Newest Literature Essays

Slapstick comedy warrants more than two chuckles and a snort, courtesy of Chaplin’s decades of work that gave the world humorous content packed with a philosophical punch. Regardless of liking him or not, his films irrefutably remain some of the...

Recounting the tale of the beloved poet Konstantin Perov, Nabokov cultivates a compelling short story seemingly isolated from a political or social motive; however, in the concluding paragraph, the reader’s expectations swivel upon Nabokov’s...

According to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and many philosophers during the reformative Fin de Siècle era, human duality, a constant struggle between good and evil within a singular human is a natural phenomenon that prevails within...

One can look to the pariahs and outcasts of the world to understand the attributes that have been deemed unworthy in our world. In the novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove is continually alienated from her community. Her...

It seems to be an innate human need to belong, to be a part of something, a part of a group of people that have formed a strong and reliable bond. In the novel Harvest, by Jim Crace, a fire set at the local manor house sets of a chain of events...

In Homer’s Iliad, Andromache expresses her feelings of abandonment and grief after her husband, Hektor, tragically dies in the Trojan War. In Book 22, the narrator uses word choice in order to display Andromache’s feelings of abandonment, while...

As a comedy, The Clouds by Aristophanes brings attention to the uses of rhetoric and intellectualism–symbolized by the Sophistry. In an argument between the “right” and “wrong,” we see a debate between a new sophist education (the wrong) and the...

Throughout King Lear, characters intrinsically desire happiness, using other pursuits instrumentally to achieve their final goal of personal satisfaction. Through this quest, Shakespeare makes it clear that in order for one to find happiness, one...

It is no new exposé the disconcerting truths in the history of women in which the facets of female identity have been subject to mental disorder diagnoses that otherwise do not apply to their male counterparts. Particularly in the 20th century,...

The process of discovery is often catalyzed by a provocative environment which compels the individual’s opposition to existing values, engendering the realization of one’s own ideas, inherently encouraging the formation of renewed perceptions of...

Composers draw on their political and social milieu in the representations of people and politics which align with their contextual purpose and hence, such representations are inherently manipulated to serve a particular agenda. Such is...

“Words”, written by Dana Gioia, is a beautiful concoction of elements that are crucial in composing a poem. Poetry is considered a form of art, as it incorporates different elements into it, which differentiates it from traditional text. When...

If one was to read Eliot’s biography but never Silas Marner, the assumption that the author was a feminist could be made. However, the characters of Nancy and Eppie demonstrate that Eliot’s beliefs when it came to feminism were not so clear cut....

In “The Rich Brother” by Tobias Wolff, Pete drives his brother Donald home from a church community. Pete is the typical middle class success story and Donald is a poor drifter. Throughout the short story, the question arises who is truly the “rich...

“Post-Racial” Segregation Set in “post-racial” America, specifically following the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Paul Betty’s The Sellout illustrates the discrimination that presently plagues the black community in America, and the prevalence...

Anne Moody’s 1968 Coming of Age in Mississippi describes her life and what lead her to become so involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Her hard-headed personality and experience working for and interacting with whites throughout her life gave her...

Forster has started to use mythology in his early novels. Although, the reason for this is not clear, it could be for the sake of following the “literary vogue” as Crews called it. One of Forster’s novel, which is based on mythological elements is...

Chicano people come from a “mixed Spanish, Indian and Anglo descent” (Madsen 6) and Chicana is the feminine equivalent of the former term. Chicana literature is about the issues and struggles that women have to face and even the difficulties that...

Social identity as a significant construct towards acceptance and a sense of belonging or self-confidence is often susceptible to cultural expectations. Barry Jenkins’s film Moonlight which amalgamates themes of race, identity, sexuality, and...

In Arrival, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve tackles a theme that can be summed up by a quote from the film that says, “it's the theory that the language you speak determines how you think and affects how you see everything” (Villeneuve, 2016). From...

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby and Bob Fosse’s musical film Cabaret both explore how a lifelong pursuit of hedonistic pleasure will lead to self-destruction through the use of stylistic conventions of their text type. The term...

Puritanism was a religious reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries that tried to purify the Church of England of remnants of the Roman Catholic popery. Puritans were central to American writing, history and even culture. They brought...

Washington Irvin wrote Rip Van Winkle’s story to represent the struggles and problems that the Americans went through while they were under Britain’s control, and after it, when the American Revolution broke out. In order to capture the essence of...