Newest Literature Essays

Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino’s arguably most popular film, is a complex pastiche of popular culture. Its unique blend of dark humor, violence, and nonlinear and disjointed storytelling, as well as its willingness to throw genres together with...

Ambiguous text, written in such a way that the wording can be interpreted with multiple meanings, is used regularly in literature as a means of creating deeper significance in the passage. This is demonstrated in the memoirs Teaching a Stone to...

“The Poison Tree” from William Blake’s Songs of Experience is a poem that tells the story of one who is engulfed by the hatred felt towards a foe. This individual begins with telling the fury they experienced toward a friend who is told told of...

If a student tells his or her teacher that adhering to grammatical rules proves unnecessary to acceptable writing, the teacher would in all likelihood balk at the student’s claim and continue reinforcing the need for proper punctuation. If someone...

Ray Bradbury may have chosen Doug to be the twelve-year-old protagonist in Dandelion Wine, but I remain convinced that Bradbury took a pencil and paper to my childhood. Part of the reason why Doug’s character resonates with me so much stems from...

In America, according to the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”. Unfortunately, this previous statement was not completely accurate in many ways concerning American citizens. The term “equality” is reserved to a specific...

The book, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, written by an anonymous female, focuses on the social history during the capture of Berlin by the Red Army in 1945 and how it led to violent acts of rape against Berlin women. The end...

In his poem Hymn of Not Much Praise for New York City, Thomas Merton effectively describes a society governed by immorality, fueled by materialism, and spawning inhumanity. It is derived from a mindset focused solely on the achievement of wealth,...

The narrative of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is expressed in the form of a long, heartfelt from a dying father to his young son. Intended to be read after his imminent passing, John Ames III writes to capture his moral sentiments and life advice...

A fetish object assumes distinct, almost superstitious power and is often associated with sexual gratification, desire, and worship. As explained in “Sexualization in the Media," “Fetishization marks a cultural, psychological, and social technique...

Living in a major American city, we have no trouble identifying that those in need are all around us. People ask for spare change on the subway so that they can get a meal; people hold cardboard signs that read, “Anything helps.” Throughout...

The book The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil illustrates the change in societal values during the Wilhelmine Period of 1890-1914. Under Wilhelm the second, the German Empire was reined on ideals that were found on economic liberalism...

One of the deadliest wars in world history, World War I, lasted from July of 1914 until November of 1918. This was one of the first wars to be defined as a global war. This essentially means that all of the world ‘s superpowers were fighting and...

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, is a classic example of a traditional Gothic novel, despite the fact that it isn’t scary. Gothic literature received its name because many examples of the genre were set during the late-medieval, or...

Gender roles are learned mainly through social interaction rather than biologically. When people are born, they are supplied with very little knowledge of gender. Certain behavior is taught by means of social interactions and through relationships...

Misogyny tends to devastate the authority of woman by depriving her of equal treatment to her male counterpart. There are two conversations that seem to circle around ancient texts and misogyny. Did religious texts directly affect the perceptions...

Marriage is at the heart of every Jane Austen novel, or, at the very least, at the end of them, as every one of Austen’s heroines find themselves at ‘The End’ with a husband, a fortune and lifelong happiness. In reality, however, women often had...

Margaret Atwood creates a corrupt, futuristic world in Oryx and Crake that places all emphasis on technology and science, therefore devaluing the role of emotion and connection in society. Those who work in the pursuit of scientific breakthroughs...

Bram Stoker uses the characters of Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker in his novel Dracula to explore the essential attributes of a “New Woman” in Victorian England. Written during the late nineteenth century, this novel emerged out of a time where the...

In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening Edna uses painting to mature and awaken. She has always loved painting, however, she has always been unconfident about her skill in painting. As time went on she became more confident with her skills which that...

Stevens believes that to be a great butler, one must maintain their professional facade at all times in order to remain dignified (or at least, the ability to maintain a professional facade regardless of one’s circumstances is Stevens’ definition...

Shaw implicates society as a whole in the business of prostitution by exposing the underlying socio-economic conditions that serve to exploit the poor and render ‘immoral’ occupations like prostitution as viable options for lower class women to...

Tadeusz Borowski is an inherently tragic author. His life as a guard in a German concentration camp is something to be pitied at best. While Borowski writes about his horrible experiences as a guard in his collection of short stories This Way for...

The two authors Ta-Nehesi Coates and J.D. Vance have very similar viewpoints within their own racial perspectives. Coates speaks for the poor black Americans and essentially the overwhelming sentiments of most African Americans. Vance on the other...