Newest Literature Essays

Auteur director Alfred Hitchcock first introduced audiences to Rear Window, a film that would go on to reach both critical and commercial success, in the mid-1950s. With this, he left them pondering a question still being debated by viewers today:...

Both Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee and The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi deal with the weighty themes of dehumanization, oppression, and the darkest sides of humanity. Similarities between the apparatus of oppression depicted...

True literature has two purposes, the first is to show a reflection of society, and the second is to encourage social change by showing an unflattering reflection. In 1959, Shirley Jackson published her acclaimed novel The Haunting of Hill House,...

How can we define humanity? The word “inhuman” is used to describe cruel and brutal actions. Thusly, a human’s perspective would dictate that humanity should be interpreted as the opposite, and entail dignity and goodness - but it is important to...

Nothing grows and changes throughout life like a person’s identity as people face new challenges and experiences every day. The protagonist of Black Swan film by director Darren Aronofsky, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is faced with a fatal...

Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander challenges 16th century Christian teaching. Christian teaching on desire stems from Thomas Aquinas’ Natural Law which is a set of moral laws intended to identify God’s purpose for human life. One of the five...

American Indian Stories written by Zitkala-Sa in 1921 is a collection of biographical and autobiographical stories from Native Americans living in the Sioux reservation. In this work, the author describes her (and also other people's) personal...

“If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?” is a query made by the protagonist, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), in the film Arrival which provokes complex contemplations on determinism, free will, and fate. Does...

As detective fiction became more popular, people began speculating what the role of the detective was. In one perspective, many believed that the detective served as an explanation for the chaotic, modern world. The detective also gave society a...

In Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Mary Wroth becomes one of the first women in history to write a sonnet sequence, which was first published in her romance story The Countess of Montgomery's Urania. Pamphilia, meaning "all-loving," is the main...

In « Tears, Idle tears », the victorian poet, Lord Alfred Tennyson gives through his poem a retrospective glance back at what he has lost in the past, but also the way people might feel when faced with loss. Lord Tennyson wrote this poem after...

To figure out the nature of knowledge, one must ask what it means to know, or fail to know something. This involves understanding what knowledge is, and determining cases in which one knows something, and cases in which one does not know...

‘As one judge said to the other, “Be just, and if you can’t be just, be arbitrary.”’ - William Burroughs

Agamben’s Homo Sacer begins thus: ‘The paradox of sovereignty consists in the fact the sovereign is, at the same time, outside and inside the...

Humor makes life bearable. It brings joy to the vagrancies of humanity. Without humor, life would be hard to cope with. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a perfect example of how humor can make life a joy to live and remind us that in this life,...

In ‘An Ideal Husband’ Wilde effectively portrays compassion and forgiveness as very important qualities. He emphasizes how these characteristics can save relationships, proving that Robert and Lady Chiltern can recover their marriage. Robert and...

Chaucer and Wilde, although writing 500 years apart, both present power as an intrinsic aspect of marital life in Medieval and Victorian patriarchal societies. January sexually dominates May in ‘The Merchant’s Tale’, while in ‘An Ideal Husband’ it...

The mimetic theory, originated by Rene Girard, is based upon the observational tendency of human individuals to subconsciously imitate others and the extension of this mimesis to the realm of desire. This mimetic theory is portrayed throughout...

Having healthy social relationships is vital for a productive and meaningful life. At the base of every relationship that exists between human beings are the cords of love. Love turns out to be an important element in life and besides having a...

A hero is made up of many traits. His/her strength, character and intelligence among so much more. It is often said in superhero films that, “with great power comes great responsibility.” This saying can be interpreted in many ways. A lot of...

The Confessions illustrates many times through which Saint Augustine appears to desire and pursue pain throughout his life, made especially clear in the beginning of Book III. His apparent desire for pain is a surprising concept for a man who so...

The 19th century was a time of rapid growth and development in a multitude of ways economically and socially. The United States of America was developing from a union of states into a worldwide political power. This movement included western and...

In both ‘Tis Pity’ and ‘The Wife of Bath’ many character abandon reason, and tend to replace reason with their own desires, making them, in T.S Eliot’s words “Monsters of egotism”. Fundamentally, in ‘Tis Pity’, when characters do not listen to...

As humans, we experience hardships, in some cases more drastic than others, over the course of our lives. Subconsciously, we may repress memories depending on the degree to which they physically and/ or emotionally damage us as means to best cope...

Plath often looks at the cycle of life from birth through to death: as death is a cycle, it may not be the end, but rather, a new beginning. In “Edge” one must take a journey with death showing that if one seizes life, then one can seize death and...