Newest Literature Essays

In Redeployment, Phil Klay reveals the vulgar, brutal aspects of warfare behind the victories and heroism that are often shown in media. Through several short stories, Klay shares the difficult course that soldiers undergo with reconciling with...

As in other plays, reflecting a specific culture, “Death and the King’s Horseman” has kept close to religious and traditional issues, but it has shaped culture into a great tragedy. Aristotle defines tragedy in his book poetics as:

A tragedy is...

Commonly called “a novel of manners” because of the way characters are shown thinking and speaking about how people in society ought to conduct themselves, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton focuses chiefly on Lily Bart, a woman whose social...

Literature is an amalgamation of historical and social context alongside the writer’s personal feelings. This is why a sole interpretation of ‘Frankenstein’ is so difficult to come up with. Shelley came from a radical background of two vocally...

The social hierarchy and class differences of The Animal Farm caused its demise. The most prominent social groups settled into their own habitats, establishing their own “grounds.” The animals on the bottom of the hierarchy are not well educated,...

The Unruly Child That is Love

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the concept of love and relationships are certainly at the forefront of the play. However, if one delves a bit further into the story, elements such as violence, death, and...

To add an element to a story, authors tend to use colors to allude to specific details, thoughts, or feelings of characters. Judith Guest’s novel, Ordinary People, is a coming of age tale which forces readers to analyze the different characters...

Vladimir Nabokov’s work Lolita is a reflection of his aesthetic literature. Nabokov is able to construct a character who can stimulate and appeal to his audience through his fluid and articulate use of language. A language that is able to mask...

In Shakespeare’s Othello, Othello is presented as a man of stature and distinction, so much so that others oft precede his name with the word “valiant” (1.3.50). He is someone who, despite prejudices attached to his skin, is found worthy of love...

Karen Russell’s modern Southern novel, Swamplandia! is informed by various works of Southern Literature through different time periods. It is through the use of themes and motifs specific to literature of the American South that Swamplandia! gets...

Choice is inescapable and inevitable to all who exist or have ever existed. When meeting a fork in the road, a decision is always made, even if no action is taken. Utterly paradoxical, even the act of no decision at all is stepping in one...

In general, comic strips and graphic art are given little attention as complete works of literature. Considered to be lacking substance and novelistic qualities, graphic novels are undeservingly lumped into a category that does not account for...

Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker describes the difficult and oftentimes discouraging assimilation of a young Korean American, Henry Park. Throughout the novel, Henry struggles to find his true self in either Korean or American culture. His effort to...

Tumbling out of the cart, clashing into the dark grey stone, the cask explodes over the pavement, its contents seeping into the jagged cracks of the street. Perplexed by the event, the people watch intently before hastily running towards the...

Friendship is arguably the most relevant philosophical matter expounded upon in The Nicomachean Ethics. While other virtues may not be practiced on a daily basis, friendship and the implications of such a relationship are somewhat more consistent....

In Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, humans are described as exhibiting three types of coping mechanisms in order to relieve themselves of the suffering that they experience. One of these mechanisms is intoxication: to intoxicate one's...

In the novels Their Eyes Were Watching God and Love Medicine, Hurston and Erdrich (respectively) use the characterization of the women to promote women’s empowerment and self-fulfillment. Lulu can be seen within Erdrich’s work as the...

A character’s views on morality and material gain seem to form the distinction between being a “good” or “bad” character in Austen’s novel Mansfield Park. By conducting a character analysis of Lady Bertram, Mary Crawford, and Sir Thomas, one can...

In The Odyssey, Homer conveys themes of loyalty, authority, and reverence to the gods as he tells the story of Odysseus’ journey back to his home in Ithaca. All of these themes are exemplified in the disguised Odysseus’ encounter with Eumaeus, the...

For hundreds of years, the dominant culture in America has categorically underestimated black southern culture and vernacular, mistaking these segments of American life as largely simple, vulgar, and uneducated; Zora Neale Hurston sought to change...

The Children of Men by PD James depicts the life of Theodore “Theo” Faron alongside his five acquaintances Julian, Miriam, Rolf, Gascoigne, and Luke as they embark on a harrowing mission to privately birth the child that will likely become the...

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson portrays the life of its narrator, Ruthie, alongside her sister Lucille as the two grow from mere children to young women while being surrounded by the confusion of shifting guardians, as well as the influence of...

Often referred to as the leading writer of transcendentalism, Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson directed thousands in the 19th century to rediscovery of self through his literature. Among them, young New Englander Henry David Thoreau mirrored Emerson’...

During the 1800’s, when Mary Shelley first began to write, she struggled to show her husband Percy that she was in charge of herself and her artistry. Shelley describes Percy as constantly being anxious about her having to prove herself and find...