Newest Literature Essays

Bilbo’s sword, Sting, plays a large role in The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien -- a role that almost appears to be incongruous for its size. Through each one of its appearances, Sting’s increased significance as a plot element simultaneously...

In a rather prophetic statement about a doomed family residing in an ancestral home, where the curse of the father becomes the curse of the children, Hawthorne writes in The House of the Seven Gables, “Ambition is a talisman more powerful than...

“Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon” (Dickinson, n.d.). At first glance, this utterance by Emily Dickinson conveys a negative attitude towards the unique and the new. However, upon second interpretation, this...

The theatrical device of performing a play within another play has been employed for centuries, most notably in European theatre and literature (Fisher and Greiden xi). The play within a play “describes a strategy for constructing play texts that...

How can a trial turn a religious minister into a man separated from a town’s power structure? In The Crucible, Reverend Hale is sent to Salem to deal with an alleged outbreak of witchcraft. At the beginning of the play, Hale is a confidant man,...

Communities are complicated. Each one is more than just a group of people living together in one place: they are supposed to offer their members a sense of belonging and acceptance, yet often ostracize those who are different. Often, they embody...

Throughout history there have been no shortages of western Christian writers. In a field so competitive, only those who have created work that is theologically influential are remembered by the masses. Martin Luther is remembered for crafting the...

“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High”-Psalms 82:6

It is an impossible task for an author not to project his or her own private biases onto a page. Theistic writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were...

Over 1300 pages long, Tolstoy's War and Peace presents characters who disappear as quickly as they appeared. But every single one of them has a particular significance in the broader themes that War and Peace displays, whether that theme be love,...

Setting traditionally provides a base for a writer to create a storyline and the characters that populate it. In Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky paints the picture of a dirty, polluted city filled with drunks and prostitutes. This setting...

In the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, a more realistic depiction of the superhero figure is achieved by allowing genres to be imbedded separately within the thoroughly developed identities of Rorschach, the Comedian, and...

If cultures are considered unifiable by way of shared stories, it is not inconceivable that cultures may be connected through distinguishable but ultimately similar histories of shame. Whether or not these histories force upon cultures the role of...

Jane Austen is universally known for her uniquely intimate and precise descriptions of every-day life in late 18th and early 19th century England, and her plots are oftentimes focused on the humorous adventures of women who attempt to navigate the...

Before women gained the right to vote in the United States, feminists hoped that the end of suffrage would give women of the future a public voice and subsequently the ability to better their lives. Most middle to upper class women in the early...

Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility and Ang Lee’s film interpretation of the same name share many key similarities. Important transferred elements and cardinal functions are sustained in the jump from novel to film, rendering the plot,...

Since the Greek philosopher Plato banned them from his ideal commonwealth, poets such as Sir Philip Sidney have attempted to defend their work by arguing that poetry and its use of language combine the liveliness of history and the ethical focus...

William Grifenhagen

11 November 2015

Edwin Arlington Robinson struggled with depression throughout most of his life, especially during his early years as an adolescent. When asked about his childhood, Robinson himself described it as “stark and...

Almost every child begins in this world dreaming of fairytales. She imagines herself a princess like Disney’s Ariel or Sleeping Beauty: bursting into song, radiating beauty, and living happily-ever-after. But when this child grows up, she realizes...

Jane Austen’s novel Emma and Douglas McGrath’s film interpretation of the same name share many key similarities. Important transferred elements and cardinal functions are sustained in the jump from novel to film, rendering the plot, atmosphere and...

In the Oxford English Dictionary there exists an irony: a definition of a term, which originated from the Italian politician Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, implies the exact opposite of what its originator argued. This irony is...

The phenomenon of morality and its origination has been a topic of debate throughout history. Specifically, the world renowned philosophers, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, come to a very significant disagreement over the history of morality, the...

“Noah’s children had inherited the flood although they had not been there to see the deluge” (Go Down, Moses 276). This sense of doom follows through five of the major novels written by William Faulkner set in his mythic Yoknapatawpha County. Doom...

Disentangling the Twins of Conrad’s Psyche

Joseph Conrad spoke such truth about the inner working of humankind when he said through his character Razumov in Under Western Eyes, “A man's most open actions have a secret side to them” (pt. 1, ch. 2)....