Newest Literature Essays

In 1865, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln broke the hearts of many in the country. For abolishing slavery, Lincoln was praised by thousands, even after his death. Writers were inspired to write tributes, such as Walt Whitman with his poem, “O...

From the second half of the 19th century, a mythical version of Italy took hold of the European collective imagination. In the mind of foreign Romantic writers, Italy became the symbol of the glorious past and the place of landscapes of romance....

The Assistant is the second novel written by Bernard Malamud in 1957. The riveting story resonated with a wide audience and it garnered positive reviews subsequently winning the National Jewish Book award for fiction, which saw to it being listed...

Arguably, Sherriff presents Osborne as a convivial character, with his most prominent trait being his avuncular, caring nature. Upon first meeting Raleigh, a nervous young officer, he kindly informs him that “the other officers call me uncle."...

Arguably, both poets present a sense of prestige and admiration towards those who participated in WW1, using hindsight as post-war poets to reflect upon the horrors endured by soldiers and to remind more modern readers of the utmost respect these...

The question of how one gains knowledge of a topic comes up in multiple essays by Montaigne. “On Practice” suggests imagination is not good enough to practice being close to death because the closest one can get to understanding the experience of...

Whether Poirot is more so a seeker of justice rather than a representative of the law is an interesting concept, as it develops the idea that the law is not doing its job in finding justice, a complex critique that Christie actually explores...

America is known to be the land of freedom and opportunities, but in times of crisis it can turn into a disaster. During the 1930s America was going through a terrible drought, no rain and extremely high temperatures, which later on led to the...

Although Agatha Christie’s novels are known for their simple and traditional detective formula, ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ explores quite complex themes; most significantly, class. The victim, Roger Ackroyd, is a conventional victim for a...

The main characters in the novels Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe in 1958, and Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937 are Okonkwo and Janie Mae Crawford. The countries in which they reside (Nigeria and The...

Heart of Darkness is a novel that is chockfull of metaphors alluding to light and shade; a literary device meant to connect the reader’s preconceived notions associated with meanings of light and dark. The story, written by Joseph Conrad in 1899,...

Bernard Shaw’s 1914 drama ‘Pygmalion’ finds its roots in the classical myth of Ovid, who writes an erotic tale of romance between a sculptor an this status in ‘Metamorphoses’. It is unsurprising therefore that Shaw’s play has often been celebrated...

The relationship between the body and soul is one obsessed over by playwrights since the morality plays of the medieval period. Renaissance writer Christopher Marlowe and 20th century American playwright Bernard Shaw are no exceptions to this: in...

A Man of the People is a satirical story of mentorship, romance, revenge, and chance. The story is told in the perspective of Odili, the protagonist and a young educated man who is used symbolically to represent the younger generation that was...

Principles and sacrifices made to defend those principles is a key theme of “The Winslow Boy”. Many sacrifices were made by the major characters, some out of choice, while others had sacrifices forced upon them by more powerful characters....

Throughout Machiavelli’s The Prince and Christine’s Book of the City of Ladies, the narrators consistently integrate the theme of education through literature into their ideal social philosophy. From a political standpoint, Machiavelli’s guide...

From Jason to Perseus, Greek plays popularly depict righteous mortals with honorable qualities. The abundance of heroes in Greek mythology shows the preference of many playwrights to portray humans in a positive light. However, these paragons of...

Shakespeare’s sonnets justify the rigorous fixation of beauty standards that dictate the human race by cultural, social and political means. This essay analyzes the first four sonnets of Shakespeare’s collection, which both bluntly satirize human...

What does it mean to destroy oneself? In the short amount of time that is one's life, a lot of people have made an art out of self-destructing. People place themselves in terrifying positions just to feel anything else but the crushing pain of...

Tennessee Williams creates tension and conflict through oppositions in the play – he shows striking differences between the characters Stanley and Blanche, animalistic qualities, the contrast between the old world versus the new world and the...

Much of what happened to black slaves during the middle and late 19th century has been swept under the carpet, and Toni Morrison was fully aware of this. Her book, Beloved, seeks to bring many of those horrors to light so that a modern day reader...

The non-fiction novel ‘In Cold Blood’ depicts the true story of multiple murders that took place in the small farming town of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. Capote – the author and narrator of this text provides a wealth of knowledge surrounding the...

Alike the division of a novel into chapters, entrances and exits allow playwrights to structure the different sections of the plot in a comprehensive and effective manner for the audience. Whilst Wilde uses “An Ideal Husband” to examine a...

Much of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America centers around the immediate despair and hardships which afflict victims of the AIDs crisis in the 1980s. Beyond that, however, there are certain characters who illustrate conflicts related to issues...