Newest Literature Essays

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...

Think all the way back to the Stone Age. Food variety started and ended at whichever animal you were able to hunt that day. Today we live in an age where the food choices are virtually endless. You have your choice of fast food, processed food,...

Jane Austen ’s Northanger Abbey has been widely analyzed as satire of the gothic novel and, at first glance, it seems there is more than enough textual evidence to support this claim. Throughout the novel, Austen employs a sarcastic narrative...

War is widely regarded as a time of devastation, death, and destruction. Many times, the brave souls that go nobly into war come out completely different, scarred and changed by the horrific events they have witnessed, if they survive. In All...

Washington Irving lived throughout the late 18th - early 19th century and was an American short story writer, essayist, historian, and diplomat. His piece of work, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” can be considered as a classic in today’s American...

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t,” is inherently Shakespearean in nature, and translates to the well known contemporary idiom “There’s a method to my madness.”(2.2. 223). While the structure of nuclear diplomacy ventures far...

In “The Sound of Waves”, the possibility that individuals must break social norms and stay true to themselves in order to reach true happiness is explored across two distinct classes. Shinji and Hatsue, who belong to different classes, fall in...

In Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre the protagonist paints four pictures during the plot. These paintings carry meanings in themselves. In addition, the act of painting is important for the main character, since it means her a way of escaping...

Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’, highly contested for its scathing depiction of 1960’s American society is renowned for its portrayal and characterization of the permeating theme; The American Dream. It seeps into all facets of society and impedes...

In stressful situations, people use connections with things to help them overcome the horrors in the situations. In the Military, many soldiers experience very stressful and intense situations. They use connections with cigarettes, fellow soldiers...

It is moments of wrongdoing and subsequent atonement that constitute every child’s coming of age. Within his autobiographical narrative, A Summer’s Life, Gary Soto recreates his fall from innocence as his guilty six-year-old self steals a...

Though pride can have a negative connotation and is often thought of as a synonym for being full of one’s self, it can also be an honest and healthy feeling of genuine satisfaction with one’s own achievements. In other instances, pride can also...