Newest Literature Essays

Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last and The Year of the Flood are cautionary, post-apocalyptic novels that tell two different stories with many similarities. The Heart Goes Last follows Stan and Charmaine, a married couple struggling to stay...

In 1973, a 10-year-old African American boy named Clifford Glover was shot and killed by Thomas Shea, a policeman for the NYPD. In the days that followed, riots and protests tore through the surrounding area in Queens. Then, a year later, Shea...

Within the contents of a variety of different biographies, there are multiple similarities between the conventions that are typically used. However, there are also multiple differences between them in their features that set these works apart from...

Harriet Jacobs’ moving text Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an incredible narrative chronicling the story of a slave named Linda and her resilient fight for freedom. However, as she takes us through her journey, we come to see that the...

As some may know, Till We Have Faces is far from being C.S. Lewis’ most beloved work nor is it the most accessible. However with the central story of the broken protagonist, Orual, we get a glimpse into Lewis’s interpretation of how souls are...

During his life, C.S. Lewis writes a collection of seven novels that he publishes into his well-known Chronicles of Narnia series, which sheds light on Narnia’s history. These novels introduce similar themes with the first book in the series...

Fun Home is an autobiographical graphic novel by American author and cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It follows the story of her maturation, growing up in Pennsylvania, moving out of the house, and coming to terms with her sexuality. In the process,...

Throughout Nadine Gordimer’s short stories published in 1989, titled Jump and Other Stories, the South African author constantly combats the status quo with her controversially poignant content. In one of the short stories, Once Upon a Time, the...

It’s a common hope in the life of parents that their children will go on and live more successful lives. That their child will learn the lessons their parents taught them and the road their parents laid out for them to lead them to a more...

“I thought I could make my life into a room and choose what came into it.”

While influenced by others at times, one’s life is impacted the most by the choices they make and whether or not they decide to grapple the opportunities they are...

When Horace Walpole wrote the first ever Gothic novel in 1764, the world had never seen anything quite like it before. In an age we now call the enlightenment, where knowledge, science and philosophy had made huge leaps forward, this book dared to...

Dubliners was published in 1914 and written by James Joyce, who was born in 1882. When applying feminist theory to the Dubliners short stories, one must keep in mind that although feminism had its start in the 19th century, many of the formative...

Within “Dharma” by Vikram Chandra and “The Twenty-Seventh Man” by Nathan Englander, the concept of the journey forms the central structure around which the rest of the narrative is built. While the two stories are contextually very different—“...

To truly delve into Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, a reader must understand the symbolic meaning of a mirror in the novel as well as on its function as an object of symbolisation itself implemented through the characters, their interrelations, and...

In the Elah valley, a massive warrior Goliath was slain by a shepherd David in a battle. Many see the battle to be one of sheer luck and wit, but this fable could uncover a more broad and common perspective. Gladwell argues that the weaker person,...

In Ali Smith’s “Free Love” while traveling abroad in Amsterdam, a teenage girl is able to explore something she has never been capable of before, her sexual orientation. Whereas, in Ernest Hemingway’s “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”, to society Cornelia...

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, centers around the interplay between guilt, redemption, and sacrifice. Hosseini refers to the concept of religious sacrifice through which individuals cleanse themselves of sin and free their consciences....

In the famously popular novel Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll expresses themes of chaos, fantasy, and violence, all of which raise important questions throughout the novel. However, in the many film adaptations of the story, some of these...

The full title of Le Guin’s 1974 novel reads “The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” and proves to be just what the title suggests. This science fiction novel is also a utopia, but not one which serves as “a hopeful prescription for a near perfect...

Fiction has created the opportunity for humanity to explore concepts in an experimental and safe arena. The Anthropocene has seen the adverse consequences of the human species experimentation, which is why it is essential for literature to be...

Henry Ibsen’s 1882 play Enemy of the People and Steven Spielberg’s iconic film Jaws both a address the same central theme: a power struggle between the needs of the individual and the needs of the majority. As Thomas attempts to persuade the...

In Narrow Road to the Deep North, Japanese poet Bashō expresses himself masterfully through the traditional forms of haibun, covering themes of nature, folklore, faith, and journeys both physical and spiritual. All these stories and sentiments are...

Bennett and Royle, in their book `An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory’, state that `the relationship between literature, secrecy and secrets is fundamental1’. In the novels I have chosen, this `fundamental’ dynamic is seen in their...

In Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy’s Life, Wolff recounts a life of secretive rebellion under the rule of his abusive stepfather and submissive, peace-making mother. Tobias lives, from the beginning, in two worlds. The world of passivity and...