Newest Literature Essays

A Midnight Summer’s Dream is exceptional in that it features more than just one story unfolding at once. Although the quartet of lovers and the fairy world is often the focus of the play, the rude mechanicals and their attempts to produce a play...

After the chaos of the atomic bomb and the carnage of World War II, precedence was placed on government constructs to supply order to a tense climate, particularly in finding direction in a new ‘East versus West’ conflict. In John Le Carre’s...

Throughout the extensive criticism written on Shakespeare plays, the definition of these problematic plays has been a constant topic for debate. Kiernan Ryan suggests critics focus either on these plays all having in inherently ‘political...

Without myth, who would we be; what would we believe? Myths shape culture and history; they manipulate our beliefs, surround, and transform our lives. Governments, leaders, businesses and advertisers use myths to allow individuals, to live day to...

Dorothy Allison’s autobiographical narrative Two or Three Things I Know for Sure examines how a lower-class upbringing has affected the identities of the women in her family. Beauty, inadvertently, becomes one of the most valued things among her...

Through all the speeches of the Symposium, Eryximachus’ speech may be the most difficult to understand. Looking at Eryximachus’ initial, more scientific approach to love, under which he views love as something that can be quantitatively measured,...

Robert Olen Butler’s story “Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed” is narrated by the ghost of a victim who died on the Titanic, whose spirit continues to haunt the waters in which he dwelled. Making his way from the ocean, to a cup of tea, and...

The narration in Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” is delivered in third person omniscient and is a key element in the story. The role of the narrator is more than simply communicating the story to the readers; in this case, the narrator provides an...

When you picture Islamic women, the image that immediately comes to mind is a woman cloaked in black, with not one part of her body visible. Even more so, it is hard to imagine this specter as possessing any sort of sexuality. Yet, in Tariq Ali’s...

People have been telling stories since the dawn of mankind. They are ways to communicate about the past to younger generations and most importantly, a way to teach. In both Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian and Holocaust by Bullets by Father...

John Locke’s theory of the social contract seems, at first glance, to envision the growth of freedom and the concomitant recession of authority. Considered this way, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government presents a clear contrast, manifesting...

Over the course of his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes suspends belief in all material and metaphysical substance before rebuilding from the foundational element of the thinker’s existence, eventually concluding that God exists...

‘Jacob Marley was as dead as a doornail.’ The celebrated author Charles Dickens accentuates this inert nature of a door nail to the society to 1843 England through his classic novella ‘A Christmas Carol.’ The novella’s titular character, Ebenezer...

Mankiewicz’s All About Eve uses the theatre as a medium in which the female protagonists, Eve and Margo, are victimized at the hands of varying internal and external factors. The film clearly portrays Margo as a casualty of lies and scheming, as...

Throughout the poem “Wind”, by Ted Hughes, there are two significant symbols. In the poem, the house (and its surroundings) is one of the main subjects and symbolizes a relationship between the writer and another person. The second symbol in the...

Everyone, at some point, has an experience that so profoundly alters his or her life that it seems to define time itself. For many Americans, the tragic terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001 fractured life into two pieces: before...

The Sexualization of the African-American in “Going to Meet the Man” James Baldwin’s short story “Going to Meet the Man” explores the interweaving of racism with the sexual violence against the African-American in 1965 southern America. Baldwin...

The concept of redemptive and destructive love is common in all modes of texts, no matter the location or the time period. This is because love itself is timeless; it is a moving force that pushes people to act, an emotion which can cause both...

At the table of an unassuming cafe in Old Anarkali market, Lahore, Changez relates the story of his citizenship within America and charts the nature of his stay. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid is able to successfully employ a rare...

Captivity and slave narratives allow insight into the trauma that the victim experiences; however, the victim’s narrative is often influenced and therefore, altered, to conform to the society’s pressures at that time. Focusing on the reception of...

As members of a patriarchal society, the women in A Midsummer Night's Dream are obligated to be subservient to the men. Power is only extended to women in the fictional world of Fairyland. This exemplifies the misogyny of the time, where women had...

Laden with allegories, dualisms, and symbolism, Hawthorne’s "The Birth-Mark" makes light of a variety of multi-faceted and complex issues, foremost among them those of sexuality and humanity. While the character of Aylmer seems both emotionally...

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is set in Nazi Germany in World War II. Narrated by Death, the novel takes as its protagonist Liesel Meminger, a girl who grows up in a foster home where Jews aren't seen as evil, in a departure from attitudes in the...

As First Lady Rosalynn Carter once said, “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be,” applies to many leaders and one of them is Ralph. In Lord of the Flies by...