Newest Literature Essays

Shakespeare's genius in character and plot development is exemplified in two of his most complex history plays, Richard II and Henry IV, Part I. With these sequential plays, Shakespeare vividly develops characters and sets up complicated plots by...

How valid is the distinction between history and tragedy in Richard II?

An attempt to sort Shakespeare's plays into neat categories may appear to have its benefits when striving to understand his work, but even a superficial reading of Richard II...

"Hardy summons into us a graphic dimension, and then, apparently without realizing the danger in doing so, he allows another Eustacia to enter his novel. This Eustacia emerges, through a consistent patter of speech and action as a creature unfit...

John Gardner once said that there are only two types of stories: someone leaving home or a stranger coming into town; The Return of the Native meets both of these in a way. Eustacia wishes to leave, while Clym returns, but seems to be almost a...

In his novel The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy creates an unreliable world of misconceptions and coincidences by paralleling the setting of Egdon Heath to reality, as perceived through human nature, to convey his theme. Throughout the novel,...

The Victorian novel often focuses on prominent, relevant issues of the time during which it is written. These issues can range from class, ambition, and gender to love, sexuality, and desire. Authors of the Victorian era delivered insight on these...

The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, begins with personification of a majestic heath, the setting for this novel: "The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could... retard the dawn, sadden noon,...

In The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, by Bertolt Brecht, a violent gang gains power through the vegetable trade, attaining near dictatorial status in a chillingly short amount of time. One thing leads to another in a rapid sequence of events that...

Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five is, at first glance, nothing more than a science fiction tale of one man's travels to another planet and his ability to view his life out of chronological order because of his power to time travel. There...

Henry Fleming, after receiving his red badge of couragea blow to the headtakes over the role of color-bearer during a vicious combat. As he sees his comrade sink to the ground in pain, he fights with his friend Wilson for the esteemed position of...

Stephen Crane, in "The Red Badge of Courage", makes numerous references to flags, references that are all fraught with meaning. Flags themselves hold a great deal of symbolic value. They began as a way to distinguish tribes in battle, but came to...

The world of Stephen Crane's fiction is a cruel, lonely place. Man's environment shows no sympathy or concern for man; in the midst of a battle in The Red Badge of Courage "Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so...

Stephen Crane's pieces are written with the intent to establish individualism as an unfavorable quality. He establishes that group goals are more important than that of the individual and creates groups to which each character should conform....

In 1915, during the Taisho period of Japanese history, native Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa created a collection of short stories entitled Rashomon and Other Stories. The progenitor of the modern Japanese short story form, Akutagawa's...

Lucrece's tragic downfall in Shakespeare's "Rape of Lucrece" can be largely blamed on male competition. Her hapless story begins with a contest to determine which man possesses the chastest wife, "among which Collatus extolled the incomparable...

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun challenges the stereotype of 1950's America as a country full of doting, content housewives. The women in this play, Mama, Ruth and Beneatha, represent three generations of black women who, despite their...

When Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom returns to Brewer to seek the help of his old high school basketball coach Marty Tothero in John Updike's 'Rabbit Run,' a third-person narrator establishes the scene "Rabbit glances up hopefully at the third-story...

On the title page of Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw describes the play as 'A Romance in Five Acts'. Throughout the play, readers might assume that the heroine and hero of Pygmalion will end up romantically together. In fact, a common complaint...

Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound centers on the struggle between Prometheus and Zeus. Prometheus is an intelligent god who is concerned with the welfare of others. Zeus is a tyrant who acts rashly according to his emotion. The two figures clash...

The 1920s is an era somewhat paradoxically described as an anachronistic one rife with social upheaval. Willa Cather's The Professor's House sheds light on this awkward time as she details the life of Godfrey St. Peter, an academic caught between...

The Prince is more of a manual for successful leadership then a book. It was the first book written that did not make any mention of god and at the time was considered controversial for its lack of morals. The Prince describes the two principal...

In 1532, a divisive pamphlet was published which established the foundation of modern political science while merging classical pagan philosophy with Renaissance humanism. (Fry) The Prince, written by Niccolo Machiavelli, was condemned immediately...

Using the model of Cesare Borgia in The Prince, Machiavelli proposes a new theory of virtue that is consistent with no moral standard other than what is called for by necessity. To do this, Machiavelli first discusses Cesare's virtue, and then...

The concept of virtu is central to Machiavellian political theory in The Prince. The problematic nature of this term makes a concise definition difficult to formulate. Varying definitions often lead to different interpretations of Machiavelli. In...