Newest Literature Essays

Throughout his works Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, and The Birth-Mark, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbolism to show that all humans are inherently flawed and are sinful by nature, and teaches the lesson that you can not obsess over...

The Beat Generation has always been associated, and rightfully so, with themes connected to sexuality. Beat writers were, and still are, famous for advocating sexual liberation and free love, being open about their homosexuality when that was the...

John Webster explores the attraction of that which is forbidden in a plethora of ways. The nature of the attraction, and the powers that determine that which is forbidden vary throughout. However, the theme remains manifest in all the instances...

‘He heard the will in his wife’s voice, and was at a loss. Her language was unintelligible to him’ (D.H. Lawrence).

In the novels Howards End and A Passage to India, EM Forster evokes the social backgrounds and priorities of his characters...

In Chapter 20 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is presented to us as a figure torn between reforming and alleviating himself from the sin and corruption he has perpetuated on others, and pursuing his exclamatory yearning for his “unsullied...

Hidden away from everything and everyone, one can begin to know little more than the sense of neglect. This situation is seen throughout Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, which brings up the idea of being alone prevents the feelings of...

In his book, “The City of God,” Saint Augustine of Hippo writes to defend Christianity against pagan claims of abandonment from God. When the city of Rome fell in 410, many citizens argued that it was Christianity’s fault, but Augustine says that...

In works of great literature, violent scenes often play prominent roles. However, these scenes of violence do not exist for their own sake, but instead add value and depth to the story being told. The Book Thief, written by Markus Zusak, is no...

During the early 20th century, America faced a time of uncertainty and despair during the stock market crash in late 1929. People all over the country were unemployed and many were dying due to starvation and to malnutrition. Also, marriage rates...

“The Faeire Queene” is an epic poem written by Edmund Spenser in 16th century – England Renaissance, but set in the Middle Ages because of its being a chivalric romance. Aside from religious allegories, juxtapositions, and contradictions; Spenser...

The theme of violence is commonly identified within both Plath's and Hughes’ poetry; however, the way in which it is incorporated by the two very different poets contrasts one another, from the use of techniques, the different tones throughout –...

What does it mean to be a human being? Everyone has their own opinion and rarely is it as simple as biology. When science and technology are placed in this question the answer becomes even less clear. This question of when does giving technology...

The Monk, published in 1796 by Matthew Lewis, holds the distinction of one of the most popular and most controversial Gothic novels of all times. Set in the backdrop of the Protestant Reformation in Spain, the novel addresses and challenges many...

Mildred Taylor’s novel, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, depicts the life of a young African American girl, Cassie, and her family living within a racist system. Readers experience the hardships that the Logan family face through the eyes of the...

In Section 7 of Out of the Blue, Armitage builds the tragic tension, this section describes the panic experienced by the workers in the Tower after the plane struck and commemorates the experience of those in the Towers, making the reader...

The relationship between art and the self is a reoccurring theme in Tennyson’s poetry; indeed in The Palace of Art the narrator declares “I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house”[i]; bridging the gap between the interior (soul) and exterior...

Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer and Phillis Wheatley’s poems exemplify vastly different attitudes toward freedom from contemporaries within the British colonies. Crèvecoeur defines freedom most simply as owning land, because owning...

Although the world has evolved in many ways since Yeats was around, his poetry remains significant in the modern era. By simply scrolling through social media, flipping through T.V channels or listening to the radio, we are constantly reminded...

The very nature of travel literature is to inform the population that has not traveled abroad to so-called ‘wild’ places of the cultures and people that lie beyond their own nation, specifically, the untraveled English population. Given the rise...

In both Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar named Desire and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, there is extensive concern for how masculinity and femininity are portrayed. Both texts present archetypical interpretations of gender as well as juxtaposing figures...

The character of Raskolnikov is an interesting one in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. A failed visualization of the Ubermensch initially, there is leagues more depth to the character, not only in a psychological way but in the context of...

Beauty is easy to find within the basics of human nature, such as elemental love or the innocent playfulness of children, untouched by the world’s nastier truths. However, primal instincts held within mankind are not always as elegant as one would...

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a highly acclaimed philosopher, among other achievements. With a firm transcendentalist mindset, Emerson wrote a number of essays dedicated to the transcendentalist movement of the 19th century; one of which was ...

Zeus is certainly not a person to trifle with, especially when it comes to his sacred fire. The punishments dealt out by Zeus are probably anything but fair but are all very metaphorical and symbolic if the reader reads between the lines....