Newest Literature Essays

Edna Pontellier was brought up in a male-dominated society, where her role as an individual was decided in advance. As a woman of the late nineteenth century, Edna is required to act accordingly to a set of prescribed (though mostly unspoken)...

The intertwined relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality has existed for centuries. While these labels have the benefit of allowing those with similar identities to find each other and establish communities, there are also serious dangers...

While their origins are still being debated, there is no arguing the fact that gender roles have been present around the world for decades. Whether they are considered beneficial or oppressive, gender roles have served as a basis for some of the...

Vladimir Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” follows an elderly Jewish couple on the day of their institutionalized son’s birthday. In three parts, Nabokov describes their wasted journey sanatorium, where they could neither see their son nor deliver his...

The novels “The Things They Carried” by O’Brien and “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi uses the narrative, with a war context, to invite the reader to identify with scenarios, characters and ideas. Marjane Satrapi denounces the Iranian War with...

At first glance, the two short stories, “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol and “Two Friends” by Maupassant seem like two anecdotal overviews of the general society at the time. But in fact, these two short stories are very critical and provide a...

In both the poetry of Hardy and Eliot, time is used as a key feature to portray feeling about the external world and speakers’ own positions within the universe. Whilst Hardy often uses time to signify the idea that time has the ability to heal...

In both the 19th century fictional autobiography of Jane Eyre, and the 21st century memoir by Jeanette Winterson, protagonists are presented as being trapped within the oppressive worlds that they inhabit. Winterson and Eyre fight many battles,...

“He lived in mythology and a fairyland”: this sentiment expressed by Hopkins demonstrates how Keats could easily be perceived as fully immersing himself in an imaginative dream world, yet fails to encompass the notion that he does attempt to play...

Keats evidently uses his poetry as a form of escapism, thus valuing emotions and imagination over logic an reality, as he is able to craft his own form of reality through his writing. Many have speculated that this is due to his, arguably,...

Arguably, Ben Elton, Isaac Rosenberg, and Charles Sorely all present a vivid image of the brutal reality of both the grotesque physical and the resounding psychological effects of war, far different from the romanticism that pro-war poets of the...

With the popularity of fast food, the obesity rate has begun to proliferate in United State. Morgan Spurlock made an investigative documentary on the potential effects of fast food in respect of this phenomenon. Supersize Me is a 2004 American...

The Drover’s Wife, a classic Australian short story, was written from somewhat feminist perspective by Henry Lawson in 1892. Lawson demonstrates a nuanced view of gender role through recounting the story of a bush woman with her four children in...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the Beautiful” follows a watchmaker’s spiritual and emotional journey of creating the physical form of his idea of beauty, a butterfly. Light imagery plays out throughout the short story and its perception and...

“Daphne, the daughter of the river god / Peneus, was the first love of Apollo” (Ovid 1032). Thus begins Ovid’s recitation of the famous story of Apollo and Daphne in Book I of his 8 A.D. collection of stories, Metamorphoses, his most celebrated...

An issue that has continued to prevail throughout the centuries, and will continue to do so until justice is found, is the role of women in society. For centuries women have been suppressed by the power of men. However, over the past century women...

In the drama Death of a Salesman, the conflict that arises from a failing paternal-son relationship is illustrated akin also to the play Fences. Both storylines follow middle-class households in the mid-20th century and the interactions between...

The Odyssey by Homer tells the story of the hero Odysseus’ decade long journey home. Throughout this journey the characters use lying to for a variety of reasons, and occasionally, they lie for no reason at all. The lies in The Odyssey do not have...

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, is a novel of dizzying richness, complexity and depth. It discusses topics as varied as European social and cultural decay, philosophical treatments on the mystery and vagaries of Time and the clash of East...

Vladimir Nabokov’s “Spring in Fialta” explores the protagonist's, Victor's, forbidden and impossible love affair with a carefree woman, Nina. Throughout the text, Victor’s narrative flashes to different, unchronological points in the past and the...

Mala Ramchandin is the main protagonist of the novel “Cereus Blooms at Night” written by Shani Mootoo in 1996. Themes of ecocriticism, transnational feminism, and the genre of minor literature, a theory popularized by philosophers and activists...

The boundary between the human and the non-human animal is tested now more than ever with the prevailing field of Animal studies. Traditional theories in philosophical thinking from Aristotle to Descartes that regard the human and the non-human...

Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message” (McLuhan)and this is true of films as well as any other forms of media. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, directed by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, is a film that uses the medium of...

The three main female characters of All the King’s Men, while standing as their own personal individuals, also serve to show the best and worst aspects of all the main male characters that present throughout the novel. While Anne Stanton and Lucy...