Newest Literature Essays

In the wide spectrum of humanistic characteristics, that of desire is one of the most prominent. It is an emotion that is challenging to resist, as it tends to control many aspects of life because of the strength it possesses. In the realm of...

Beowulf and Roland are two of the most well-known heroes found within literature. While many know their names and their stories few realize what it is that qualifies them as literary heroes and the ways in which their hero stories compare. Joseph...

Toni Morrison through her novel, Beloved (1987), attempts to reacquaint the readers with the history of American slavery by choosing to present it through the African-American community’s experience rather than the white American perspective. The...

In the one-act play “Trifles,” there are countless examples of symbolism and characterization through the use of strong female roles. By showcasing the women as leads in this play, it was able to take on a more feministic essence to it, which is...

In the historical fiction drama The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver illustrates major development in culture through the use of vivid flashbacks, graphic imagery, and specific framework structure, demonstrating that a culture shock was...

In The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, Hoppie Groenewald is a train guard, conductor and star welter-weight boxer. While reading the book, the reader will notice Hoppie does not have as extensive of a role as some other characters but is...

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure explores concepts of moral law within an immoral setting and set upon by leaders with questionable morals. Measure’s Vienna is a setting where pragmatism and absolutism can compete both in the shadows and up front...

In the early 1800s, tense relationships between Europe and the rest of the world greatly impacted modern world history. In 1803, the newly formed United States nearly doubled its domain after purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France. Soon...

Matthew Lewis’s The Monk takes its era’s heightened anti-Catholicism to heart, and uses it to critique social norms. Lewis tackles the problem of the fetishization of purity that the Catholic Church, and society outside the Church hold so highly....

The gradual and horrifically strange mutation of the titular canine of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel Heart of a Dog into a ‘New Soviet Man’ provides an ideological counterpoint to the instantaneous and handsomely familiar appearance of that same model...

One poignant example of the misperceptions that women face in a male-dominated society is presented in the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. The story takes place in the Dust Bowl era, when rough economic times made it hard to find work;...

Everyman provides the perfect example of why allegory must be approached carefully in order to make an impact; a story with a powerful message is very often dependent upon timing. The timing of a play about a devastating plague sweeping across...

Stories, like the ones experienced by the grandfather in The Tiger's Wife and then re-told to Natalia, are part of the aspect that shapes a community, and distressful situations unite groups of people for better or for worse, depending on the...

Assuming you got a message anonymously, informing you that you were going to die because of a car accident tomorrow at noon, would you use this message to try avoiding death or would you simply accept and embrace your destiny? Many people,...

Escapism is a method one uses to focus attention on pleasant or enjoyable things, as opposed to the harsh realities of everyday life. Humans face countless struggles, and to overcome these they turn towards their imagination or other means in life...

The idea that childbirth can test a woman and perhaps lead to self-awareness serves as a major theme for Buchi Emecheta's Nigerian novel The Joys of Motherhood, in which a young Ibo woman marries twice, the first marriage highlighting her...

While being selfless is often thought of as a good personality trait, sometimes selflessness can bring unexpected consequences in our own lives as well as in the lives of those around us. In both the collection of stories known as The Thousand and...

The characters in the novel When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka find themselves in a rather comforting place they call “home.” The father has a job outside the home, the mother works inside the home, and the children go to school and make...

In H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the unnamed narrator, commonly referred to as the Time Traveler, creates a device that is capable of time travel, and proceeds to meet two humanoid species of the far distant future. The Time Traveler’s adventure...

As Hollywood’s first and only science-fiction blockbuster set in South Africa’s economic capital, District 9 was subjected upon release to cursory analyses by critics who are superficially familiar with the history and modern social context of the...

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land presents a multitude of fragmented depictions of character, voice and dialogue, which combine to create the overall sense of disorientation within the poem. Despite this pervading lack of stability, the poem continues...

In Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”, he brings into question the differing perspectives that each individual possesses. By describing the reality of the sailors before the consumption of the Lotos flower and after the ingestion of the...

Throughout ‘An Ideal Husband’, the “battle of life” is portrayed in numerous ways by numerous different characters. For example. Robert Chiltern deceives those around him by selling a cabinet secret, and Mrs Cheveley wears the mask of good...

The 1939 film The Wizard of Oz directed by Richard Thorpe has been a successful film for quite some time, although it wasn’t a hit at first. Formalist movies were relatively new and The Wizard of Oz took many risks when it comes to form. Movies...