Newest Literature Essays

Bong Joon-Ho’s most recent venture, Parasite(or Gisaengchung), rose to widespread critical acclaim following its premier at the Cannes Film Festival, where it also won the coveted Palm d’Or. There have been countless films and works of literature...

Truth is something that can never be thoroughly understood or known at all, thought Dickinson. She used poetry as a way to look for it, only to have more questions pop up every time she thought she had found it. That is the thing with truth, she...

“All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.” (Burke 402).

Here, revered statesman Edmund Burke was trying to say that a person’s character is destroyed because of their inclination to behave in a certain way....

American author Cormac McCarthy is well-known for unflinchingly examining the moral state of humanity within his writing. His works seldom offer any justification or redemption, leaving readers to equally ponder the sense and senselessness, the...

When the ‘Great Cornhill Fire’ of 1748 swept through the Cornhill district in the centre of London, it obliterated nearly two blocks of the city, destroying more than one hundred homes, causing multiple deaths, and triggering widespread looting in...

Settler common sense, a term popularized by Mark Rifkin, refers to legal and political structures established during times of colonization which are designed to allow “non-native access to indigenous territories” (Settler Common Sense xvi), and...

When most people think of heroes, they often associate them with having a happy ending. For example, fairy tales always end with their heroes living happily ever after, but that is not always the case. Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero is...

Tar Baby, written by Toni Morrison, tells the story of two people from two very different worlds and their journey to find love in a world filled with societal norms, discriminations, and strong ties to the past. The lives of Son and Jadine...

Top Girls, an all-female play written by Caryl Churchill in the early 1980s, focuses almost exclusively on the new struggles women faced in trying to become integrated into and obtain success in the workplace. This struggle is emphasized most...

The goals and struggles associated with the feminist movement have undoubtedly changed over time, transforming as increasing freedom and equality shed light on the more complex issues which surround integrating women wholly into society. Machinal,...

Marsha Norman’s ‘Night Mother is rife with haunting images and conversations, but no item specified in the play is more revealing than the gun which Jessie chooses to use to end her life. Jessie’s careful decision to use her father’s gun gives...

In Patrick Pearse’s search for recruits to the Volunteer Army, a year before the Easter Rising of 1916, he stated, “Whatever soul-searchings there may be among Irish political parties now or hereafter, we go on in the calm certitude of having done...

As part of human nature, the desire to want more has lead many to a path of self-destruction. By way of illustration, the main character in “Paul’s Case” by Willa Cather, Paul, has an obsession with a more luxurious lifestyle fueling his negative...

A key tenet of existentialism is that as humans, we are all surrounded by absurdity. The very world we live in is absurd, and our actions are the only thing that we have complete control over. In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov...

The social contract is the view that a person's morals or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form a society in which they live. The best three known philosophers of social contract theory: Thomas Hobbes,...

Sounds and noises play an important role in any book. All kinds of noises and sounds used by the author are significant in adding “flavor” to the story. Without such noises, readers would perceive the book as “flat” and it may become hard to...

Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening explores the relationship between the reality of a critical situation and the fantastical version of this reality that becomes quite easy to get caught up in, and how this relationship can put...

As a satire of greed and corruption in early postcolonial Nigeria, Wole Soyinka’s play The Trials of Brother Jero revolve around three characters’ markedly different approaches to asserting power for themselves and over others.

Brother Jero’s...

Using inspiration from one’s own personal life experiences is no foreign technique to writers of the past as well as the modern day. Most writers do what that they do because of the trials and tribulations that they have faced in their lives, and...

In Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), Mitchell engages with the concept of white femininity in a number of ways. This essay will consider how, through her characterization of female characters who adhere to, and/or subvert ideas of...

According to The Journal of Literary Technique, the narrative voice in Middlemarch uses “an authoritative system of interpretation adequate to explain the particular experience of each individual character”(Clark-Beattie 199). In chapter 37, Eliot...

It is well-known that throughout history, people oppressed each other because of differences amongst themselves. The most recent situation where this one sees this is in the 1950s and 1960s, where black people treated unequally simply because...

It’s been said that people come into our lives for a reason. They bring change in ways we least expect. “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, by Herman Melville, is the story of a lawyer who hires a new scribe for the office. At first, everything seems to go...

Call Me by Your Name, by André Aciman, is a novel narrated in the form of stream of consciousness by Elio, a seventeen year old. Elio is smart for his age, and he has a vast knowledge of language. Through language, he is able to create atmospheres...