories and experiences to explain the nature of the behavior of those involved, the oppressed and the oppressor. His essays are important in...

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the character of Shylock begins the play with firm control over his daughter, his money, and his Jewish religion. Yet by the play’s conclusion, he is daughterless, has lost half of his wealth, and has been...

Given that William Shakespeare was writing in a period when ‘blackness [was] one of the many qualities, physical or otherwise, that isolate[d] and acutely degrade[d] those who possess[ed] it’, and ‘the male dominance over women and children in the...

For decades James Joyce has been canonized as a high modernist writer, and Ulysses as the archetypal modernist novel. However, as Emer Nolan observes, attempts to assimilate Joyce into the predominantly metropolitan modernist tradition habitually...

Leslie Marmon Silko can be considered a key figure within the Native American cultural renaissance that took place within the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century, within which increasing amounts of Native Americans – having...

'We and our families are pining and in misery, and want, and starvation! We demand a fair day's wages for a fair day's work! We are the slaves of capital - we demand protection to our labour. We are political serfs – and we demand to be free.’...

There are a variety of different methods in which to express oneself artistically. Some of the most eminent are through fiction writing and painting, however, one of the most historically sensitive and perceptive means of expression is through...

Because a shift to modernity can result in enormous, but detrimental, social change, T. S. Eliot’s dramatic monologue, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, criticizes the changing nature of society, characterized by the abandonment of...

The Novel Daisy Miller by Henry James portrays a study of an outgoing American tourist, Daisy herself, and the downfall of her reputation through the eyes of the narrator. Daisy Miller’s characterization throughout the novel is based solely on the...

Language connects people in a way that nothing else can. Communication is the key to understanding, expression, and building connections with others. In Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, entitled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah...

Love is a universal feeling which creates powerful bonds between individuals. By way of illustration, in Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s Icy Sparks, characters suffer through many hardships but are able to overcome the difficult situations they are in with the...

As we progressed through this course, many themes have become clear and have been expressed thoroughly in the assigned readings. A very prominent theme around the 19th century, socially and in literature, was the role of women in society. The 1800...

Across centuries, fairy tales have provided young women with a form of escapism from the restrictive society around them with princes, magic spells, and evil-stepmothers. The women in fairy tales, specifically from the writers and producers of...

Unlike novelists, playwrights can use visual and auditory effects to emphasize certain aspects of the storyline. Tennessee Williams’, A Streetcar Named Desire, utilizes music to portray an internal conflict taking place within Blanche DuBois....

Women’s rights movements in the 1950s of England were not entirely strong. In a speech in regards to women’s rights Wiley Rutridge, Justice of the Supreme Court in 1948, states “there still [remains] large areas in which unjustifiable...

Within the relationship between Jean and Berenger in Rhinoceros, Berenger’s passivity and Jean’s narcissism become apparent. It is clear from the play that Jean is abusive and Berenger is submissive to him, making their friendship toxic. The...

A number of texts that define themselves within the post- modern category have attempted to capture the essence of Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacrum and hyper- reality. Simulacrum can be described as ‘something having merely the form or...

"Misery won’t touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprint on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of ”(Edwidge Danticat).

These disheartening yet wise words from Edwidge Danticat articulate...

Each year, residents of forgotten neighborhoods pay the price of being alive. In “Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin uses references to human vulnerability to express the impact of home environment on outlook and life experience. Through the actions of...

In his novella ‘Minority Report’, author Phillip Dick outlines the ambitious nature of human beings and through the representation of characterization and the setting which reflects upon the pessimistic ideas which Dick possesses about human...

Flower arranging, a lost razor, bestiality–all topics which are discussed in Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia. Despite its seeming inconsequentiality, the discussion of flower arranging in Act I when paired with the destruction of items in...

Under the hostility of the Jim Crow Laws and the ever-present threat of lynching in Post-Reconstruction America, the circumstances seemed dire for African-Americans who dreamed of a brighter future. Yet there were still a few whose names found...

The distinction between truth and falsehood is at face value a simple one, but in actuality what is ‘true’ extends beyond the face of the world and permeates all aspects of life. Social systems are built upon the importance of truth, and our...