Newest Literature Essays

The infant has always been a versatile and powerful symbol for a variety of themes; themes such as new life, innocence, potential, and even loss. While in both Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s "To a Friend, Who Asked How I Felt, When the Nurse First...

Within the line of duty, upstanding accomplishments are norm; even then, some officers manage to stand out for unparalleled excellence. Randy Sutton is a veteran of the Las Vegas Police Department, known nationally for his commentary on issues...

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older--the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” With these words, Jane Austen crystallizes one of the central questions of her novel Persuasion--whether it is...

In Mikhail Lermontov's novel A Hero of Our Time, the author brings out the irony surrounding various characters with Pechorin being at the center stage. The portrayal of Pechorin is viewed in the book as an exemplary Byronic anti-hero and...

Henry David Thoreau, a leading philosopher of the 19th century, stated that "Men have become the tools of their tools." Machine Man, written by Max Barry, holds true to this quote. In this fiction novel, scientist Charles Neumann surrounds his...

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening focuses on Edna Pontellier’s sexual and emotional maturation as the protagonist frees herself from the restraints of patriarchal society. Nancy Walker in her critical essay “Feminist or Naturalist?” instead perceives...

Both Jean Toomer and Ralph Ellison allude heavily to Old Testament imagery as they illustrate the Southern American landscape in their respective novels, Cane and Invisible Man. Toomer compares, through spirituals and spiritual-derived language,...

In his nineteen holy sonnets, John Donne contemplates his mortality, and explores themes of divine love and judgment along with his deep personal troubles. In the first loosely Petrarchan holy sonnet “Thou hast made me”, Donne presents a hopeless...

In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill advances the “greatest happiness principle,” which “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to produce happiness…[and] by happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.” [1] Mill...

In his novel The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers takes the reader into the mind of a soldier. This work evokes not only the physical duress of fatigue and fighting, but also the emotional stress and the long-lasting trauma that remains with a soldier...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is led to have an affair by her repressed unconscious desires, what Freud calls the id. Similarly, Arthur Dimmesdale struggles with his internal guilt and refuses to confess his sin; he...

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five we are taken through the strange life of a Mr. Billy Pilgrim. The story revolves primarily around Billy’s time in Germany during WWII but also several other points in Billy’s life. What the reader will...

In the wide spectrum of humanistic characteristics, that of desire is one of the most prominent. It is an emotion that is challenging to resist, as it tends to control many aspects of life because of the strength it possesses. In the realm of...

Beowulf and Roland are two of the most well-known heroes found within literature. While many know their names and their stories few realize what it is that qualifies them as literary heroes and the ways in which their hero stories compare. Joseph...

Toni Morrison through her novel, Beloved (1987), attempts to reacquaint the readers with the history of American slavery by choosing to present it through the African-American community’s experience rather than the white American perspective. The...

In the one-act play “Trifles,” there are countless examples of symbolism and characterization through the use of strong female roles. By showcasing the women as leads in this play, it was able to take on a more feministic essence to it, which is...

In the historical fiction drama The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver illustrates major development in culture through the use of vivid flashbacks, graphic imagery, and specific framework structure, demonstrating that a culture shock was...

In The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, Hoppie Groenewald is a train guard, conductor and star welter-weight boxer. While reading the book, the reader will notice Hoppie does not have as extensive of a role as some other characters but is...

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure explores concepts of moral law within an immoral setting and set upon by leaders with questionable morals. Measure’s Vienna is a setting where pragmatism and absolutism can compete both in the shadows and up front...

In the early 1800s, tense relationships between Europe and the rest of the world greatly impacted modern world history. In 1803, the newly formed United States nearly doubled its domain after purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France. Soon...

Matthew Lewis’s The Monk takes its era’s heightened anti-Catholicism to heart, and uses it to critique social norms. Lewis tackles the problem of the fetishization of purity that the Catholic Church, and society outside the Church hold so highly....

The gradual and horrifically strange mutation of the titular canine of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel Heart of a Dog into a ‘New Soviet Man’ provides an ideological counterpoint to the instantaneous and handsomely familiar appearance of that same model...

One poignant example of the misperceptions that women face in a male-dominated society is presented in the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. The story takes place in the Dust Bowl era, when rough economic times made it hard to find work;...

Everyman provides the perfect example of why allegory must be approached carefully in order to make an impact; a story with a powerful message is very often dependent upon timing. The timing of a play about a devastating plague sweeping across...