Newest Literature Essays

Luminosity and spiritual longing for something that had vanished a long ago are probably the two main characteristics of the last two paragraphs in Chapter 1 of “The Great Gatsby”. The scene takes place shortly after Nick's return from dinner at...

Laced with haunting similarities between the creator and the created, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein implements the Doppelganger effect to further develop the story of one man’s quest for knowledge and the journey that ensues. From the beginning of...

In William Shakespeare’s final play, “The Tempest,” the playwright spins a magical web of a story that, although being comedic and light-hearted, subtly addresses the issues of absolutism, power and the monarchy. The main character in “The Tempest...

Shakespeare is a subtle author when it comes to religion, and throughout Othello Iago never directly addresses his religious beliefs. Yet one passage in particular, that of Iago’s attempt to persuade Roderigo to control his passions, makes the...

Characters in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Tempest use stories to explain personal history or change the course of events. These are no simple tales; rather, they are complex and thought-provoking means of enriching each play and carrying action...

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller uses common objects as symbols of the evolving relationship between the main characters in his play. Women’s stockings and their holes symbolize the failing relationship between Willy Loman and his wife,...

Eveline as Ireland: a realistic and symbolic approach

James Joyce has always been widely regarded as a major exponent of ‘the children of a fragmented, pluralistic, sick, weird period’ as Nietzsche called the artists of the time (Bradbury, p. 7)....

It is commonly believed that one can perceive the soul through a person’s eyes. However, Shakespeare allows the audience and readers to perceive the inner spirit of a character through his words, thereby giving words magnificent power. Throughout...

The success of a story is contingent on its ability to survive. Many stories are preserved as texts, a large contributor to the survival. Stories that are non-textual must be preserved by word of mouth. In Corregidora, by Gayl Jones, the...

A major theme in the play Romeo and Juliet is the contrast between the two worlds: real and unreal. In order for true love between the star-crossed lovers to survive, it must exist in both. Romeo lives in the unreal world for the majority of the...

Ralph Waldo Emerson's optimistic ideal of the “self-reliant man” in nature resonated in the literature of many of his contemporaries. Although many agreed with Emerson's principles, however, two major writers, Herman Melville and John Keats, chose...

In Act IV, Scene II of William Shakespeare’s King Richard II, King Richard II states, “my grief lies all within; / And these external manners of laments / Are merely shadows to the unseen grief / That swells with silence in the tortured soul; /...

The difference between death and dying can often seem minute. The dying are merely those on the way to death. Yet the intrinsic difference between the process of dying and the moment of death is one of great literary obsession, in particular in...

Since its original date of publication in 1925, Franz Kafka’s The Trial has resisted interpretation. At first glance, the novel’s seemingly simple and serial sequence of events poses no problem for the reader. Though the incidents that involve...

Although the mighty king persona is almost always on display in the characters of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, the audience is at times presented with the inner workings found within the deep recesses of each monarch’s mind. The reader and...

Often instead of the gallant, chivalrous hero, it is the deceptive, wicked villain that leaves a lasting imprint on the audience. The subversive and incorrigibly horrendous actions of the villains in Shakespeare’s Othello and Titus Andronicus,...

“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it” (389). While this analysis by William Blake recognizes clear...

Shelley uses nature as a restorative agent for Victor Frankenstein. While he seems to be overcome with grief by the murders of his friends and family, he repeatedly shuns humanity and seeks nature for health, relaxation and to strengthen his...

“Daisy Miller: A Study” by Henry James, a story about an American girl in Europe named Daisy Miller, is told by an unknown narrator who only has access to the main character Winterbourne’s thoughts. The story is framed around Daisy Miller and her...

In his free-form documentary F for Fake, Orson Welles, through interview, speculation and illusion, states that art itself can in no circumstance be purely “genuine” in the traditional sense, and that truth, by nature, is relative, and, in many...

The playwright Henrik Ibsen once stated, “Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.” Ibsen was a great anti-idealistic writer of the mid to late nineteenth century. His...

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a literary masterpiece that for the past two centuries has fascinated the imagination and interest of diverse readers. The word “Frankenstein” refers to the monster because it is universally accepted that the creator...

Smith asseverates that she has “tried to show the utility for imperialist ideology of a gender ideology that constructs a feminine sphere as ‘too beautiful altogether’” (Smith183). She presents her thesis through an engagement with feminist “...

Samuel Longhorn Clemens, under the pseudonym Mark Twain, uses southwestern dialects and local vernaculars to create realistic characters that accurately reflect the people and familiar scenes of mid-nineteenth century Southern American life. In...