Newest Literature Essays

Each person, wherever and whenever he or she lives, experiences his or her own here and now. Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being explores this idea by following three main characters who are all separated by time and space. Despite the fact...

When writing The White Tiger and Native Son, Aravind Adiga and Richard Wright utilized setting to influence the plot of the novels, by having the stories of their characters happen in very regulated and controlling societies. Their extreme...

Both The Inheritance of Loss and Clear Light of Day feature characters who either identify with cultures other than their own, or attempt to cope with cultural differences while living abroad. Using themes such as education and migration, Kiran...

A master of humor and satire, Ben Jonson was a playwright, poet, and actor; he was also known as one of Shakespeare’s theatrical contemporaries, if not Shakespeare's prime literary rival. His poem “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr....

In Toni Morrison’s novel Sula, the characters’ attitudes towards their sexualities are shaped by their identity-forming processes. Sula and Nel, despite their similarities, have clashing beliefs about sex due to the vastly different female role...

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson employs Utterson as the narrator and voice of the novella, as well as the investigator or detective figure that allows the story to be ‘discovered’ dramatically by the reader. Utterson also provides a contrast...

The American Dream is a concept that first takes on its concrete form in The Epic of America; it is described as "That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his...

The Aids pandemic has spurred so much commentary in South Africa that its true, startling impact can sometimes be overlooked: is easy to forget that approximately 5,38 million people are living with HIV and that an average of 1100 people die of...

Lulu Nanapush Lamartine is a symbolic and admirable Chippewa Woman in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. As a Native Woman character, Lulu reclaims and redefines space that is usually taken up by unjust stereotypes by using her shameless beauty and...

In Troilus and Criseyde, a Trojan prince, Troilus falls in love with Criseyde who is a beautiful widow. Pandarus who is Troilus’ friend and Criseyde’s uncle, helps Troilus by making Criseyde fall in love with him by fair means or foul. Troilus and...

The Martians in the book and the movie The War of the Worlds are a metaphor for the evils of cultural imperialism because their arrival severs the most important means of communication and transportation technology, challenges religion, and leaves...

Charles Bukowski’s poem “Alone with Everybody” was written in the mid-1970s, and it was first published in a poetry collection titled Love Is a Dog from Hell in 1977. Bukowski is a German-born American author who is known for his ability to convey...

Sarcasm by definition entirely changes the way a comment or sometimes whole event is interpreted, often flipping a subject on its head, altering the original obvious meaning and revealing it to be the near opposite. In The Adventures of Tom...

Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) explores repression and projection of identity through the voice of the suffering, confusing, and often unreliable Lucy Snowe. This novel emerged after Brontë’s acclaimed Jane Eyre, exemplifying a newfound...

In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie uses witch imagery to depict Indira Gandhi as the Widow. Critics have discussed the historical context of this decision, with some finding it problematic. However, by interpreting the Widow as an element of...

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles, written in a double narrative form alternating between the Victorian era and the present day. Currently, some literary debate surrounding the novel...

New York: the place where one’s dreams come true. At least, this is how it appears to outsiders. However, upon a closer examination of New York, a harsher truth comes out. As seen in the play Thoroughly Modern Millie, the social class one is born...

Four braids wrap around the cover of Americanah, binding the stories and experiences of race within. Stories of realising one’s own race and how it changes your mobility in different places. Stories of understanding power. In Americanah, Adichie...

In Spartacus, director Stanley Kubrick and Music Director Alex North utilize sound, including music, sound effects, and dialogue, in historical drama Spartacus to emphasize the types of romance the characters offer. Gladiator and slave revolt...

There exists an entirely different dimension, where illusion and deception form people’s personalities and rule their lives, and that dimension is exists here, everyday of our own entire lives. We all live lives only according to what is in our...

“Man is a social animal, distinguished by ‘culture’: by the ability to make tools and communicate ideas. Employment of tools appears to be his chief biological characteristic” (Oakley).

Directors Stanley Kubrick and Franklin J. Schaffner maintain...

Throughout D H Lawrence’s The Fox, the protagonist March is repeatedly represented as ‘a shadow’. This not only suggests March and Banford’s marginal status as unmarried women in a 1920s society, but represents a tension between what can be seen...

It is not uncommon for the pain of physical trauma to transcend into mental trauma as well. This can be seen in Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky, in which she describes the aftermath of a brutal rape. Although she was physically hurt by the man that...

Lennie is a central character in Of Mice and Men, and though many believe he is a flat character, he does in fact evolve as the story goes on, with Steinbeck making him progressively more human. The reader strongly empathises with such a...