Newest Literature Essays

William Butler Yeats, the esteemed twentieth-century poet, was in love with the Irish nationalist Maud Gonne; his poem “The Two Trees” was originally written for her. Gonne was very devoted to rather uncompromising ideologies, but in this poem...

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in 1600’s Puritan Boston. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, a woman who suffers public ignominy, forced to wear a red scarlet letter for her sin of adultery. The Scarlet Letter provides...

We see playful children - giggling, laughing, not a care in the world - and envy their innocence. Their spirits have not yet been hardened and jaded by the world around them. Our lives are made up of a series of moments, big and small, that...

In the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a narrator chronicles the events leading up to a murder and explores the mystery surrounding the victim’s innocence or guilt. In the book, Bayardo San Roman, a wealthy...

“Language is not a neutral instrument.”[1]

Literature is never without an ideology, whether intended by the writer, interpreted by the reader, inherent in the language, or implied by the context. Thus, an author or a playwright’s particular...

“I put it all there as a matter of historical record… We will all only exist as my inventions. No one will care what events and which individuals were misinterpreted to make a novel… How can a novelist achieve atonement when… she is also God? In...

In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare carries his characters from a court setting in Sicilia to a rural area in Bohemia, and then reconciles the plot in the original court. This play incorporates a pastoral theme by showing the role of providence...

In The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe, the protagonist Niki Jumpei leaves his work and family behind in search of a new species of beetle. On his search, Niki finds himself trapped in a hole amongst the sand dunes, and he initially tries to...

Gender double standards, which are among the effects of gender stereotypes, are reflected in Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographic novel The Bell Jar, which was published in 1963. This work tells the story of a young woman named Esther Greenwood, who...

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” features a unique symbolism of the repression of homosexual desire and of the damaging effects of a society that promotes repressive behavior. This short story details the process of imprisoning that...

“Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.” According to George R.R. Martin, an estimable American novelist, an individual's perspective ultimately decides whether he views himself as a protagonist and deems...

George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is a cautionary novel which explores a dystopian society mired in propaganda and totalitarianism. Similarly, director Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) is a critique of a futuristic world where growth and industralisation...

The creation of life is a cautionary metaphor for the advancement of science in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Today, however, this type of life-generating science is commonplace. It does not take place in the laboratory of a mad scientist, but in...

The discoveries can be transformative for individuals as they develop new ways of viewing themselves and society; however, sometimes broadening one’s understanding can have detrimental effects. Robert Gray and Katherine Mansfield, in their...

Edgar Allan Poe, who was born in the early nineteenth century, had an undeniable impact on American literature. Influenced by the era’s trend, the Romanticism, he had written plenty of short stories, tales and poems spiced with gothic features and...

From “the Other” towards “the Subject”

---A Study of Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. I will analyze Evelyn Nesbit’s personalities presented in Ragtime as a recreated character that is not lifted straight...

From the viewpoint of our world today, Shakespeare’s era seems about as conservatively-minded as a society could get. Shakespeare completely demolishes this notion, with his progressive suggestions of a normalcy in homosexuality and transgenderism...

The eighteenth-century novel seemed often to be the place in which people would attempt reform society. The novel gave writers a medium through which they could provide both entertainment and a place in which they could attempt to reform people’s...

Many people in today's world have trouble when it comes to communicating. In literature many authors use communication as a way to either create relationships or to create barriers in one. In the novel The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat, many...

In the coming of age novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee portrays many characters in various ways, but none more insidious than Mayella Violet Ewell. Mayella is the story’s boldest antagonist. She is a static character who undergoes no inner...

The amount of characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey may seem unusual and maybe even a bit overwhelming. The patients and staff of the ward make up the novel’s long list of characters. However, Kesey’s choice of numerous...

Death and Immortality in the Epic of Gilgamesh

Death is a common factor that will affect everyone, no matter race, religion or culture. Death will always hold a powerful place in the human condition, and everyone will eventually experience it....

In the way reality is theorized, the metaphysical has the potential to replace the empirical as the dominating approach to understanding reality. In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago is intrigued by the fluidity of reality, particularly in how...