Newest Literature Essays

Scholars have portrayed the character of Othello in remarkably different ways: tragic hero, sinner, victim, deluded romantic, noble outsider, and a myriad of other characterizations. Taking that into consideration, it is surprising how little...

The works of Anton Chekov, Henrik Ibsen, and Moliere are quite distinct from one another, each author being primarily concerned with critiquing the specific society of his own country at the time in which he lived. Their plays, however, share many...

War increases conflicts causing relationships to break revealing one’s true nature. In the historical fictional novel Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden uses the character’s Xavier and Elijah to explain how conflicts lead to devastating effects in war....

As one reflects on the past, he or she will be full of pride and guilt. Margaret Laurence uses her protagonist Hagar Shipley from her fictional novel The Stone Angel to explain bitterness, longing, and reverence is the result of contemplating the...

Raymond Carver and Edward Hopper are renowned influencers in their respective expressions of the arts. Carver’s literary work and Hopper’s paintings are devoted to human interaction. Although their avenues of expressing such genres are different,...

The psychoanalytic concept Oedipus complex refers to the emotions and psychosexual desires during the phallic stage in the developmental process, which a boy child possesses towards his mother creating a parallel sense of rivalry towards the...

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a novel laden with comparisons and allusions to religion, folklore, and philosophy. Frankenstein’s creation of a monster showcases a man doing what only deities had done before: giving life to something dead. This...

In Jazz, Toni Morrison writes with a style both rhythmic and passionate that is strikingly similar to the music of her novel’s title. Set mainly during the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the late 1920s, Morrison essentially tells the story of a...

While facets of Oliver’s identity are indisputably innate, such as his morality and one dimensional goodness, the majority of his identity and that of those around him are socially constructed and enforced upon them. Oliver’s own face, an...

A focus on the body, especially that of the female body, is integral to Moore's 'Esther Waters' and Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure'. However such an exploration is to extremely different effects. 'Zola repeatedly made use of the metaphor of dissection...

Empathy, happiness, guilt: all are feelings that human beings are capable of that distinguish humans from objects or robots. But in William Gibson's’ “Neuromancer”, his readers are introduced to a futuristic world where the distinction between...

Instability, in its most basic sense, is something not likely to change or fail, this is a feeling or fear explored across various themes in Maud. Across the private and public spheres, instability is recognized in the mind, politics, existence,...

The Epic of Gilgamesh focuses on the inevitability of death and the ways mortals can come to terms with their mortality. In the classical Babylonian epic, He Who Saw the Deep, Gilgamesh is a mighty king who longs to achieve fame and glory,...

Few aspects of the world are as subjective and as complex as literature. The same piece of literature can take on a virtually infinite number of meanings based upon the interpretation of the individual. This idea has been expounded upon in several...

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson portrays the life of its narrator, Ruthie, alongside her sister Lucille as the two grow from mere children to young women while being surrounded by the confusion of shifting guardians, as well as the influence of...

Shocking, horrific, and filled with suspense, Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) was a self-proclaimed experiment in filmmaking. Adapted from a Patrick Hamilton play, the film was received with mixed reviews, but the pioneering method of making the film...

There is little debate that Spenser admired Queen Elizabeth I. When reading through Book One of The Faerie Queene, Gloriana is fashioned in a manner that allows her to as an allusion to the famed maiden queen. In his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh...

In his Letter to Menoeceus and the Leading Doctrines, Epicurus claims that happiness is derived from the fulfillment of pleasure as well as the absence of pain. Most people today would probably agree with Epicurus on that point, and seemingly in...

The poem “Home” by Warsan Shire speaks out for refugees by describing the unthinkable and difficult decisions refugees are forced to make on a daily basis. Shire employs personification and second person techniques in order to portray the idea...

Mikhail Lermontov’s only novel, A Hero of Our Time, chronicles the adventures of a young officer, Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, through second and third-person narrative as well as through his own traveler’s journal. Like many other Russian...

Man is never so naked than when he wears a mask. Or in other words, what is perceived is the exposed truth people see and not the truth that really exists. The problem is that the mask reflects exactly what a person so chooses to be, but not what...

Two poems, Ozymandias and Death, be not proud are similar because they both share the themes of time leading to a downfall. But the difference is that in Ozymandias the King has his downfall from being proud and arrogant, while in Death, be not...

Surrounded by the wilderness of Mytholmroyd, Hughes’ childhood was greatly influenced by the natural world, and this was significantly reflected in his poetry. Much of Hughes’ literary works depict the sheer power and, indeed, the cruelty of the...

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 19 presents the concept of time as a destructive force that is omnipotent and all consuming; a creature of various forms, all monstrous, set on tearing apart all that is and has been known in the world, even...