Newest Literature Essays

Robert Frost’s petrarchan sonnet, written in iambic pentameter, “Design,” questions the role of God in the world through predestination and divine intervention with the use of tone, juxtaposition, imagery, and symbolism. He does so by narrating a...

Hanif Kureishi’s well known short story “My Son the Fanatic” (1997) explores themes of friendship, religion, fanaticism and identities. In a detailed discussion, this essay will discuss the significant relationship between the father, Parvez, and...

Kambili and Jaja live in a strict, quiet household where everything revolves around their father, Eugene Achike’s, intense religious beliefs and the family’s need to constantly impress him. However, when they visit their Aunty Ifeoma’s house and...

Pirandello’s Six Characters is a play that tries to explain the creative process to the audience. The author used his characters to personify the various stages of a playwright’s writing process, while framing the action against the convenient...

Most teenagers go through a time when they believe that their parents are too overbearing and strict with them. Although this is a normal feeling to have on occasion growing up, Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy reveals the intense situation of an...

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late 14th Century, featuring several tales loosing linked together that revolve around typical medieval lifestyles, virtues and preoccupations with many modern day parallels. In the Merchant’s...

The roles of women in Middle Eastern culture have varied throughout the decades, ranging from being delicate creatures in need of protection to becoming blind soldiers suddenly dedicated to a misleading cause. This is most noticeably depicted in...

Eavan Boland is an Irish poet and author born in Dublin, Ireland in 1944 who focuses much of her work on the national identity of Irish people, the role of Irish women throughout its history, as well as Ireland’s rich and, at times tragic, history...

The idea of what constitutes legitimate scientific proof is one that is subjective and varies from one circumstance to another, but compiling various types of evidence to support a claim has long been an accepted, respected, and even encouraged...

While Miss Bates, in Jane Austen’s Emma, may initially be perceived as a minor character from afar, upon deeper analysis it can be noted that she is of capital importance in this novel. Serving as a representative of Highbury’s lower classes, Miss...

When it was released in 1937, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children was heralded as one of the great anti-war plays of that still young century. But while martial and religious themes are certainly visible through the narrative,...

In Paradise Lost, John Milton endows angels with magnificent qualities, both positive and negative. Through symbolism, he shows their greatness. In a meaningful shift from earlier ideas of his time, Milton’s angels are shown to possess full free...

Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies is a book of philosophical and logical refutations and arguments. It is a direct response to several writings in which the male authors make claims against women’s purity. These books, according...

Rudyard Kipling is widely understood to be a strong defender of the British Empire. However, Kipling’s prose piece, ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, reveals a deeper ambiguity about the Empire, exposing many of the flaws that lay at the heart of the...

Identity is “the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is” (Oxford Dictionary). Identity includes one’s sexuality, age, political views, religious beliefs, or anything that shapes who they are. In Tender is the Night by F....

Milton’s exploration of heroism in Paradise Lost has been the focus of much debate and controversy since the poem was first published. Critical attention has shifted through the years from Satanism to feminism, from the exultation of Adam to the...

In John Howard Griffin’s controversial 1962 memoir Black Like Me, white-man Griffin takes an anthropological and personal journey, posing as a black man in the deep south in an attempt to understand the black experience. Equal parts personal...

Many authors have been inspired to write by their environments, beautifully rendering their scenery with their words. Willa Cather and Mary Austin are two examples of such authors, who recreate the vast expanses of the Midwest's grassy fields and...

The story of Sindbad the Sailor, found in “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” and filled with countless economic transactions, can be understood through the application of different economic models to reveal the motives and driving forces of the...

When Sir Thomas Wyatt decided to introduce the sonnet to England, the result was unexpected to say the least. While Wyatt had been known for lighter riddles, songs and satires, he nevertheless made the surprising choice to focus on a brooding...

In “The Merchant of Venice”, William Shakespeare explores the cities of contrast which are Venice and Belmont. These two locations in Italy are so antithetic to each other that even characters’ behaviours fluctuate from city to city because of...

It is easy to look at Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, widely considered the first revenge tragedy play, as having a completely nonsensical ending. While the proceeding three acts are fairly typical for a revenge narrative, with machinations...

Many scholars and critics alike view Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, believed by many to be his first tragedy, as an emulation of the bloody, gory revenge plays that were prominent and popularized during the sixteenth century. The play’s plot is...

Several hundred years following the production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Tom Stoppard took it upon himself to expand on the characters who take on the roles of Hamlet’s best friends in his absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are...