Newest Literature Essays

When one imagines Russian theatre around the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, a barrel of laughs is likely not the first clichéd metaphor to spring to mind. This was a contradiction as Russia as it made its way towards...

From its outset, Frankenstein establishes a link between the procuring of knowledge, or the uncovering of secrets, and evil. Walton’s sister’s ‘evil forebodings’ that surround his attempt to reach the North Pole, pointed out in the very first...

Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” use nature as a common motif to express his feelings of love towards a woman and the loneliness he feels being with her. An example of such work is found in his poem, “Girl Lithe and Tawny”....

September of 1913 was the height of one of the most important trade union disputes in Irish history and the poem "September 1913" is based around this. Yeats was, at the time, a great supporter of the lower classes and attacks middle-class...

The first factor of the poem which is striking is the title: the fact that it is a ‘Love Song’ suggest closeness and romance which is then removed by the way in which he signs his name. ‘J. Alfred Prufrock’ appears to be more personal than simply...

In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, several major themes arise. One of the most dominant themes is the idea of redemption for past wrongdoings. The protagonist, an Afghani-American named Amir, relays the story of his childhood; through this, one...

In Sandra Cisneros’ work The House on Mango Street, young Esperanza must face the trials and tribulations that accompany growing up. This daunting task is made all the more difficult by society’s views of her race and gender. As a teenage Latina...

In Toni Morrison’s graphic portrayal of racism and psychological distress, The Bluest Eye, young Pecola Breedlove faces challenges much too large for anyone her age to be able to handle. Her constant internal battles with racism and personal...

In general, we as humans like a sense of closure in regards to literature; ambiguous endings are usually seen as an easy way out of a novel. However, in John Fowles’s novel The French Liutenant’s Woman, ambiguity does not stem from a lack of an...

In Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, Piscine “Pi” Patel is forced to relay his life story to condescending Japanese skeptics who refuse to believe his tale; they refer to it as nothing more than a fictional invention. Pi somewhat agrees with the...

Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel Middlesex is one full of interesting and somewhat unique themes. There is no question as to why the work has gone so far as to win a Pulitzer Prize: it follows a pattern that has proven successful for thousands of years....

Throughout J.D. Salinger’s most famous work of literature, The Catcher in the Rye, the reader is exposed to several facets of symbolism that help give substance and characterization to the protagonist of the story, young Holden Caulfield. It is...

Throughout history, art has played a major role in portraying the structure of society and the different roles people play in it. In Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, art seems to dictate the life of young Dorian Gray to the point of...

In Ian McEwan’s award winning novel Atonement young Briony Tallis must try and make amends for her wrongdoings toward her older sister Cecelia and her love interest, Robbie. At the end of the novel, the short, twenty-page coda entitled “London,...

Absolute monarchies have carried a negative connotation throughout history and have been the source of many rebellions and wars. However, if an absolute monarch learns to be just and execute his power rationally, then his or her reign can be...

In his minimalist short story Save as Many as You Ruin, British author Simon Van Booy comments on the human concept of fate, and how a series of random life events can bring forth the feeling of inevitability. The story is told from the point of...

As one of the leaders of the realist movement in drama, Henrik Ibsen earned his reputation for creating plays that accurately depict the details of ordinary peoples' lives. The first two acts of A Doll's House are safe territory, following the...

In T.C Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain, the author offers a distorted lens to highlight the differences between two couples from separate cultures brought together through a series of unfortunate events. Candido and America Rincon are illegal...

Travel Writing and Identity in Tristram Shandy

In The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne employs unconventional structure and non-linearity to disorient his readers. Sterne projects himself through the lens of Tristram Shandy,...

Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is heavily saturated with elements of satire and dark humor. Sterne proposes an argument, through the inclusion of the ‘male’ mid-wife, Dr. Slop, for the restoration of...

Two primary tropes guide Fantomina’s foray into sex and love with Beauplaisir: economic value and sight. Both of these tropes typically signify a text dominated by the masculine, treating women as commodities to be objectified and therefore...

William Shakespeare’s 55th Sonnet and John Donne’s “The Canonization” are both poems that possess the same themes, anxieties, and cultural practices, thus illuminating the two poets’ experiences in early modern Britain. According to Sasha Roberts,...

Artists such as Lily Briscoe from To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and Stephen Dedalus from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce are equally affected by the ways in which society interprets their art. They embody these two...

In his novel Light in August, Faulkner presents one of his most biting critiques of religious and social intolerance in early twentieth-century society. Faulkner uses the fictional town of Jefferson to confront the presence of racism, sexuality,...