Newest Literature Essays

This paper will explicate The Iliad, Book 21, Ll. 99-127 with respect to syntax, diction, and figurative language. This passage is the scene of Lycáon’s death at the hand of Achilles, who is on a killing spree after the death of Patroclus. The...

In Brave New World, the dystopian world is made up of levels of humans who, from the making, are told what to think and how to act. Literally. Bernard, an Alpha male who doesn’t fit into the society, is unhappy with his life. John, a “savage” who...

We all have secrets and insecurities and we all make mistakes. Many of us do our best to hide our imperfections with the hopes that no one may ever know of our flaws. Problem is our biggest enemy already knows. You see, we can hide from the rest...

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is unique in that the narrator and arguably main character of the story, Chief Bromden, is not the protagonist. Instead, McMurphy fills this role, and Bromden acts as both the main character, providing...

Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled forms a narrative following an unnamed soldier through six stanzas, containing vignettes of fragments from his life, contrasting his consciousness, and therefore knowledge, throughout. Focusing on the consequences of...

Romantic love, a universal issue many writers grapple with, consumes most of one’s life: it is constantly exalted as the loftiest of virtues in Christianity along with the notion of true love. Durrenmatt, however, satirises and distorts...

‘What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?’ - Henry James

It can be argued that a person’s character and individual nature is affected by exterior incident. This occurs in both Henry...

Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters Remix reflects multiple theories presented in Peter Mendelsund’s What We See When We Read. Throughout Palahniuk’s episodic novel, the reader is taken, nonlinearly, through the life of protagonist, Shannon...

In The Bear, William Faulkner uses specific depictions of the wilderness and the main characters of Ben, Ike, and Sam Fathers to represent much more than just a group of guys going on a bear hunt once a year. At first, this book seems like a...

Author Shannon Alder once said, “Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.” Essentially what Alder is saying is that the things we find fault with in other people are really the things that we do not have and therefore...

The 1970s in the U.S. was a pivotal time in politics and social change. Second wave feminism was characterized by the sexual liberation of women. As women began to become familiar with their sexual identities there was also the desire for them to...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gothic work, “The Birth-mark”, the central character, Aylmer, expresses his disgust with the mark’s ability to diminish his wife’s aesthetic beauty, as well as betray her mortal tendency to sin. The hand on Georgiana’s...

The relationship between Gandalf and Saruman in J. R. R. Tolkien’s famous trilogy The Lord of the Rings is not only a depiction of good versus evil, but a depiction of the corruption of magic and power. Gandalf and Saruman are two incredibly...

The nature of power within Looking for Richard both reflects that which is represented in Richard III and extends or alters it to be incorporated into a modern context, appropriate for a wider, contemporary audience. Richard III is a Shakespearian...

The famous Italian priest Thomas Aquinas once said: “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” How does the loss of a friend affect a human being? In Herbert Mason’s retelling book Gilgamesh: A verse narrative, the...

Discoveries that challenge what one does in their everyday lives and what one sees as acceptable allows them to reassess their place in the world and forces greater understanding of it. Through viewing the world through fresh eyes, one offers...

Composers undermine institutions of power to show the unethical values of government with strict systematic control while also conveying how this influences the behaviors of society through creating a lack of individualism. Aldous Huxley’s novel ‘...

The Battle of Maldon uses linguistic tools to glorify the military capabilities of the Saxons, who are in reality the losing side, while minimizing the victory of the invading Vikings. Through use of language the poem eternalizes both individual...

Aravind Adiga’s Epistolary novel “The White Tiger” is, at its core, a tale of “rottenness and corruption,” told through the eyes of Balram Halwai, a man born to “the darkness” of India. The narrative comments upon the vast inequalities of...

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here" reads the Gates of Hell in Dante Alighieri's The Inferno. After awakening at the bottom of a hill, Dante learns that he must descend through Hell, the Inferno, to reach Paradise. Virgil appears to Dante as his...

The state of nature and the emergence of the human capacity to reason has been a common interest for writers throughout history. John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke, all address these issues in their works, "On Liberty" ,...

In Ridley Scott’s 1982 film “Blade Runner” a strong element of oppressive slavery pervades throughout the film. The people of earth, set in the year 2019, have developed a human like species in which they refer to as ‘Replicants’. These creations...

The Trial is the most well-known novel of Franz Kafka, published in Berlin in 1926. The original manuscripts were collected and prepared fo publishing by Max Brod, Kafka’s closest friend, two years after the author’s death. Brod says that the...