Newest Literature Essays

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman and “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell have plots of very different naturesin one, a mentally disturbed woman is taken to a reclusive house to recuperate while in the other, a woman is accused of...

Jesmyn Ward’s autobiography, Men We Reaped, tells of Ward’s life as it relates to five men that she knew, all of whom died atrociously and unfairly. Throughout her memoir, Ward uses several methods to differentiate herself from her community....

If asked, most people would say women are strong, passionate, loving, but not all of these positive traits truly define who they are. Their nature is deemed the most difficult to define because they have negative aspects that contribute to their...

Florizel and Perdita are depicted in The Winter’s Tale as the epitome of young love. Whilst the majority of the play is surrounded by heartache, pessimism and paranoia, Florizel and Perdita’s relationship serves as a reminder of hope and happiness...

The short story “Letters from My Father”, written by Robert Olen Butler, and the poem “The Writer”, written by Richard Wilbur, both depict family struggles. “Letters from My Father” is about a Vietnamese girl who grew up without a father because...

The tradition of black autobiography has held “a position of priority” (Gates, 1) in the African American community for centuries, beginning with traditions of oral storytelling and continuing with more contemporary voices such as Maya Angelou and...

The word “faith” in reference to religion emphasizes the uncertain nature of religion. By definition, if one is religious, they must trust and take a leap of faith to come to a conclusion about their gods, spirits, or idols. Faith is predicated...

Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" can be understood as the narrative of a woman who was discarded and hampered by the world and its cruel definition of beauty and success. You can discern the story of a young girl who once felt ashamed to appear in...

In Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Hoban portrays a post-apocalyptic society ravaged by a nuclear war. While he masterfully crafts the story to warn readers about the dangers of technology, the real achievement is in the strange language, called...

Haruki Murakami, Japanese author of The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, has many characters who all have influential aspects on the protagonist Toru Okada. But one particular character, May Kasahara, is one minor character who has a critical effect on...

As easy as it is to take advantage of simplicity, some authors understand the depths of the complex world enough to transcend boundaries and speak to both the fruitful guiltlessness of youth and the world’s seeds, hardest to swallow. In 1990,...

George Orwell, most reputable for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) uses his signature transparent writing style to record a personal anecdote of ‘A Hanging’ conducted in a Burmese prison camp where he worked during the...

William Shakespeare is no stranger to the bending and breaking of conventions. Hailed as an inventor of words from “elbow” to “sneak”, and a master playwright who created some of the most enduring plot structures, like that of Romeo and Juliet,...

In dark and dire situations, humor is often needed to lighten the atmosphere in order to ensure sanity. This proves to be very true in William Shakespeare’s tragic play, Romeo and Juliet. As the plot of the play continues to develop, tragic and...

“Askari” is a word with Arabic origins meaning “soldier”. In South Africa, the word was used to identify those formerly of the ANC who “turned” and were converted into counterinsurgents and informants for the apartheid regime. Askaris are often...

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko are entirely different, at least on the surface; they focus on two separate groups of people who progress through distinct journeys. In Invisible Man, the Invisible Man is...

On the surface, the county of Yoknapatawpha seems to be a close-knit community that provides a support system for the Bundrens in the aftermath of Addie Bundren’s death. While this is technically true, it is not as rosy a picture as Blackman makes...

Early in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy provides a lucid examination of some of the personal weaknesses of his protagonist, and of the sad ironies that these failings yield. Michael Henchard’s use of alcohol to escape the reality of his...

The Gothic is undeniably intertwined with transformative states, both literally, such as with the presentation of supernatural beings that lie between life and death, and also thematically, with the idea of transitional time periods and settings....

In October 1937, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina—one of Latin America’s most brutal dictators—directly ordered the execution of all Haitians then living in the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic. People suspected of being Haitian were asked to...

In James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, religion functions not only as form of worship but also as a covert site of sexual expression. In the novel’s opening chapters, Baldwin often characterizes religious worship in language that borders...

In the short story, Brokeback Mountain, by Annie Proulx, page 11 describes Alma’s one encounter with Jack. After witnessing her husband kiss another man, she faces them both quietly and uncomfortably, but does not otherwise convey any dramatic...

In The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides has the narrators describe seemingly average daily occurrences as extraordinary, exhibiting the search for something more significant in their uniform, designed-to-be-perfect lives. Through the narrators’...

It does not seem a viable course of action to try to apply our modern developed ethics to a 16th Century mindset such as that which yielded Jonson's The Alchemist. For example, as a civilisation would all at the very least, feel uncomfortable...