Newest Literature Essays

The concept of the “superfluous man” began appearing in Russian literature in the 19th century. It refers to a man who often has superior intellect, leading him to feel misunderstood and victimized in a society that does not give him the...

In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer presents decision-making in a variety of ways, including through the relationship between fate, knowledge and freedom of action, ideas that are at the centre of medieval philosophy. Troilus claims to not believe in...

In keeping with tradition, Anne Bradstreet like several other Renaissance writers, introduces her work The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650), through a prologue. Not only does it serve the purpose of acquainting the reader with the...

Love, marriage, and the impact of gender are themes frequently taken up by Jane Austen, but it can be difficult to find where she stands on such topics, given the varying perspectives of her characters. While as readers we are often aligned with...

In The Satanic Verses, it seems that no relationship is a relationship between equals. Everyone is paired with an opposite: dominant and submissive, god and worshipper, angel and devil, faithful and adulterous. This inequality creates toxic, even...

There is a thrill to be had in frightening experiences; this explains the popularity of horror films, roller coasters, and haunted house tours. So many people embrace their fears in order to achieve their desired thrill. In the novel Bastard out...

In White Teeth by Zadie Smith and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, the authors demonstrate the different ways that religion can become a factor in cultural tradition and in friction between different racial groups and nationalities....

In English novels, Jewish characters have been routinely described as greedy, nit-picking, and stingy misers. They are usually but not always merchants, money lenders, or bill brokers—Shylock from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare,...

Setting is an important part of Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion, symbolically underpinning the novel’s conceptual concerns. This narrative can be understood as a sweeping contemporary myth in which the setting works ironically and...

Although Shakespeare’s sonnets are frequently read as well as quoted as individual poems, they are threaded together as a series by a number of recurrent themes and characters—for instance, the characters of the young man and the dark lady, and...

Young adult novels set at boarding schools typically feature protagonists that encounter trials not necessarily representative of life outside of fiction on their journey towards adulthood. Rather, these texts amplify struggles and cause problems...

Strength cannot be universally defined. It is, in its truest form, an individualized characteristic. Some perceive strength as staying true to oneself and refusing to bend to the will of another while others may view it as taking in stride what...

It takes a writer like Angela Carter to make connections between circus clowns and prostitutes. Her novel, Nights at the Circus, depicts both, and they are shown to be more similar than one might first imagine. In Nights at the Circus, Carter uses...

The Searchers is a western directed by John Ford in the year 1956 and starring John Wayne as the main protagonist of Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran who embarks on a long and arduous journey to rescue his kidnapped niece from the Comanche tribe...

The Journal of English Literary History indicates that ‘‘The picture of little T.C. in a prospect of Flowers’ is characteristic of Marvell’s poetry both in its complexity and in its subtle use of superficially ‘romantic’ or decorative detail’....

The novel A Hero of our Time is a Russian novel about the life of a soldier named Pechorin serving in the Caucasus, written by Mikhail Lermontov and translated in one of its most famous versions by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov. Throughout his...

Throughout the novel Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje, there are many occurrences of humans, mainly men, displaying their animalistic nature over their human nature that sets them apart from other animals, especially with one of the major...

In John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” the idea of liberty is examined through a lens that is applicable regardless of form of government. John Mill, son of James Mill, the father of utilitarianism, had a rough childhood that heavily influenced his...

The human conscience is an interesting specimen. From it spurs imagination, curiosity, and all other elements that make us human. The influences of the outside world impact the way one might deem an action. They can even sway us to steer away from...

In Atonement, McEwan reveals in the final section, ‘London, 1999,’ that the previous narrative had been a novel written by the character Briony, creating a metafictional lens and calling into question all the previous events the reader had assumed...

From Hitler to Hussein, the rise and fall of dictators has captivated historians and writers alike for centuries. British novelist George Orwell (1903-1950) was no exception. In his 1946 allegory Animal Farm, Orwell satirized the 1917 Russian...

“What does sadden me is that, while judging correctly of their wrong-doings we should be so blind to our own” (235).

Montaigne’s essay “On the Cannibals” is a criticism on how the ‘civilized’ man passes judgment too harshly upon others while...

In his letter to the clergymen, Dr. Martin Luther King utilizes many of the intellectual concepts that President Thomas Jefferson employed in the writing of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. While highlighting...

There is a worn-out old saying about how when a door closes, there will always be a window to crawl through instead. But what if the window has bars on it? Or what if it is too high for someone to reach without anyone to give them a boost, and no...