Newest Literature Essays

Never has there been a character quite so open to interpretation than that of Bartleby in Herman Melville’s short story Bartleby, the Scrivener. In the position of the reader, it is simple to blame Bartleby for an initial lack of understanding...

Catch 22 is an outrageous novel, one designed to provoke the reader and to evoke a sense of uneasiness and disturbance. Its complexity can drive one completely mad with frustration. A lot of people fall in the trap of believing that Catch 22 is...

The autobiographic novel, Left to Tell composed by Immaculée Ilibagiza, is punctuated by legions of demonic allusions and enveloped in an almost impenetrable shroud of evil. Although Immaculée’s halcyon childhood days appear untarnished and...

Sylvia Plath is known for being a prominent female poet of the 20th century whose work often focused on feminine aspects of life such as motherhood, as well as the challenges of being an educated, aspiring female author in the patriarchal 1960s in...

Throughout history, America has often been depicted as a land of many freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of petition, thanks to the First Amendment. Slowly but surely, these...

Within The Comedy of Errors by the venerable William Shakespeare, there comes a hectic bit in the first scene of the fifth act whereupon a lowly messenger brings disturbing news to Adriana: “Mistress, upon my life I tell you true / I have not...

Unlike the author, whose job it is to write the story, the role of the narrator is to tell the story. The narrator provides the window through which the reader looks, framing the discourse, and deciding what is, and what is not, important, where...

In Perilous Kinship by Zafer Şenocak, the protagonist Sascha grapples with his intersecting German-Jewish and Turkish identities in the wake of the German reunification. Coming from a family of migrants, coupled with his own nomadic character,...

Issues regarding social class often tend to stem from innate human desires for power and influence. Throughout history, power has been shown to be a very dangerous tool for those who are not fit to hold it, and this topic is extremely prevalent in...

In seeking to define the post-modern moment in his essay ‘Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?’, Lyotard uses and extends the Kantian theme of the sublime to serve as an entry point to conceptualize the ‘unrepresentable’, that which is...

During the nineteenth century, prominent thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson shaped the American perspective through the philosophy of transcendentalism. Emerson decried tradition and emphasized the pursuit of individual values, encouraging social...

'Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year' and 'Friends' Photos' both reminisce and compare the past with the memory and newfound perspective that their speakers have gained from the present with photographs as a medium. However, while...

As the biggest literary phenomenon of 2012, Gone Girl, penned by former television critic Gillian Flynn, was at one point a household item, commonplace among coffee tables, airplanes, and offices alike. Ubiquitous among both the older and younger...

In The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, Tristan and Iseult surrender their will to a powerful love potion that bonds them for eternity. The potion makes them betray their loyalties to King Mark and commit sinful acts in the name of chivalry and...

Two of the most profoundly influential and respected figures of the American Revolution are Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. Both held views about religion and morality that defied orthodoxy, giving rise to the new emphasis on the individual’s...

What is the meaning of life? Is life not a constant journey to finding the meaning of our existence? Is life about finding this meaning of existence or is it all about searching? One of the oldest epics in the world, “The Epic of Gilgamesh”,...

The anarchist is dead – this is perhaps the only ‘fact’ the text subscribes to throughout; everything else in the (performative) text is presented in a vaudevillesque fashion by bringing in a bizarre combination of different genres and techniques...

In a study of Voltaire’s Candide, the central critical discussion revolves around the final chapter. Candide’s epic journey finds its conclusion in a garden, where Candide and his companions are reunited and choose to spend the rest of their days...

In both the movie Seabiscuit by director Gary Ross and the novel Jasper Jones by author Craig Silvey, many heroes hidden in plain sight can be found. These characters are very similar in certain elements such as Johnny Pollard, who is also known...

The Scarlet Pimpernel can be seen in many different ways: a contrast between law and disorder, a war between different ideologies, or a personal fight between characters. In all of these interpretations, the victory of Sir Percy, the Scarlet...

There are two different types of captivity: being captive to an outside force or being captive to yourself. When most people think of captivity, they think of an outside force, someone restricting someone else through overt force. Yet the other...

History and individual testament as narrated in the novel Left to Tell, authored by Immaculée Ilibagiza clearly defines the trajectory of holocaust as springing up as a natural consequence of an established racism. In its embryonic stages, the...

Impregnating her narrative with rich symbolism, Immaculée Ilibagiza gives birth to the Left to Tell novel. She employs prolific imagery to clarify on the tenor of events during the Rwandan genocide. Descended from an inveterate Catholic home,...

An often-explored trope of both contemporary and classic literature is the utilization of somewhat morbid imagery to further a narrative or perhaps convey an underlying message in a vividly grotesque manner. One such example can be found within...