Newest Literature Essays

During the Victorian Era, the status of religion was one of the most pressing social and moral issues. Though Charlotte Bronte grew up in a religious household, she, like many other authors, criticized certain aspects of religion even though, like...

Creating symbolism in literature adds depth and meaning to any story. Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X displays an abundance of symbols that offer insight into the life of Malcolm X himself. Often, the symbols that Haley uses...

William Blake was known for tailoring his romantic poetry specifically for children, particularly in ‘Songs of Innocence’, where the themes of nature and religion were utilised to allow Blake to directly educate his intended younger audience about...

You can hear the waves crash against the shore less than fifty feet from you. Your prized car, the one that you’ve loved for years now, is stuck in the sand, unable to move. All of the money you didn't donate to charity, preventing malnutrition in...

In Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease, a story of injustice, betrayal, and love is delivered from the perspective of Peter Brownrigg. Peter is a fourteen year-old Cumberland farm boy in the Elizabethan times, who ran away from home chased by the...

Being selfishly consumed with shame and pride over a loved one can cause one to treat that beloved individual in cruel ways. In James Hurst’s fictitious short story "The Scarlet Ibis," the narrator realizes exactly these truths through brutal...

In many of William Butler Yeats’s works, he creates a seemingly inescapable gyre or cycle that history and human lives follow. In The Second Coming, Yeats examines the cycle of history in which every two thousand years, a new messiah arrives. In...

“In the latter part of the 19th century, Japan opened up for trade with the West. Merchant adventurers arrived from all over the world, many of them English. Some traded in silk and rice and lived in enclaves around the 'treaty ports.' They...

“Forever” (Marquez, 1988: 352). Thanks to this simple word -- Florentino Ariza’s answer to the Riverboat captain’s question when asked how long he intends to keep the boat going -- it is not hard to understand why many critics would label Love in...

Humans can only experience life subjectively: each of us is rooted in our own individual positions that cause us to perceive differing shades of reality. An awareness of this universal condition permeates Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, as...

If different kinds of motivation were to be viewed on a spectrum, there would be quite a distance between instinct and reason. While instinct denotes an animalistic impulse, reason implies careful deliberation, a process that involves employing...

During the early twentieth century, the idea of women having as much power as men was foreign: men were not only better educated, but were also the primary breadwinners for the family. Though individuals do not have the ability to immediately...

Throughout the Gothic novel Dracula, Stoker uses symbology and imagery to reveal social anxieties and fears of the late Victorian era, for example the use of animalistic description and blood. Wilde, in his own Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian...

A play of epic proportions, Tony Kushner’s magnum opus Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes presents a portrait of America that is at first sight devastating, yet ultimately optimistic and profound in its analysis of humanity’s...

Human beings do not thrive in solitude. Every hero has a supporting team, and every protagonist must maintain a close group of allies in order to ever truly succeed. George Eliot's Silas Marner furthers this idea that, although there is evil in...

The Sufi musical tradition, or Sama’, has been used as a way to connect with the divine for hundreds of years by incorporating poetry, song, and dance to praise God. For many mystics, this blend is the single most powerful link to God, and is...

Hunger, written by Lan Samantha Chang, is a novella that shares the story of a family troubled with a desire for a better life. The story is told from Min’s perspective - the mother - and it is she who recollects the everyday life of the family....

In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, David is a heterosexual man with homosexual desires. This desire to be with men leads him desensitized to how he actually feels when he is with all four of his lovers - male and female. Each and every...

Beauty, in every form and aspect, is regarded by the general population as the eighth deadly sin. This becomes strikingly evident throughout the examination of Hester’s plight. Hester Prynne, a radiant example of elegance, begins to find...

Throughout Jane Eyre, the themes of love and marriage are presented in contrasting ways. In the Lowood education system, Brocklehurst preaches the evangelically tainted message of ‘mortify[ing]… the lusts of the flesh’ in preparation for the...

In Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, the struggle between the Romantic, religious, and at times over-emotional intent of characters and their reasonable nature creates the complexities faced on the Pequod, the ship captained by Ahab. This competition...