Newest Literature Essays

Blanchot’s view of the status of the narrative voice is very pertinent to any discussion of Heart of Darkness. ‘Something indeterminate’ and ‘spectral’ implies a lack of stability and centrality which is rendered strongly in the novel by the use...

In Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, Mother Culture is the embodiment of unquestioned influences man is accustomed to living by. Her story tells the Takers that they were intended to lead the world into paradise; however, quite the opposite happened....

A literary canon is a list of the most esteemed books in a country; books that have attained a high status and considered to be of high aesthetic quality. Canons are works that are approved by cultural and academic institutions. Overall, the books...

“Life is swift, and the value of life is the value of every moment.” -Waldo Frank

Out of all the readings for this class, this sentiment is expressed strongest in the works of Jean Toomer and Sherwood Anderson. Cane and Winesburg, Ohio are books...

Peter Pan (1911) by J.M. Barrie and The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1988) by Edith Nesbit are Victorian novels that follow the stories of two underprivileged families who entertain themselves and each other with their imagination. In both...

Chungking Express (Hong Kong, 1994) is a film directed by Wong Kar-Wai, with a narrative that is divided into two different stories. The first part of the film follows the life of “Officer 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro)” while the second one follows the...

When colonial settlers arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620, the primary concern of the newly established society was to ensure survival; however, nowadays, Western consumer society has placed a significant emphasis on shallow ideals,...

Sleep Rough Tonight, written by Australian author Ian Bone, addresses the idea of cultural violence and the effect it has among teens. The novel follows Alex, a young and troubled teenager who learns some tough lessons about life and growing up....

Change is inevitable; it grows with the next generation and time and time again sneaks up on those that are not looking for it. This is true for music, fashion, literature, religion, and even politics. The tide of any of these subjects may change...

“There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can…let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason” (Guterson 418). Reason, especially in the eyes and hands of human...

Humans are made of the tangible; flesh and blood, muscles and bones, cells and nerves. The survival of man can be dissected into the purely scientific, the emotionless, the artless. The value of the anatomical can clearly not be understated, as...

If the setting of a novel is 19th century Europe, there is a good chance that the women in the novel will be treated as a means to an end rather than as autonomous beings who have intrinsic value in and of themselves. This is the case in Wuthering...

Elizabethan men are not entirely different from some modern men, especially when it comes to their views on marriage, love, and sex. Many men still continue the double standard of expecting their partners to be virginal while they themselves are...

Love is said to be blind, and sex impervious to reason. However, a person’s outlook on sex is incredibly telling of that person's fundamental outlooks upon life itself. To some, it is a sacred act to be committed in marriage only, and to others it...

Each day, someone loses his or her innocence due to a seminal moment that changes his or her life forever. This concept of lost innocence is represented in both the novel The Catcher in the Rye and the film Rebel Without a Cause. Protagonists...

Medea, in Medea by Euripides, might be described as a hysterical and ruthless murderer, for she kills an innocent princess and slaughters her very own children. The women in The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu could easily be described as needy...

Society is notably poor at judging people’s character. Good people can be disregarded for petty reasons and deplorable people can be supported for equally poor reasons. Such contrasts are common in Persuasion with characters like Sir Walter, Mr....

In 1899, Anton Chekhov published a short story of two lovers’ clandestine affair called “The Lady with the Dog”. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, the story’s main character, sees a young woman walking a dog on the sea-front in Yalta. It is said that...

Nature is the embodiment of science and mathematics. From Valentine's grouse to Thomasina’s leaf to human interactions, mathematics transcend the boundaries of mere numbers and symbols to create patterns that function to explain the universe. Yet,...

“Ligeia”, published in 1838 by Edgar Allan Poe, describes the tale of a narrator who is deeply enthralled by his own imagination and thoughts and is submersed in the act of escaping reality. This cautionary tale warns readers about the dangers of...

Many of Cicero’s points are cleverly structured so as to provide the most convincing attack on Verres, for example when he discusses Verres’ behaviour in Aspendos he begins by describing how “nullum te Aspendi signum…reliquisse” (You have left no...

Plot structure in any novel is an important literary technique that can differ greatly from one novel to another. While the actual story tells the reader the events that happen to the characters, the plot is the technique used to form a time line...

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered a great American novel because of its fast-paced intricate plot and round complex characters. Throughout the work we witness many different perspectives and opinions about life in New York in...