Newest Literature Essays

J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur has been praised for defining the American way of life. In one of his works, Letters From an American Farmer, he attempts to answer the question “What is an American?” In an excerpt from that work, On the...

Author Philip K. Dick once said, “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.” The theme of the source of madness is explored in all three stories that form Paul Auster's novel The New York Trilogy. The three relatively short...

In the futuristic world depicted in Feed by M.T. Anderson, nobody thinks for themselves – the feed thinks for them. Everyone is dependent on the feed and bored with their everyday lives. Because of this, the character Violet stands out. Violet’s...

Double consciousness is a term that was coined by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk. According to Du Bois, double consciousness is a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of...

In Fast Food Nation, Erik Schlosser addresses the fast food business and the revolutionary impact it has had on the American food industry in the past few decades. Schlosser discusses how fast food was integrated into American society to such an...

Theater and acting fundamentally allow people to become something else- to transcend the bounds of their identities and present, or be presented with, a different reality. The process of writing, a theme particularly prominent in ‘Atonement’, is...

Mohsin Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist explores the life of Changez in the United States as a young Pakistani man. Throughout the novel, the author switches between two distinctive cultural settings: the United States and a tea shop in Lahore,...

The proviso scenes in Restoration dramas depict a legal negotiation or “bargain” that takes place between the hero and the heroine of the play. In William Congreve’s comedy, The Way of the World, scene V of Act IV plays a significant role but “...

Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter depicts the life of a newly widowed Ramatoulaye who writes a letter to her childhood best friend Aissatou, describing her life as a co-wife and an oppressed woman in the Senegalese culture and tradition. By writing...

Forbidden love is a prominent theme in both The Guide and The God of Small Things. While R.K. Narayan utilizes Raju’s affair as a plot device, Arundhati Roy displays several sexual taboos as part of a broader theme to challenge societal...

In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy clearly values characteristics such as spontaneity, honesty, vitality, and liveliness. He makes this obvious to the reader through narratives that indicate that he values forms of naturalness over forms of...

Elias Curran-Moore

Freudian Explanation for Purpose of the Narrator's dreams in “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”

Various theories of why we dream range from practical applications like facilitating encoding memories for long term storage...

Each person, wherever and whenever he or she lives, experiences his or her own here and now. Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being explores this idea by following three main characters who are all separated by time and space. Despite the fact...

When writing The White Tiger and Native Son, Aravind Adiga and Richard Wright utilized setting to influence the plot of the novels, by having the stories of their characters happen in very regulated and controlling societies. Their extreme...

Both The Inheritance of Loss and Clear Light of Day feature characters who either identify with cultures other than their own, or attempt to cope with cultural differences while living abroad. Using themes such as education and migration, Kiran...

A master of humor and satire, Ben Jonson was a playwright, poet, and actor; he was also known as one of Shakespeare’s theatrical contemporaries, if not Shakespeare's prime literary rival. His poem “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr....

In Toni Morrison’s novel Sula, the characters’ attitudes towards their sexualities are shaped by their identity-forming processes. Sula and Nel, despite their similarities, have clashing beliefs about sex due to the vastly different female role...

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson employs Utterson as the narrator and voice of the novella, as well as the investigator or detective figure that allows the story to be ‘discovered’ dramatically by the reader. Utterson also provides a contrast...

The American Dream is a concept that first takes on its concrete form in The Epic of America; it is described as "That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his...

The Aids pandemic has spurred so much commentary in South Africa that its true, startling impact can sometimes be overlooked: is easy to forget that approximately 5,38 million people are living with HIV and that an average of 1100 people die of...

Lulu Nanapush Lamartine is a symbolic and admirable Chippewa Woman in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. As a Native Woman character, Lulu reclaims and redefines space that is usually taken up by unjust stereotypes by using her shameless beauty and...

In Troilus and Criseyde, a Trojan prince, Troilus falls in love with Criseyde who is a beautiful widow. Pandarus who is Troilus’ friend and Criseyde’s uncle, helps Troilus by making Criseyde fall in love with him by fair means or foul. Troilus and...

The Martians in the book and the movie The War of the Worlds are a metaphor for the evils of cultural imperialism because their arrival severs the most important means of communication and transportation technology, challenges religion, and leaves...

Charles Bukowski’s poem “Alone with Everybody” was written in the mid-1970s, and it was first published in a poetry collection titled Love Is a Dog from Hell in 1977. Bukowski is a German-born American author who is known for his ability to convey...