Newest Literature Essays

In England, the Baroque was a partly useful concept when discussing about the Restoration Comedy. The English theatres were closed for 18 years, during the English Civil War and English Commonwealth. They were reopened in the Restoration of...

Hope in the face of hardship is a recurring theme in much of literature today. As human beings, it is in our DNA to survive---despite circumstances that make it difficult to do so. A human beings innate ability to survive shows itself in the way...

There are a countless number of authors that critique contemporary English usage to the highest extent they possibly can in order to ensure one’s writing is flawless. David Foster Wallace and George Orwell are two of the many authors that...

Advances in technology have changed the way in which individuals live and interact amongst each other. Although many people seem to enjoy the current technology we have now that was not available before, some individuals are able to find flaws...

In the Western world, the Caribbean has long been viewed as an Edenic paradise. As a result, it has attracted legions of tourists from all over the world seeking an escape from the crushing banality of their day-to-day existence. While popular...

S.E. Hinton’s seminal first novel, The Outsiders, is widely credited as the birth of contemporary teenage fiction. While J.D. Salinger is often seen as the first writer to truly capture the modern teenage mindset sixteen years earlier (albeit in a...

School violence, from the events of Columbine to the more recent Newtown shooting, and the 31 school shootings in between (Shen), is prevalent in American society. Unfortunately, the perpetrators of these crimes are often not noticed - and...

While certain of William Shakespeare’s plays have so ingrained themselves into popular culture as to be ubiquitous, others are rarely performed or read and are, in fact, largely ignored. Shakespeare’s Othello, one of the former, and Titus...

Regardless of language or culture, certain aspects of life are present in every person’s life. Among these are love, food and clothing; because of their connection to all peoples, they are popular symbols in literature. Jhumpa Lahiri, in...

In West African culture, Anansi is a cunning god, who takes the shape of a spider. He is known to be a trickster and very deceitful. He is considered the god of all knowledge of stories. In other words, Anansi owns all stories. In Anansi Boys, the...

“A sex symbol's currency lies in her youth, her curves, in the suggestion that a sexual encounter lurks around the next corner.” (Sharon Krum, The Guardian) The power struggle between genders in society is something that can be seen every day,...

The quotation, “the best feeling in the world is watching things fall into place after watching them fall apart for so long” (Glassman), best describes the effects of restorative justice on Shannon Moroney’s life in the memoir Through the Glass....

In the middle of the Civil War in Alabama, Peyton Farquhar, a wealthy farmer, awaits death upon Owl Creek Bridge. With a noose around his neck, Union soldiers watch as the gentleman collects his thoughts in his last moments before he is hanged for...

An individual’s actions and thoughts are often products of one’s nurture and experiences. These can provide a path to one’s destiny. In his novel The Wars, Timothy Findley explores the origin of Robert Ross’s incentives and investigates his...

"You can walk in another’s shoes, the saying goes, but you cannot walk in his skin.” -Tracey Mishkin

Lucille Clifton is an author whose work brings forth attention to “forms of oppression such as the exploitation of women, people of colour, and...

When some audiences read The Awakening by Kate Chopin, they perceive a feminist piece ahead of its time, or search for hidden metaphors and allusions. Some readers would be content to simply ponder the significance of the title. However, although...

As French writer Luc de Clapiers said, “The art of pleasing is the art of deception.” William Shakespeare, an artist of words, employed deceit and trickery in his stories to make them complex and engrossing. Deceit is a subject not often spoken...

Both White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James are Gothic tales that share some traits in common with supernatural superstitions that remain popular today—ghosts, legends, and, of course, haunted houses....

From their introductions in Emma, Jane Austen sets the characters of Frank Churchill and Mr. Knightley apart, with Mr. Knightley immediately being described as "a sensible man" while Frank Churchill is described as "very good-looking" and in...

Throughout an examination of Plath’s poetry, a reader will witness prominent themes of inadequacy and mental anguish. The poet’s lack of self-belief is primarily evident in ‘Mirror’, as the poet struggles to overcome her insecurities. Furthermore,...

"What do you sell?” asks Delmar, leaning in to the one-eyed salesman. “The word of God, which, let me tell you, there is damn good money in during these times of woe and want.” The Bible has been misused, misquoted, and misrepresented by history’s...

In A.M. Homes’ novel Music for Torching, married couple Paul and Elaine find their relationship to be as static and boring as the Westchester County suburb in which they live. Unsatisfied with their marriage and fearful of a lifeless future, they...

Matigari, a novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, alludes to the effects of post-colonialism in an African society. In the novel, the main character, Matigari, in a search for truth and justice, stumbles upon several instances of these effects. In many ways...

“The gulls in the alchemist do not deserve wealth so much as a perfected image of themselves.”

There are two groups of gulls in The Alchemist; on the evidence of Jonson’s commentary on his own work, he presented the image that the gulled...