Newest Literature Essays

In a dichotomy that continues to plague media representations of female sexuality to this day, biblical women have a strong history of falling into one of two unflattering characterizations: victim or villain. Particularly where sexuality is...

History is written by the victorious, the dominating nation, the ruling class, and subaltern voices are overpowered and unheard. Jean-Francois Lyotard, in his The Postmodern Condition, critiques the historical master-narrative, the vision of...

Barbie doll as a popular icon in American culture has been carried with a long history. However, it is also a controversial toy that often critic by its unrealistic body image and the women stereotype imposed on her. Marge Piercy’s poem presents...

Benedick as an Entertaining Outsider

One of Much Ado About Nothing’s most beloved characters is Benedick, a willful and theatrical lord who vows to never be married. Throughout the play he demonstrates himself to be an entertainer to such an...

George Carlin famously said “When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts”. This quote couldn’t be more relevant in Dave Eggers novel The Circle...

Whilst identity in the modern day setting is seen as a fundamental right, in the seemingly dystopian society of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, identity is robbed by the government to create a subservient society. As is common with...

When it came to modernist poetry, imagery was important to flesh out the lavish artistic style said poets loved to express, which in turn allowed them to declare themes and concepts clearer. T.S. Eliot, consider among the great poetic modernists,...

‘The Coquette’ by by Hannah W. Foster is about a young woman, Eliza Wharton, who has an inclination towards coquettish behaviors. The story is a series of letters that warns Eliza about the danger of her life choices, which is primarily a choice...

Throughout the many relationships in Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things, love, both familial and romantic, is presented as a beautiful, cruel, unjust, and empowering aspect of life. The story, told through the eyes of the young twins,...

The Last of the Mohicans is a novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826, set in upper New York wilderness in 1757, the book focuses on the French and Indian War (1754 – 1763). The book follows Alice and Cora Munro, Hawkeye, Chingachgook,...

Even without reading the acknowledgments in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, it is extremely apparent that she derives her inspiration from E. M. Forster’s Howards End. From the first line, the reader is able to start drawing parallels between the two...

Early in Hard Times, Dickens develops the portrait of Gradgrind in the classroom delivering a lesson centred on horses at his model school to his model students. Dickens carries Gradgrind’s factual theories, utilitarianism and educational system...

It is not difficult to see the parallels in the lives and works of Christina Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Both poets suffered bouts of depression, both were involved in the Tractarian movement – with Hopkins converting to Roman Catholicism...

Famous Romantic era poet Percy Shelley once noted that “a poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds”. In his 2008 poetry anthology Behind My Eyes, IndoChinese-American author Li Young Lee...

Contrary to common belief, slavery as broadly defined was not abolished after the Civil War and is still around to this day. White lawmakers in the postbellum South strived to create a system in which prisons could lease out inmates, especially...

‘The art of the storyteller is to hold the attention of the reader.’

One of the ways in which author Lloyd Jones holds our attention in the novel Mister Pip is through the use of Matilda’s innocent narrative voice. Matilda’s traumatising...

The concept of an entire race being born into a system subconsciously and socially degrading them is appalling. Underprivileged and undeserving, these unfortunate people groups are cast into mediocrity and suppressed under the unbearable weight of...

In many cultures, wind has taken on its own personal identity. Through story telling wind has been given power of the supernatural in order to be used by the gods to influence or punish the heroes of Earth. The supernatural power of wind can be...

There are many different ways to describe the mysticism that pervades Willow Springs in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. Most people would call it magic, but every character would describe it differently. Mama Day would call it seeing. Dr. Buzzard would...

Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) is commonly understood to be a coming of age story that deal with the theme of racial discrimination in the American South during the Great Depression. Close inspection of the novel reveals many...

Published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remains a revolutionary literary achievement whose iconic monster continues to captive modern readers. William Shakespeare, hundreds of years prior to Shelley, also cast a monster at the center of his...

Thirty-six middle-aged people lean in simultaneously, a collection of ears trained intently on the speaker. He clears his throat before addressing the smattering of adults comprised mostly of teachers, a handful of parents, and an empty-nester...

In the short story, “Roman Fever,” Edith Wharton portrays a daily life situation between two wealthy middle-aged women talking in Rome. The morals and struggle of upper-class women to succeed and stand out at that time period are revealed in the...

History has been, and always will be, a matter of perspective. Wars, for example, will be viewed and taught differently by each respective country involved. Some things will be written off and forgotten, while somewhere else they are made sure to...