Newest Literature Essays

Reader response criticism is a school of formal literary theory that focuses on the reader and their experience of literature. A prime thematic or style that can be found in many of Neil Gaiman’s novels is his manner of taking the unknown and...

Boldly forthright and bitterly candid, Junot Diaz’s "Drown" forges a sense of community culture that propels the development of several of the work’s major themes, foremost among them the retention of historically accepted implications of...

Author Mary Shelley uses the creature in her book Frankenstein to depict the dangers of humans creating artificial intelligence. Shelley presents these ideas through using Victor Frankenstein as a creator of a new species of life, and the creature...

The critic Joe Nutt writes that ‘it takes a bold man to taunt death’[1]. This observation was made in reference to John Donne’s Holy Sonnet X, ‘Death be not proud’, and accurately portrays both the tone and subject of the poem. Throughout the...

“For a moment [George] contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her”...

Throughout Antigone, Creon maintains complete confidence in his belief that, in order to prevent anarchy and chaos, the rule of a king must be obeyed even it contradicts proper morals and/or the will of the gods. The decisions that he makes in an...

Throughout the narrative of William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, the idea of loyalty is discussed in different scenarios and different situations that align with each separate facet of the plot. While this principle is regularly utilized...

Roy’s “God of Small Things” is a work of literary genius that commentates on the difficulties and divisions created by Colonialism and, more broadly, the impact of western influence on the entirety of eastern culture. In the narrative, the idea of...

Mute characters play a significant role in plays. They are the characters most people would ignore because they do not say anything; however, mute characters may be the characters who say the most in a play. Within Mother Courage and Her Children...

The 2007 movie Juno raises many ethical issues through the perspective of Juno, a sixteen-year-old girl who becomes pregnant in high school. The movie is based around the moral struggles she faces during the pregnancy, as well as how she handles...

The infant has always been a versatile and powerful symbol for a variety of themes; themes such as new life, innocence, potential, and even loss. While in both Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s "To a Friend, Who Asked How I Felt, When the Nurse First...

Within the line of duty, upstanding accomplishments are norm; even then, some officers manage to stand out for unparalleled excellence. Randy Sutton is a veteran of the Las Vegas Police Department, known nationally for his commentary on issues...

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older--the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” With these words, Jane Austen crystallizes one of the central questions of her novel Persuasion--whether it is...

In Mikhail Lermontov's novel A Hero of Our Time, the author brings out the irony surrounding various characters with Pechorin being at the center stage. The portrayal of Pechorin is viewed in the book as an exemplary Byronic anti-hero and...

Henry David Thoreau, a leading philosopher of the 19th century, stated that "Men have become the tools of their tools." Machine Man, written by Max Barry, holds true to this quote. In this fiction novel, scientist Charles Neumann surrounds his...

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening focuses on Edna Pontellier’s sexual and emotional maturation as the protagonist frees herself from the restraints of patriarchal society. Nancy Walker in her critical essay “Feminist or Naturalist?” instead perceives...

Both Jean Toomer and Ralph Ellison allude heavily to Old Testament imagery as they illustrate the Southern American landscape in their respective novels, Cane and Invisible Man. Toomer compares, through spirituals and spiritual-derived language,...

In his nineteen holy sonnets, John Donne contemplates his mortality, and explores themes of divine love and judgment along with his deep personal troubles. In the first loosely Petrarchan holy sonnet “Thou hast made me”, Donne presents a hopeless...

In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill advances the “greatest happiness principle,” which “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to produce happiness…[and] by happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.” [1] Mill...

In his novel The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers takes the reader into the mind of a soldier. This work evokes not only the physical duress of fatigue and fighting, but also the emotional stress and the long-lasting trauma that remains with a soldier...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is led to have an affair by her repressed unconscious desires, what Freud calls the id. Similarly, Arthur Dimmesdale struggles with his internal guilt and refuses to confess his sin; he...

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five we are taken through the strange life of a Mr. Billy Pilgrim. The story revolves primarily around Billy’s time in Germany during WWII but also several other points in Billy’s life. What the reader will...

In the wide spectrum of humanistic characteristics, that of desire is one of the most prominent. It is an emotion that is challenging to resist, as it tends to control many aspects of life because of the strength it possesses. In the realm of...