Newest Literature Essays

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...

Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” explores the fight for feminism at the height of the Civil Rights period of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The poem’s metaphors are used to create a powerful sense of symbolism the audience can relate to, along with...

Duck Soup is a political satire film directed by Leo McCarey in 1933; it stars the four Marx brothers who were renowned for their work in comedy. The film begins with a wealthy widow, Mrs. Teasdale, who inherits a large fortune from her late...

Typically, books have more similarities to real life than most people realize. One example is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; here, Collins writes of a dystopia where a tyrannical government controls the districts and subsequently the people...

Throughout the history of mankind, humanity has bared witness to a myriad of atrocious practices that have had an adverse effect on individuals despite the fact that they do not speak up against said practices. The Hunger Games perfectly captures...

In The Big Sleep, Chandler constructs various locations that resonate with the characters and storyline, but also these locations themselves transform into characters with their own independent attributes and motives. The success of these...

Many religious traditions teach that the world is fallen or corrupt, affected at every turn by man’s sin. However, psychological research shows that people tend to believe that the world is a just place, where people get what they deserve....

Before modernization, people were accustomed to a slow-paced life, free of industrial turmoil; however, the modernization and industrialization of the world made this comfort turn into fear and mistrust in an instant. In response to this extreme...

Is there something in nothing? Is there nothing in nothing? Throughout The Tragedy of King Lear, written by William Shakespeare, readers hear multiple references to the word “nothing.” Although nothingness is commonly regarded as something...

When one hears the word Satan, he thinks of an opposition to God. The name alone conjures up evil thoughts in most peoples’ heads. In the epic poem, Paradise Lost, a tale of the creation story, however this feeling of evil is quickly misplaced....

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not compiled like most gothic novels; rather it is compiled of many different sources and mediums.These sources are used to tell the history of Count Dracula, a rich vampire, and his evil attempt to create more...

Tennessee Williams portrays the character Stella as an adaptable character who has changed to fit in with her new surroundings in order to survive. She is also portrayed as a vulnerable possession, quite primal and driven by desire but also as a...

Romanticism was a literary, artistic and an intellectual movement that originated in Europe approximately at the end of the 18th century. This movement was originally a revolt against the neo-classical movement which focused on rationality and...

The criminal underworld was an elaborate network in Old London introducing new crime stories and entertainment such as Newgate Calendars. The Calendars were nonfiction crime reports from the 18th century that always ended in a lesson for the...

“You see but you do not observe” explains Holmes to a frustrated Watson, as he can’t figure out how Holmes comes to his conclusion (Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia). This seems to be the common scenario throughout Doyle’s stories, as more often than...

The definition of a modern-day hero is seen as “a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities” (Merriam-Webster). This definition is very similar to the way the Anglo-Saxons defined what a hero is....

Since 1801, Ireland was under British control due to the abolition of the Irish Parliament by the United Kingdom. Several uprisings had been attempted during the reign of the British, but none of them were necessarily note-worthy until Easter...

A defining characteristic of the Latin American literary tradition is the concept of magical realism, and Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez is often thought to be the father of magical realism as it is understood today. Even though magical...

In his tragedy Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare successfully engages his audience in a variety of emotions. Although these emotions are often negative, they still provide a cathartic release for the reader. Catharsis is defined as “a sudden emotional...