Newest Literature Essays

The 19th century philosophy of transcendentalism, championed by the profound literary figures of the century such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, was an accumulation of ideas built on the principles of individualism and...

Kazuo Ishiguro’s An artist of the Floating World is a novel ripe with scenes of introspection, indeed the past is one of the principal devices in order to further many of the work’s central themes. Regardless of the oftentimes stringent, even...

Composed by Ariel Dorfman, Death of the Maiden is regarded as a compelling play where a woman, Paulina, sought justice for actions that happened to her fifteen years ago. She blames a man named Roberto Miranda, a doctor that had visited her and...

"My Oedipus Complex" by Frank O'Connor is a short story in which the reader has extremely mixed feelings towards the main character, Larry. The story begins with Larry and his mother having a normal day. Their incredibly strong bond is clearly...

Society has been fascinated by the power struggle between men and women since the conception of gender. Movies and television shows about the battle of the sexes intrigued both men and women, but the real life version of the battle of the sexes is...

Despite being one-hundred-fifty years old, Frederick Douglass’s speech “The Hypocrisy of American Slavery” and Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” have survived the tests of history as some of the most influential speeches of their time. Both...

Letters from an American Farmer by French-American author J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur can be considered one of the first propaganda pieces for the service of the newly formed United States of America, the purpose of which being to attract...

To read Johannes de Silentio’s account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Fear and Trembling is to understand the paradoxical nature of the single individual and how there are internal and external forces that define the individual in the...

Many of the great modern works of literature and film find their inspiration in the classical works of authors such as Homer, Chariton, and Xenophon. While modern authors may not even realize they are imitating the characters and generic...

In Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s “A Spirit in A Raspberry,” the main character, Baron B. has always been in his comfort zone: he has all he needs, and he is content with existing only in his small corner of the world. The young baron is unaware that life...

Throughout history and literature, utopias usually materialize as attempts to fashion a more perfect society, typically catalyzed by a disagreeable quality of the current civilization. Having an understanding of the purpose for the creation of...

In her essay "Dispelling the Myth of Strong Female Characters," Megan Leigh deconstructs the phrase “strong female character”, and argues that it is too often a positive attachment given to two-dimensional female characters. The stereotypical...

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole is hailed as the first novel of the Gothic genre. Accordingly, the novel contains many tropes found in gothic literature, such as the pious princess and the evil prince. In the novel, male characters do...

Both historian Herodotus and playwright Aeschylus adopt the central subject matter of the Persian Wars- a series of conflicts fought between Greek and Persian forces, which roughly began in 499 BC, and ended in 480 BC in Greek victory at the...

In a traditional Mexican household, the women tend to personify a maternal character in which they nurture, provide for, and maintain the unity of their family. Throughout the novel Pedro Páramo, the protagonist Juan encounters three significant...

In today’s world, Western society has grown incredibly desensitized to violence. Children play video games such as Grand Theft Auto in which they murder civilians and sexually assault women without a second thought in order to win the game. Turn...

A fragmented narrative challenges readers to piece together the jumbled components of a narrative in order to make sense of the story (Hamilton). Although hard to follow at times, the narrative presents an alternative form for storytelling. In his...

In a last, desperate attempt to gain support and exercise free will in a society that condemns her, Seneca’s Medea calls on the gods for help. Medea finds herself in a country with an oppressive government that despises foreigners, and her foreign...

Maxine Hong Kingston’s No Name Woman explores the life of Kingston’s aunt, who had a child out of wedlock in rural China. As she doesn’t know the exact circumstances of her aunt’s story, she’s forced to imagine different versions of her aunt’s...

In literature, the opinion of a character seems to not solely derive from the perspective of one narrator. A holistic characterization of an individual requires a multitude of viewpoints, as each person notices distinct nuances of a persona that...

In Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde, Lorde invents a new genre that she calls “biomythography,” a genre in which she can explore her experiences, emotions, and life-journey in a way that emphasizes emotions, eroticism, and the...

The role of nature in American literature operates on three levels. Firstly, nature in American literature provides a refuge for characters from the austere conformity required by American society, allowing them to be themselves without fear of...

In 1991, Bao Ninh published his novel with the title Thân Phận Của Tình Yêu, or The Destiny of Love in accordance with North Vietnamese regulations to publish material that only glorified the war, reflecting Ho Chi Minh's fervent patriotism to...

When students learn about abolition, they are typically introduced to significant texts written by historical literary figures such as Fredrick Douglass and William Wells Brown. However, the slave narrative genre is overwhelmingly comprised by...