Newest Literature Essays

‘[T]he modern period […] begins really with the late nineteenth [century], when the sense of the passing of a major phase of English history was already in the air.’ Indeed, when we discuss ‘modern’ in terms of literature this tends to be a...

Edgar Allan Poe’s unusually common usage of orangutans in his short stories is no secret. In The Murders of the Rue Morgue, the orangutan turns out to be the murderer who deprived Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter of their lives. Its actions are...

William Shakespeare is an author who is known best for his tragedies, such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar: plays in which the heroes lose. However, Shakespeare also wrote comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of...

‘Silence’ in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is integral to the text not only in a literal sense, but also figuratively; the gaps that are purposefully left in the plot and the reader’s knowledge also act, powerfully, as “silences”. Whilst...

In her novel, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison explores the burdens society places on its weakest members and the adverse effects they have on the individual's mental stability and self worth. Society has expectations of beauty and worth that teach...

When it comes to innovative stylistic and thematic techniques in We, Zamyatin does not disappoint. Every detail of this novel is deliberate, from the colors of objects to characterization of names. While a heavy emphasis is often placed on the...

Throughout the novels – Iain Bank’s The Wasp Factory of 1984, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin from 2003 – the authors depict the protagonists as subversive outsider figures, as they each have only one friend – Frank’s Jamie, whom...

In the third and final play of The Oresteia trilogy, The Eumenides, Apollo testifies for Orestes and the Furies testify for the late Clytemnestra in a trial that will decide whether or not Orestes is guilty. In this play, a new system of justice...

Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred details the harrowing journey of 26-year-old Dana Franklin. A modern black woman from 1970s Los Angeles, Dana is continuously jerked back through time to the land of her ancestors: early 1800s Maryland. Her task?...

Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, written in 1982, emerged from the appearance of Feminist writers in the 1970s, when specific gender issues were no longer being suppressed by a patriarchal society. This allowed for the growth of personal freedom...

‘The long history of English elegy is a pouring of fresh tears into ancient vessels,’claims Rosenberg in ‘Elegy for an Age.’ Indeed, the elegy seems the best literary form to exemplify Eliot’s famous claim that “No poet, no artist of any art, has...

Harsh climatic conditions, no food and hard work; all of these aspects symbolize the daily life of a prisoner inside the Gulag. The horrifying treatment of the prisoners is very well documented in many prison novels. However, the way that the...

Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography “The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, the African,” presents a created identity of the “enlightened slave,” as a means of appealing to the pathos of the British and American people...

Philip Larkin’s wrote his collection of poems The Less Deceived in 1955, and it became a work which garnered him public recognition. His poems often include a deep sense of his feelings of inadequacy and contain his view that he did not belong...

In ancient Greek Society women were not regarded as equals with men, they were viewed as inferior and incapable of doing what a man could. They had to act submissive and be under a man’s control and oftentimes could not do or speak on their own...

Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle” has endured as an American classic that places timeless themes against a backdrop of the American Revolution. Rip Van Winkle, the placid, charitable, idle Dutch-American protagonist enjoys his slow...

Both Regeneration and Private Peaceful are set in the First World War, and are strongly shaped by time and memory. Private Peaceful shadows young Private Tommo Peaceful and his older brother Charlie, and is told in a simple yet eloquent style. It...

Socrates, a famous ancient Greek philosopher, is depicted as ridiculous in The Clouds by Aristophanes yet as thoughtful in The Republic by Plato. In the former, he runs a Thinkery that educates students, and when Pheidippides enrolls, Just and...

The emergent evolution in the traits of human personality, both physically and psychologically created a new and unique dimension to extend the nebulous boundaries of exploration. While grouting the breaches that occurred during the understanding...

In early African-American literature, there is a consistent theme of gaining freedom through assimilation that as an idea slowly wilts and becomes militant as it continues to be ineffective in the black struggle for freedom and equality. Phillis...

Living in a world surrounded by people who function in a disparate way could cause one to feel neglected, but finding another person, fiction or non-fiction that shares similar characteristics can help one feel valuable. In Mark Haddon’s The...

Too often in literature, novels surrounding a specific time period lack the authenticity of mise-en-scene for the reader. However, author John Dos Passos commits to unique and innovative writing techniques in his novel 1919 (one of the three...

A Doll’s House written by Henry Ibsen, a play set in the 1870’s in Norway and Blood Relations written by Sharon Pollock, a play set in the 1890’s in America both have a strong female lead who are faced with situations uncommon today. The...