Newest Literature Essays

In Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas explains that her father, Kazem, had studied and worked in America and “often spoke about America with the eloquence and wonder normally reserved for a first love. To him, America was a place where anyone, no...

Louise Erdrich’s novel Love Medicine conveys the state of Native American life in today’s society. Her symbolism stands out to me above all else in the book. While Erdrich uses many symbols and motifs, the most poignant is her water and river...

The House on Mango Street is a story told through the observations of Esperanza, a girl of Latino heritage, as she views the world around her. Esperanza interprets the world she sees around her on Mango Street while paying special attention to the...

In her collection of short stories entitled Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri illustrates the difficulties that immigrants face when displaced and distanced from their culture. Each story serves as a different viewpoint on cultural...

In his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz brings to light a piece of Dominican history that he sees as both relevant and problematic. Within the first few pages of the novel, the speaker identifies his story as a fukú story....

The women of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Love’s Labour’s Lost play very different parts in their respective stories. The women in the two plays have differing roles, responsibilities, opportunities. The women in Titus Andronicus are rarely...

Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ is an inherently Marxist novel, from its subject matter to its characters, and proposes its message through allusions to reification and the possible threat posed by science and its discoveries. Although some elements...

There are few identities that fit neatly within conventional, binary systems of thought. Binary oppositions that exist within the spheres of race and gender are exclusive of individuals who occupy intersections of these identities. In The Woman...

Wordsworth said that ‘poetry is passion, it is the history or science of feeling’. In conjunction with Shelley’s quote, this is a bold statement to make. Not only does Wordsworth name poetry as the ‘science’ of emotion –creating an authorial sense...

Gender in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is caged within a static binary composed of the masculine and the feminine; relative opposites within which individuals are expected to conform to a certain quota of behaviors – for to fit into neither...

Ernst Cassirer states in his book The Myth of the State that “The Prince is neither a moral nor an immoral book: it is simply a technical book. In a technical book we do not seek for rules of ethical conduct, of good and evil. It is enough if we...

Larkin’s poetry reflects a certain dark humor, with an often-witty conveyance of a powerful message. There is certainly control and elegance in Larkin’s work; the subject matter is apposite and therefore has an impact on his reader rather than an...

In Virginia Woolf’s book Mrs. Dalloway, a variety of characters with complex, unique personalities are brought to life. Woolf uses vivid imagery and poignant monologues in order to highlight and simultaneously criticize the social structure,...

When a person is referred to as ‘mature’, it does not necessarily mean that he/she must be an adult. In Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, maturity is a recurring theme. Yet, the main characters are mainly comprised of children. This brings forth...

Jean Rhys novel Wide Sargasso Sea is one of the most important post-colonial works that examines the effect of colonialism on Jamaica. Part of this examination is the exploration of how the aftermath of slavery affects Antoinette’s relations with...

Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark features a variety of references to Oedipus Rex in its plot and characterizations. Several critics have discussed these similarities in psychoanalytic interpretations of the novel, but the Oedipus parallels serve...

Rife with opportunity, urban centers often allow the diverse groups of people drawn to them to realize their dreams and achieve their goals; however, the challenges that come with a bustling city life are not suited for everyone. One excerpt from...

The core of the American Dream, for many, entails liberty, a value historically represented through New York’s famed amusement park Coney Island. Millions of spectators visited the park as a place of leisure to escape social prescriptions as well...

How does civilization progress? How do the ideals and standards of a society change over time and adapt to technological advances? Throughout the majority of recorded history, progress and change in this sense is the result of an antithesis, or an...

With the increasing emphasis on cultural exchange in recent literature, writers have attempted to point out how difficult it was for the people to maintain their ethnic identity besides their national identity. Assimilation into the mainstream...

Greek theatre, portrayed in Medea, emphasizes the characters and the plot through the structure of Greek theatre as well as bringing about a new moral and social portrayal of Greece. Originated in Athens around the 5th century BC, Greek theater,...

Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain” describes the events leading up to the sinking of the Titanic as well as the aftermath; however, on a deeper level, the work explores the theme of the conflict between man and nature. These opposing...

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is such a symbolically and philosophically dense novel that anything short of volumes dedicated solely towards its analysis would not do McCarthy’s work justice. However, it may still prove beneficial to hone in on...

Winston Churchill said that ‘the truth is incontrovertible’. This statement construes ‘truth’ as an absolute concept, where there is only one truth, and anything else is by definition a non-truth. Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Thackeray’s ‘Going to...