Newest Literature Essays

The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun communicates and explores both the struggle and overall sense of identity through the heavy use of motifs and symbols throughout the book. As the story progresses and elaborates, these remain consistent...

Moby Dick confronts us with problems of language before we encounter anything about whales. The first word in the book—after the table of contents—is “Etymology,” and the tale of the “pale Usher,” and Hackluyt’s quote, immediately raise questions...

Stephen King’s Carrie and Peter Shaffer’s Equus both centre around teenage characters who are torn between their emergent sexuality and the religious views of their parents. King and Shaffer use characterisation to portray lust as a sin, then use...

The subtitle of both of Claudia Rankine’s most recent books, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and Citizen, “An American Lyric,” frames these works as engagements with the relationship between an “I” and a “We,” understood as a political unit. The phrase...

Though different in many ways, the writings of Kant, Nietzsche, and Sorel all acknowledge the significant role of violence in man's political affairs. Violence is a powerful tool. None of these men belie its importance, and they all accept that...

There are a variety of cues which encourage us to take Stephen Dedalus’s performance of his theory of Hamlet as sophistry, and to cast Stephen as a sophist. Stephen has been compared to Gorgias in “Aeolus”: Socrates and Plato make a number of...

Fantasy bridges the gap between reality and experience in a child’s mind, becoming a crucial part of a child’s engagement with the world around them. The fantasy genre dominates children’s literature; entailing themes of magic, adventure and...

Considering the works of her scholars throughout the years, it seems evident that the relevance of Mary Wollstonecraft's pamphlet, A Vindication of the Rights of Men has mostly been overshadowed by her more famous later essay, A Vindication of the...

Oryx & Crake is a novel that touches upon many themes and elements including technology, human relationships, and the environment. The theme that sticks out most to me is the tampering with nature element because with global warming and...

The year is 1946 and the island nation of Japan is still reeling from a devastating loss in the Pacific Theater. While the fighting and violence may have subsided in the wake of the West’s domination, a war still rages on in the psyches and souls...

Since its release Steven Galloway’s novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo in 2008, has won numerous awards including, nomination for the International Dublin Literary Award and winning the George Ryga award for Social Awareness in Literature. Since the...

The reality and concern of human nature and experience is articulated through the universal engagement and timeless literary appeal of William Butler Yeats’ poetry. His poems -‘Easter 1916’, ‘When you are old’ and ‘Leda and the Swan’ - serve as...

Political theocracy is an inherently oppressive, autocratic system, rendering individuals ultimately powerless. A composer’s political and personal representation subjectively constructs an audience’s conceptual and contemporary opinion through...

A great deal of Edward Thomas’s poetry deals with the intersection between the natural world and the mental arena, often revolving around what he is able to divine from his interactions in physical landscapes. The relationship between these two...

When Ryan Gosling was asked to describe The Nice Guys, which tells the story of Gosling’s Holland March, a private detective who struggles to find consistent work in 1977 Los Angeles, California. One day, though, an old woman hires him to look for...

In 1991, well-known sci-fi director Ridley Scott directed a revolutionary film, Thelma & Louise. Focused on two women, the film explores their unconventional road trip and their relationships with men. Written by a woman, Callie Khouri (who...

American fiction has been dominated by historical romances since Sir Walter Scott coined the genre with Waverley in 1814. American historical fiction indicates that the literature is unique in its character to any other nation; but instead, in ‘...

Within this essay, I will discuss extracts from both Ferdinand Saussure and Edward Said, both discussing language and its position in our lives. For instance, within Saussure’s text, we are presented with the idea that language only has a...

Australia is a nation that was built from the slime of another; those who built this land up from nothing were sent here to serve their time but ended up creating a community that is known for their distinct ‘Australianisms’ - “customs or features...

Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame Bovary, creates a multitude of contrasts throughout his novel between beauty and foulness. By combining the two extremes so often, it results in a camouflage of the nefarious aspects of the novel by the...

Stories are never told by simply listing what happens, and in fact narratives are produced using a wide combination of literary techniques such as time fragmentation, intertexual references and metaphorical imagery. Here, it is necessary to...

Cloud Atlas is a very confusing story at first, with many interconnected storylines and characters spanning hundreds of years. One of the driving forces of this movie is the idea of karma and being reborn over and over again, each new life being...

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin artfully illuminates the struggles the main character John faces when his race, religion, and family structure all intersect on his fourteenth birthday. As John sits on the threshold between his...

The political climate in the United States today generated as a result of the 2016 election is extremely polarized, contentious, and has led many to lose all hope in American democracy. In Gary Shteyngart's dystopian novel, Super Sad True Love...