Newest Literature Essays

“The Chrysanthemums” written by John Steinbeck, illustrates the feelings of a woman in a misogynistic relationship living in a patriarchal society. Women are placed into gender roles of being housewives to their working husbands. They are...

In Augustine’s Confessions, he has an internal conflict about his hesitation to convert to Christianity. He claims to disagree with the Manichean ways and beliefs, and lists his reasons why in several passages. The subject of these passages is...

“Is this the little lady who started the great war?” said Abraham Lincoln during his first meeting with Harriet Beecher Stowe. The reaction of one of America’s most celebrated president is a clear demonstration of the effectiveness of Stowe’s...

As a society we are less likely to change when given a mirror image of ourselves in a text. In A Single Man directed by Tom Ford, 1960s society provides a modern audience with events and people that are not in the contemporary world, but the...

Born in 19th century Poland, Joseph Conrad experienced a life out of the ordinary as a world traveller. Attracted by reading, maps and the dream of becoming a sailor, Conrad led a multi-skilled life, travelled the world and wrote masterpieces that...

The logistical problems of everyday human life are often concerned with the pursuit of love and beauty. The impracticalities of actively chasing after phenomena that we do not fully understand are considerable – unless, of course, you’re Socrates....

While The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Good Earth by Pearl Buck vary greatly in basic subject matter, their thematic content and general intent are strikingly similar. Both award-winning literary works in their own right, together...

Art reflects the social context it was created in, and so can be useful in determining social opinions of different time periods. Live theatre is no different, and the way minority characters were written and portrayed on stage can be valuable to...

The influential 19th century novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott expresses didactic tendencies, as well as qualities of sentimentalism, allowing it to be a compelling read for adolescent audiences. Following the story of the March sisters,...

Both Caldwell’s Tobacco Road and McCarthy’s Child of God concern themselves with quintessential poor white people. Tobacco Road follows the Lester family, a poor family on the outskirts of town, struggling for food and money during the Great...

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is a novel about characters overcoming hardships that are necessary for their happiness. Before Jane Austen decided on the final title, she chose the title First Impressions, which acknowledges that the main...

The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed significant strides in the upheaval of gender bias and patriarchal standards. Women gained many more liberties, such as with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, and the first wave of feminism...

It is often thought that graphic novels and comics are in some way less sophisticated or overall lesser than traditional novels, as if the use of illustrations rather than long text descriptions makes it a more simplistic medium. However, the...

We face moral dilemmas every day of our lives—whether it’s giving money to a homeless man or taking a peek at a peer’s chemistry test. Fortunately, the stakes aren’t high. The tragic figures of Hamlet, The Once and Future King, and Oedipus...

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman explore the themes of magic and the supernatural. Harry Potter is a story about a young, seemingly ordinary boy, finding out that he is in fact a...

From telling scary stories to teaching multiplication tables, a mother takes on a myriad of roles. Yet, as a mother fully devotes herself to her child, she loses connection with other facets of herself. The consumption of maternity subjects the...

Kim is a novel about a young boy named Kim and his maturation into an adult. He goes on many adventures all the while playing the “Great Game” and tying to help the Lama attain “freedom from the Wheel of Things” (Kipling 12). A bildungsroman is a...

Gothic literature uses gender to discuss social norms and explore stereotypes while commenting on whether gender stereotypes should be upheld or disrupted in society. In this essay, I will compare two female characters and two male characters in...

Both texts highlight and effectually foreground, the need for humanity to learn from its mistakes for its ultimate survival. The social, cultural and historical milieu of a composer’s era, significantly molds construction of their text and the...

As much as we like to think we forge our own identities, much of who we are is determined by outside forces. Oppression is a powerful force in shaping the identities in Maya Angelou’s memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and in her poems “When I...

Tennessee Williams’ 1955 play ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, explores the avant-grade realities in which facades appear to dispel. Through his iconoclasm of the patriarchal normalities of 50s society, William’s embellishes characters as catalysts for...

Euryalus’s mother always stood out among the others. She left the other mothers behind to stay with her son while most of the women decided to live in Sicily instead of traveling this arduous journey. She also was highlighted in the battle in...

Humans are complex beings, each with individual traits, and an individual set of traits that they value in others. Despite this individuality, cultures are formed, in part, by the values they possess and nurture in their society as a whole. In the...

In the novel The Smell of Apples, written by Mark Behr, Behr uses a first-person perspective through the main character Marnus, an eleven year old boy. The book uses a first-person narration, through Marnus, to relay both the events of when he is...