Newest Literature Essays

John Webster’s The White Devil portrays an inherent brutality within the human condition, which, while humanity may strive to do good, ensures its ultimate destruction. He draws on genuine fears of the Jacobean era to attribute immorality to every...

Natural occurrences are often portrayed in literature as accurate reflections of mankind’s actions. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the weather patterns frequently correspond to the happenings on the island. Upon the arrival of the...

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it” (Lee 33). Atticus Finch tells this quote to the main character, Scout Finch, in the book To Kill a...

Kindness, when given out, is habitually expected to be returned. More often than not it is seen that kindness, in fact, is given so that something else of value may be returned. Kindness is often exchanged for similar invaluable things like...

With the advent of sophisticated industrial machinery and colonialism on a grand scale in previously unheard lands during the Victorian period came a thirst for knowledge. Accordingly, the purpose and value of education, which involved the...

‘Eating and drinking are valued by Dickens as proofs of sociability and ceremonies of love.’ Discuss the significance of food and meals in the novel Great Expectations.

Throughout the novel Great Expectations, numerous meals which have symbolic...

In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, one of Shaw’s central concerns is the hypocrisy of Late Victorian Society and the impact of this hypocrisy on human relationships. Accordingly this essay will discuss Shaw’s literary presentation of social hypocrisy by...

Show how the theme of love is shown in the novel Silas Marner.

Most literary discourse about Silas Marner accepts love as one of its key concerns. Any discussion of how love is ‘shown’ in the novel requires an examination of the role and function...

What defines loyalty? Loyalty to a friend, to a family, or simply to oneself? The analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s character Long John Silver from Treasure Island is complex and interesting, yet in some ways ultimately subjective. Silver...

Published in The School of Eloquence in 1978, Tony Harrison’s “National Trust” is the embodiment of his frustrations at the British social-class system. Through this poem, he divulges how, after receiving a post-War opportunity for education, he...

The 1930s: a pivotal point in the birth of literary modernism. After Sigmund Freud’s publication of studies of human emotion through psychoanalysis in the early 1900s, writing was forever changed. Authors added masks of character development...

The 1868 novel Little Women is not only a heartwarming and heartbreaking story set in the midst of the Civil War, but also a series of veiled narratives of the life of the author, Louisa May Alcott. The story coincides with many of the economic...

“Optima dies… prima fugit,” (Virgil). This simple yet powerful statement is the quote chosen by Willa Cather to set the expectational theme for her 1918 novel My Ántonia. The classic adage translates to “the best days are the first to flee”,...

The Subtlety of Edgar's Importance in King Lear

Any great work of literature stems from the cohesion of many elements to create a piece that is memorable and captivating. William Shakespeare's plays gained notoriety for the ability their...

Who is More Sexist: Mankind or God?

All members of society, religious or not, at some point have heard the legendary tale of Adam and Eve. The Bible story has inspired countless retellings of mankind’s creation, each with their own unique...

The idea that humans succumb to natural urges is a literary topic that has been written on for hundreds of years. Authors have often pitted human urges against a higher code, like the knightly code from the days of King Arthur. Sir Gawain and the...

Abbey Crowley

Dr. East

Honors English 10

December 11, 2015

"‘The Sunshine Does Not Love You’”: Use of Semiotics in The Scarlet Letter

The Romantic Era: an undeniably significant milestone in the transition from British-American literature to...

David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian, thrived during the Enlightenment era. In this segment of history, which is also known as the Age of Reason, European scholars attempted to find the root of knowledge, often by working through one...

William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” epitomizes the constancy of nature and the companionship to mankind that it provides. Wordsworth uses daffodils as a source of companionship for the lonely and wandering speaker, a poet. By...

Realism, as William Dean Howells declared, involves “the young writer who attempts to report the phrase and carriage of everyday life” (641-642). This mode of expression essentially boils down to individual writers’ perspectives on life, and...

Hamlet: A Picture of Renaissance Humanism

The renaissance was an era of great change in philosophical thought and morality. Before the 15th century, monastic scholasticism had dominated European thinking. Monasticism’s emphasis on a black and...

Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, published in 1857, expresses his dislike of the French bourgeoisie. He mocks anyone not upper class declaring that they have no firm morals and survive solely on Romanticism. Flaubert uses literary techniques such...

The nineteenth century was a period of great colonial expansion for the British Empire. It was during this period of time that Rudyard Kipling wrote his famous novella “The Man Who Would Be King.” It tells the story of two British explorers in...

Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop depicts the struggle of Father Latour and Father Vaillant to reestablish Catholic authority in their newly formed, New Mexican diocese. They are tasked with righting a territory that has backslid into...