Newest Literature Essays

Since the end of World War II there has been an unwritten rule in the discourse of American politics. Though unwritten and mostly unspoken, this rule has been for the most part so widely respected and adhered to that over the decades has arisen a...

It is difficult to think of another film which has been so substantially changed for the first-time viewer more than the second entry in the original Star Wars trilogy, the 1980 sequel to the eponymously-titled blockbuster which started it, The...

In the early 1950s, French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan broke into the field of psychoanalysis with his theory of the mirror stage. Within Lacan’s notable text Ecritis, the psychiatrist gives two facets to his theory. In the first, the mirror stage...

The role of the chorus and its functions is much debated since antiquity, scholars have worked on several theories to reach the truth of the emergence of the chorus as an essential element of tragedy. Aristotle writes in Chapter 18 of Poetics, “...

A feminist struggle is a form of strife that focuses on liberating women from the oppressive patriarchal social orientation that operates to undermine the woman in the society. It is aimed at empowering women to overcome barriers that have led to...

Sylvia Plath’s use of “psychic landscapes”, as she describes it, has proven to be quite effective in highlighting key themes in her various poems. It serves as an outlet for expressing intense feelings that are otherwise impossible to convey...

Postmodernism is a contemporary theory introduced by Fredric Jameson that aims to explain the culture of the novel world we currently live in. Perhaps the most defining feature of Postmodernism is the lack of distinction between high culture and...

Home is a novel by distinguished writer Toni Morrison that explores the story of Frank, an African American man returning home post the Korean War, and his naïve and uneducated sister Cee. The novel takes us through the evolution of these...

Louise Erdrich is a prominent and celebrated Native American writer. Her novel ‘The Round House’, covers many themes and issues pertinent to the Native American community. The novel is told in the first-person point of view of the protagonist Joe...

In Carl Hiaasen’s humorous novel full of witty times yet serious situations, Hoot, uses many literary techniques and brings the attention of key ideas into play, to influence the reader in acknowledging the main concern of the story, being...

How do gender roles instilled by society impact those that are forced to abide by them? This is a question posed by many gender theorists, as our society tends to impose these roles strictly. According to this theory, these roles are damaging...

The novel In the Lake of the Woods, written by Tim O’Brien and published in 1994, contains various symbolisms. One of the major symbols is magic. O’Brien advances the idea of magic tricks by discussing its foundations with nonfictional quotes and...

In Steven Spielberg’s adventurous film Jurassic Park (1993), the director focuses on the journey a group of scientists experience as they endeavor through the prehistoric dinosaur park, escalating to become a frighting encounter for the characters...

Though very little is told in terms of her backstory, Lady Russell is nonetheless one of those characters that almost covertly dictate the course of the novel in a quite radical manner. More precisely, the widow exerts a very high degree of...

Throughout the French novel Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, readers follow two main characters, Francois and Augustin, through their journey from youth to adulthood. As narrator Francois recalls his teenage years at Saint Agathe with his...

Brideshead Revisited is a 1945 novel that was written by Evelyn Waugh. During book one and chapter one of book two of the novel, readers closely follow main characters Sebastian and Charles through their adolescent years and early adulthood. The...

‘A Wife in London’ is an anti-war whereby war is portrayed in an unflattering light. Hardy narrates the death of a soldier who fought in the African Boer War and conveys the devastating consequences this has on the soldier’s family. As such, Hardy...

The novel Crime and Punishment, written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published in 1866, focuses on many philosophical and psychological themes. One of the themes is the distinction between rationalism and anti-rationalism. Rationalist ideas are based...

If God is all powerful, why does He in His infinite wisdom allow Satan to exist? Lucifer, the Devil, the Dark One, the Tempter—seems like all it would take from the all-knowing, all-powerful creator deity is less effort than it takes to sigh and...

Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You (2014) presents the complexities of family dynamics, exploring the various conflicts the Lee family faces and the powerful influences each member imposes upon each other. The family’s isolation from...

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is an American script writer who was born in a Broadway hotel. His play Long Day’s Journey into Night presents certain parallelism with his life. Long Day’s Jorney into Night portrays, as the title states, the long day...

In 'Much Ado About Nothing', friendship is personified as the male bond (shared by Claudio, Don Pedro, and Benedick), female friendship (among Hero, Margaret, and Beatrice), and cross-gender friendship (between Benedick and Beatrice). It is...

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant follows the lives of each member of the Tull family, the mother and her three kids. The story begins and ends with the mother’s death, while the middle of the novel recounts the lives of each of the family...

“But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.” (Austen, 03)

First published in 1814, Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, while on the surficial level posits itself as a conventional...