Newest Literature Essays

Shakespeare’s two plays King Lear and Macbeth take place in two contrasting settings that, from the first scenes, influence the characters’ paths and shape the course of the plays’ events. The action of both plays alternate between the settings of...

Many plays use the balance of power as a theme to drive the plot forward and to define their characters. In A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller, the patriarchal figure of Eddie becomes a tragic hero through his loss of power and reaction to...

In many books, movies, or plays, a writer sometimes includes an outside perspective aside from the perspectives of the main characters, that of someone who recalls specific details or events of that storyline. Generally in these stories, this is...

What would you do if a loved one nonchalantly informed you that later on in the night he or she planned to take his or her own life? This is the news Thelma Cates is faced with after returning home to her daughter Jessie, in the play 'night,...

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was characterized as a time of growing change for women in terms of rights and freedom. As evidenced in “Editor’s Note: Contexts of The Awakening,” women’s acceptance of traditional female roles...

In Now We Will Be Happy, Amina Gautier’s collection of short stories about Puerto Rican families and relationships on the mainland, the ability to connect to Puerto Rican culture is framed as a very important type of power and agency. Families...

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a dystopian novel set in London, focusing on the lives of special humans called donors. These donors are actually human clones, who are raised in private schools until adulthood, when their vital organs can be...

Marlon Brando gets no more than eighteen minutes of screen time in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, but his performance goes down as one of the most legendary in cinematic history. His portrayal of the Colonel Kurtz painted a dark picture of...

Shakespeare’s minor characters are as often as diverse and essential to the plot as their protagonist counterparts, used within his plays to illuminate the main characters’ goals and feelings. The presence of these personages also expands upon the...

The first two settings that Steinbeck exposes to his readers in Of Mice and Men are the countryside and the bunkhouse at the ranch. Both of these are quite crucial to the development of the characters, as well as the progress and proper...

Sons and Lovers renders a fractured narrative capturing the dynamic nature of the ‘interior of the text’ through a rigorous analysis of its characters (and their actions); this is achieved by the narration’s rhythmic pattern of theses and...

Despite the wide range of worlds occupied by different fantasy series, a universal theme of the genre is the presence of evil forces working in opposition to a band of heroes. Most often the band of heroes is embarking on a quest to vanquish evil...

In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens defines herself by her mistakes; the memory of her mother’s death haunts every aspect of her life. By escaping from her old life, attempting to overcome guilt and find truth in her actions,...

Prejudice or alienation is almost always a theme, whether a prominent one or a minor one, within a work of literature. Art is about the human condition, and the human condition only significant because of struggle; a blessed life does not make a...

There is never a moment in life when adversity is absent, but the true test of resilience presents itself in times when the adversity seems completely grim and utterly unrelenting. In Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand describes the life experiences of...

A melting pot is a metaphor for a society where people with different cultures and social statuses blend together as one. Many immigrants find great difficulty when trying to integrate into a western society, causing them to become part of the ‘...

Nothing exists to hinder an individual's pursuit of happiness besides the shackles built from the expectations of others. Societal norms become ironclad laws, and those who do not accept these constraints often find themselves lost, ostracized,...

Tom Perrotta's Bad Haircut is a collection of short stories about Buddy, a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s. In these stories, Perrotta often introduces characters who bear false facades that do not resemble their true selves. Later on in...

The word “feminism” was first officially coined by French socialist Charles Fourier to be used to describe equal rights and social standing for women in the 1890’s. Throughout time, the meaning has changed, but the underlying principles have...

In the novel Runner by Robert Newton, it becomes highly noticeable that Charlie Feehan had strong faith in Squizzy Taylor as a possible mentor, as Charlie had lost his father at a very young age. However, Charlie promptly came to the realisation...

It is good to be the king, they say. What is perhaps not so good is being close enough to the king that you are presented with the opportunity to speak the truth when you clearly see somebody needs and nobody will. Kings, of course, lied under the...

Throughout the duration of Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger, the narrator, Meursault, evolves in terms of his self-awareness and world-view, a change which Camus uses to aid the reader in understanding both his protagonist and the existentialist...

Repetition is key to the dramatic effect in chapter 12 of Cry, the Beloved Country. Three important things are repeated: the title of the novel, the laws, and separation. Repetition makes very clear the point that the author, Alan Paton, is...

The Scarlet Letter, a key entry in the American canon, examines the concept of adultery in Puritan society, using the protagonist, Hester Prynne, to model the presence of sin and wrongdoing in an otherwise pure community. Such an important...