Newest Literature Essays

There is a famous lyric Paul Simon croons out with Art Garfunkel, bemoaning the stealthily infectious nature of suppression in society. “Silence like a cancer grows,” they warn, “…no one dared disturb the sound of silence.” It is this silence that...

“The normal is the good smile in a child's eyes. It is also the dead stare in a million adults.”

– Peter Schaffer

As the deeply conflicted psychiatrist Dysart, Richard Griffiths delivers this line with wonderful restraint to an audience in the new...

A simple girl raises the instrument to her lips. Her eyes are filled with wonder, her face with laughable, caricature delight. In an instant, the trumpet is snatched away, and a strongman harshly reproaches her for the presumptuous act—“Do only...

The greatest scenes in Fellini films are often the most surreal. In 8 , Fellini depicts the creative process (and correspondingly, the creative block), a famously surreal subject in and of itself. Perhaps one of the most iconic scenes in cinematic...

Actress Louise Brooks and her best-known creation, Lulu, are together one of the most memorable expressions of modern cinema’s “bad girl,” an unabashed symbol of sexuality. Born November 14, 1906, Brooks was known for her idiosyncratic bob-and...

Federico Fellini may have titled the film “Nights of Cabiria”—a title that syntactically emphasizes the nights and events in relation to, and as “acted upon,” Cabiria. Yet, perhaps more interesting than the escapades is the complexity of the...

In Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the nature of theatricality, “magic,” and “realism,” all stem from the tragic character, Blanche DuBois. Blanche is both a theatricalizing and self-theatricalizing woman. She lies to herself...

"When we are on stage, we are in the here and now."

“What is important to me is not the truth outside myself, but the truth within myself.”

–Constantin Stanislavsky

The System

It began, over a century ago, with a man named Constantin Stanislavsky....

Two similarly flawed notions of love are presented in Shakespeare’s plays Titus Andronicus (TA) and The Winter’s Tale (TWT). Both are rooted in differing degrees of misogyny, yet diverge significantly in their overarching objective. The model of...

People lose their sanity through many processes. It has become an art. In her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the stealthy approach of insanity as a medium to advance arguments of feministic roots. Her (mostly...

There is a concept of “social death” which is often applied to those individuals discarded by, excluded from, or persecuted by society. Social death has been used to describe slavery, apartheid, ostracism, or, as in the case of Hannah W. Foster’s...

According to Murray Baumgarten, “the narrator of the expressionist novel no longer worries about the ‘real’ world (422).” Instead, the narrator of the expressionist novel is concerned with the creation of a new, almost illusionary, and composite...

The flowing white tennure, the rotating sikke, the twirling spin of the right foot, the turning hands - one pointing towards the heavens, one towards the earth- the revolving mass of the flesh, and the spiral gyrating of the spirit; nothing seems...

“It was a machine like no other.”

The opening lines of Franz Kafka’s work ‘In the Penal Colony’ puts forward a cryptic yet insightful simile that sets the mood of the entire story. Kafka’s simile offers little further clarification, yet categorizes...

In the novella Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, the idea of cultural identity is explored through the symbolic significance of names. Although his name is never stated, it is assumed that the man that Antoinette marries is Rochester based upon the...

T.S. Eliot once remarked that poetry must be difficult. The sentiments of this are expressed in much of his poetry and in his esoteric style, especially in Rhapsody on a Windy Night. If read literally, Rhapsody presents a bewildering scene of...

William Blake’s “Little Black Boy,” Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” James Joyce’s “The Dead” and Sarah Kane’s Blasted each demonstrate how a writer’s use of language can give us intimate access to the time period that in turn informs the...

Tony Harrison’s “A Cold Coming,” William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and George Orwell’s 1984 each display distinct sensibilities that reflect the time from which they emerged....

When Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” was first released to the public, audiences and critics did not know what to make of it. Here was a film with minimal dialogue, long, obscure sequences that seemed to stretch to infinity, and little...

Contemporary political discourse often references George Orwell’s 1984 as an example of how government interference infringes on our rights as individuals while we remain complacent in the face of these violations. For example, the falsification...

In Richard Wright’s autobiographical novel Black Boy, the narrator frequently speaks about his severe physical hunger and the emptiness it brings him. While his physical hunger shapes his actions as a child, the gravity of the emotional and...

The character of the Pardoner in Chaucer’s ‘The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale’ is a controversial, ethically depraved character that, it could be said, represents corruption within the Catholic Church. As the narrator of the tale, however, he...

As Dagny enters Richard Halley’s valley cottage in the cool calm of the night, she is enveloped with music that hits her as a “symbol of moral pride” (717) This pride is not built on what the heart feels is valuable, but on what the mind knows to...

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is his first of two historical novels. Published in 1859, the book discusses the themes of resurrection, destiny, and concealment. Dickens’ novel both demonstrates his view of society, and contains historical...