Newest Literature Essays

Walters said of her 2009 novel The Little Stranger that it was driven by an interest in the capacity of people ‘to contain a range of emotional experience’, and this is particularly evident in her evocation of Doctor Faraday, its narrator. We see...

Religion shapes and reshapes social relations as well as patterns of racial interaction in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Phillis Wheatley’s poem, On Being Brought from Africa to America. As becomes evident from examination of specific quotes of...

The binary frame that is evident in Los Vendidos are: acculturation/de-acculturation. The Mexican-Americans who abandon their culture in favour of the American culture are considered to be “sell-outs” whereas those who stick to the Mexican culture...

The mode of address is the relationship between the writer, the text and the audience and the way that this is communicated and controlled by stylistic features of narration. In the case of Castle Rackrent, Edgeworth has created a complex mode of...

The protagonist in “The Drover’s Wife” by Leah Purcell is Molly, known as the drover’s wife, whose perspective dominates the entire play. The play is centered around the hardships that she encounters at the time she is solely responsible for...

In the story A Meeting in the Dark”, Ngugi wa Thiong’o describes patriarchy in the Gikuyu (a tribe in Kenya) culture. Patriarchy dictates the social aspects of the Gikuyu people such as education, religion, circumcision, gender roles and marriage....

In Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You”, the persona does not explicitly state whether he is in love or not. Pablo Neruda advances subjects that are mutually exclusive such as Love/Not to love; wanting/not wanting;...

Charles Dickens’ 1841 serialized novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of ‘80 is filled with complicated webs of characters and confusing plot lines that can be difficult to follow even for the most talented of literature experts. Since the...

“It was a dark and stormy night.” A cliché used in many novels to not only display the setting, but as a form of symbolism that contains a deeper meaning about the text. Different types of weather and the seasons are commonly used in novels as...

The epigraph in Coraline by G. K. Chesterton states that “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” (Gaiman 2). This is a fair representation of the function...

The poem, "On the Subway", by Sharon Olds is an insightful piece of work that beautifully examines the impact of centuries of racism and unfair stereotypes on the African American community. The narrator is a member of the “in” group of today’s...

A tender but powerful coming-of-age story, the film Moonlight chronicles the life of Chiron, a young African American boy living in a rough Miami neighborhood during the city’s notorious crack epidemic. Bullied throughout his youth, Chiron feels...

War is not ethic nor moral on the best of days, but even during the most brutal battles, some war rules must be established in order to protect soldiers of both sides. One of these rules, for instance, is that a warrior must never kill a soldier...

While Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War primarily serves as a straightforward historical text—bereft of the grand digressions and parables of Herodotus’s Histories—there are moments that strike one as especially poetic in tone. One...

Idylls of the King reflects the nature and dangers of Victorian idealism through an Arthurian lens. Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, portrays the unsustainability of extreme Christian values in his twelve narrative poems depicting the rise...

Daughters of the Dust is a film of astonishing visual imagery that tells the story of the Gullah clan, descendants of West African slaves living off the coast of Georgia at the turn of the 20th century. Through their isolation from the American...

From the very beginning, it seemed like Lorenzo and Jessica might not make a strong couple. Like any good Shakespearean match, these two were destined to have obstacles to face during the course of their relationship. Lorenzo is Christian and...

When the Emperor was Divine tells the story of a family of Japanese Americans living in California during World War II. During this time the United States Government forced the relocation and incarceration of those of Japanese descent into...

The importance of a narrative lies in its capacity to illustrate how humans perceive themselves as individuals and communities. Groups have been sharing stories since the beginning of time. As a result, narratives are products of their specific...

Numerous scholars have examined Christine de Pizan’s seminal The Book of the City of Ladies, finished circa 1405, as a conscious “reappropriation” of earlier texts by men – most notably as a formal response to Jean de Meun’s popular additions to...

The story of Bisclavret is a lais poem, written by Marie De France in the 12th century. The titular character is a knight cursed with the ability to change into a wolf. However, the true monster of this story is made out to be his unfaithful wife....

Many feminist scholars have lauded Edith Wharton for her refusal to shy away from portraying the misery of married women. A common interpretation of Wharton’s intentions were that this misery stems from the dissatisfaction her characters suffer at...

As one grows and matures throughout their lifetime, countless relationships are created and changed. These shifting relationships help define who a person will ultimately be. Many of the reasons for relationship changes come from social situations...

According to famous American actress Marilyn Monroe, “Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together”. At times when it seems one’s world is falling apart and life is not worth the unbearable pain, something unexpected...