Newest Literature Essays

Keats is able to portray love in many different lights throughout the poem by linking ideas and meanings, like symbolism. His different uses of structure within the poem, come considered unusual for a ballad, also have connotations towards how...

Through examining the intertextual connections between two texts, the effects of context, purpose and audience on the shaping of meaning is made evident. Virginia Woolf’s modernist novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’ (Penguin, 1925) and Stephen Daldry’s...

In Literary Theory: The Basics, H. Bertens asserts that even in the works of culturally and sexually liberal male writers such as D.H Lawrence and Henry Miller, male characters are “denigrating, exploitative, and repressive in their relations with...

Oliver Twist is a novel that evades easy categorisation; what begins as a political satire of the 1834 Poor Law morphs into a detective novel which in turn becomes a melodramatic thriller with a surprisingly tidy ending. While Dickens juggles...

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known as Bell Hooks, is a prominent figure not only in literature, but also in feminist and civil rights movements. She seamlessly weaves both of these issues into Killing Rage: Ending Racism in order to address the...

In the novel The Wave by Morton Rhue (the pen name for Todd Strasser), a history teacher conducts an experiment to understand Nazi Germany's influence on its people. However, students turn against each other and terrorize those who are not part of...

Seven-hundred and fifty acres of preserved greenery in the heart of New York City, Central Park has long been a refuge for those wishing to escape their hectic Manhattan lives and is arguably one of the most famous parks in the world, enjoyed by...

Love is one of the fundamental principles of humanity. It is what ties humans together as a people, and is vital to society. As such, it has influenced the world in countless ways, just one of which being through literature. Les Misèrables tells...

In the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1940, an array of concepts and ideas is introduced. Hemingway places images of nature within the text to contrast the destruction that is war, and to create a visible...

Chris Ware’s box of fourteen printed works, Building Stories, follows the inhabitants of a brownstone apartment building in Chicago. Mainly following the building’s third floor resident, an unnamed woman with a prosthetic leg, Building Stories...

In the poem, "El Viento en La Isla," Pablo Neruda develops the theme of internal struggle by using vocabulary and images of nature and love. This allows him to illustrate, rather than simply tell of, his own inner struggle: to stay with his lover,...

Translations of Sophocles’ play are generally interpreted in one of two ways, ‘Oedipus Rex’, meaning Oedipus the King, or ‘Oedipus Tyrannus’, meaning Oedipus the Tyrant. The exact distinction between the two titles is undefined, though through the...

The existence and power of God have been controversial and ambiguous topics for a long time. Does God exist? Can God intervene in the real world? In a modern world filled with technology, material things, and tragic events, it is sometimes easy to...

Balram Halwai is a protagonist in Aravind Adiga’s epistolary novel The White Tiger, in the sense that he is the primary driver of events in the story, and due to the fact that he faces great challenge and adversity, and overcomes the difficulties...

In John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, protagonist Johnny experiences outward conformity while inwardly questioning throughout the duration of his entire life. An exemplar of cowardice, Johnny uses passive aggression and the voices of others to...

Caring KatnissWhat is the most important thing in life? What should one value above everything else? To Katniss Everdeen, the one thing that she values most is loyalty. This becomes a major theme in the novel, “Catching Fire”, by Suzanne Collins,...

Throughout the novella “Of Mice and Men,” Steinbeck uses the character of crooks to highlight the racial discrimination in 1930s America. During the great depression Black Americans faced hostility, bigotry and persecution. In Southern states, Jim...

A series of transformations defines every human life. Whether physical, psychological, religious, or sociological, alterations mark progress on the journey of maturation. This idea plays a central role in James Joyce’s debut novel, which follows...

The American Dream varies for individuals, but for most it includes providing a stable home for their children and ensuring future generations will have more opportunities to become successful. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine...

In her essay “Don Quijote’s Disappearing Act”, Anne J. Cruz argues that Don Quixote’s death can be predicted, and as early as Part 1. Her thesis is that the first and second parts of the novel can be understood thus: “ [...] Don Quijote’s final...

Desmond Tutu once said, “A person is a person through other persons…. I am because other people are.” In essence, what Tutu is saying is that without other people to influence and affect an individual, a person is not really anyone. It is the...

Significant dialogue from Act 2 of Death and the Maiden reveals how Paulina’s torture in the Chile’s past totalitarian regime has affected her life in the democratic present day. The ambiguity in the meaning of justice is a key theme that is...

United States Olympic medalist Dara Torres once said, “Setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams.” Like Dara, many people believe that while losing hurts, it also does more for people than cause pain and sadness. Losing strengthens one’s sense...