Newest Literature Essays

Following the tumult and terror brought upon by the First World War, the so-called “Lost Generation” was hopelessly scattered across Europe and often characterized by lost, aimless souls who were dissatisfied with hedonistic lives lacking in...

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” This timeless saying embodies the ability of imagery to convey multiple messages and themes in an overarching structure. Through detailed nuance, the playwright Tennessee Williams utilizes the imagery found...

Although written in the late nineteen century, “The Diamond Necklace” translates effortlessly to modern day with relatable life lessons supporting the deceptiveness of appearance. Through irony and symbolism, Guy de Maupassant’s story shows how...

Both Briony Tallis, of Atonement, and Leo Colston, of The Go-Between, spend significant periods of their adolescence in large country homes, both of which are surrounded by large estates. Hartley and McEwan use the landscapes which are present...

The new sensibility that characterizes Romantic literature often leads to the recurrence of melancholy as a powerful and recurrent motif, especially in poetry. Romantic poets recur to their poems to express personal feelings and anxieties and in...

The protagonist of A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Dubois, is a fallen southern Belle whose troubled life results in the deterioration of her mental health. She has just returned from a date with Mitch and their conversation turns to her past....

Throughout ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue’, Chaucer uses imagery to enhance our understanding of the Wife’s character and principles. Chaucer makes use of simple yet powerful metaphors such as fire and nature to augment our understanding of the Wife...

F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a range of techniques in The Great Gatsby to explore the idea that it is often the most unlikely people who display acts of heroism. Many of the characters in the novel show stereotypical characteristics, but act contrary...

Prejudice is a pre-judgement formed about something or someone - but it is more than this as well? This complex idea is highlighted in the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and the picture book Goin’ Someplace Special by Patricia...

Following the near apocalyptic end of the Second World War, an overwhelming state of fear and confusion would go on to cause a major shift in the artistic expression of the day. Nothing remained sacred as doubt replaced any virtue of knowledge,...

The Gilded Age of the late 19th century saw the rise of extravagant hats, hairstyles, and high society. Subsequently, the Gilded Age was also host to an increasingly treacherous gap between the rich and the poor and stifling social restrictions...

Of John Keats’ “Great Odes,” “To Autumn” is a poem which rests on a precipice. In other words, autumn lies directly between the life breath of spring and summer and the impending death of winter. Much to his advantage, Keats knowingly embraces...

Tyler Durden in Fight Club attempts to subvert the capitalist, consumerist system through civil disobedience and Fight Club itself. Secondly, Chuck Palahniuk uses Tyler Durden and his insurgency to criticise contemporary capitalism, by showing the...

One of the major themes in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is the idea of the public self as distinguished from the private self. This leitmotif encompasses much more than the idea of an individual versus society; it also contains the...

Mohsin Hamid's 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' is an intriguing story of questionable identities and betrayal. The protagonist, Changez, finds himself in a teahouse in Lahore, Pakistan, where he engages in an extended monologue describing his life...

Mrs. Alving: "But I’m inclined to think we’re all ghosts, Pastor Manders; it’s not only the things that we’ve inherited from our fathers and mothers that live on in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and old dead beliefs, and things of that sort....

Minor characters may not be the center of action or attraction, but novelists can use them to supplement the understanding of major characters and the thematic purpose of the text. In his novel Slaughterhouse Five, published in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut...

The novel Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie, set in post-colonial Nigeria during the Civil War in the late 1960s, is a bildungsroman that focuses greatly on family relationships as well as religious and cultural ideals. The passage describing...

Andrew Marvell’s Mower Against the Garden is the first in a series of four ‘Garden’ poems. The poem can be read literally, as a pastoral, ecological poem concerned with the destruction of the natural landscape as a result of human consumerism; in...

A.A. Milne’s 1928 classic children’s book The House at Pooh Corner remains a highly effective children’s text nearly ninety years on. This can be accredited to the format, themes and developmental concepts portrayed in the book. The concepts in...

In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles Chesnutt tells the story of social injustice in the Reconstruction period of the late 1800s. He uses a variety of unique characters, ranging from aristocratic white supremacists to vengeful blacks. Chesnutt...

“Alabaster Chambers”, much like many of Emily Dickinson's other works, showcases the theme of death without directly addressing the subject but instead guides the readers to the topic by means of the imagery. The first stanza of the original 1859...

Ideas of social change and progressive ideals are prominent in many nineteenth century works of literature. Charles Dickens’ Hard Times is a prime example of a social criticism novel, putting prominent ideas of the time period, such as...