Newest Literature Essays

In coincidence with the clear feminist undertones of his novels, John Irving proposes opposing dichotomies: hypersexualized characters and societies, and the simultaneous criticism of sex. Irving builds societies where sex is inherent. In The...

In The Cider House Rules, Homer, the protagonist, after stifling all of the uncomfortable situations in his life would “lay awake [at night] because the phantoms of those days were not gone” (312). While Homer liked to think that he was in control...

The complex exploration of homosexual relations that break the boundaries between pupils and teachers should be typically identified as scandalous, and as a form of paedophilia in a school. However, Alan Bennett presents the issue at a modest...

The treatment of Asian Americans in the United States has been brought to attention through literature and popular culture, as well as through the self-representation technique by which Asian Americans discuss their own treatment. Frank Wu, author...

‘Toyota Celica / A long moment passed before I realized this was the name of an automobile…The utterance was beautiful and mysterious, gold-shot with looming wonder. It was like the name of an ancient power in the sky.’

The twentieth century was...

In the short stories “The Lottery” and “The Interlopers,” the authors Shirley Jackson and Saki (respectively) use pacing, text structure, and strong moods to build suspense. Through the use of the literary elements mentioned above, the reader is...

Dave Eggers’s satirical and self-referential memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius documents his external and internal life. While the book is technically a work of nonfiction, Eggers externalizes and exposes much of his personal life...

In ‘Hamlet’, Shakespeare develops his various characters through the balance of two specific dimensions. He uses these two perspectives to give his audience the opportunity to view his play through two distinct scopes. Shakespeare chooses to do...

In a Prayer for Owen Meany the relationship between religion and faith is often contradictory to societal beliefs causing confusion. Johnny’s questioning of organized religion and his growing faith creates a tension. The last chapter of the novel...

When a man’s name is synonymous with greed and misery, most readers would not associate him with the shining image of a hero. The hero’s journey is a classic literary pattern in which a character goes on an adventure, faces challenges, and comes...

Published in 1856, the novel Madame Bovary is one of the first to explore the issue of women’s disempowerment in a pointedly modern fashion. As a woman, the protagonist Emma experiences a number of obstacles that prevent her from reaching what she...

In the form of a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) composed the highly emotional Die Leiden des jungen Werther within a matter of weeks. Suitably known as a “Briefroman” in German, the novel is a...

In 1919, the year “The Second Coming” was written, World War I, one of the deadliest wars in history, had just ended and Ireland was in the throes of a war to fight British control. Tensions between Catholics and Protestants and those of different...

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, documents both the triumphs and tribulations of a village called Macondo and its founders, the Buendía family. José Arcadio Buendía and his wife, Úrsula Iguarán, establish Macondo in early...

There comes a time for many people when the gruffness and chaos of the real world becomes too much and they crave a break from it all. Throughout the poem "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July," Billy Collins is able to convey this desire to remove...

Every text represents an experience that both the author and the reader jointly construct; the author writes the details, drawing from empirical influence, and the reader filters those details through his or her own experience. When the reader is...

Following a tradition in anything is easy. The pattern is set, the style defined. Only your originality is required and there you go with the flow. But it is certainly very difficult to go against the main current, challenging traditional stock...

Cheryl Strayed is an unsympathetic character but a lovable person; this is not a contradictory statement. In her memoir Wild, she stars as a grief-stricken yet naïve young woman, making her the main (and unsympathetic) character of this story. In...

In “Adventure” from Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, the protagonist, Alice Hindman, embodies the truth of marriage. As Alice’s story demonstrates, however, marriage leads to two seemingly contradictory traits when it is taken as a personal...

In David Malouf’s novel Fly Away Peter, several key ideas are introduced by being paired with the natural environments that surround the central character Jim. Malouf presents the ideas of the horror of war and the destructive nature of humanity,...

In the short story “The Dead,” James Joyce displays his character Gabriel as pretentious and misogynistic through emphasizing his wealth, education, and presumed superiority to the women in his society. Gabriel, who requires constant reassurance...

For many immigrants, coming to America was an opportunity to leave their home country in hopes of finding a better life in a new land. In this vein, Anna Yezierska writes about the struggles of an immigrant Jewish family living in New York’s Lower...

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea is regarded as a striking Caribbean novel, lying between the world of capitalism and post-Emancipation West Indies. However, many critics frequently tend to overlook the marginality of women in the post-colonial era...

Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus explores the life of a wealthy Nigerian family with the protagonist Kambili, a young girl who tries to find her own voice in an oppressive society and home. Throughout the novel, the author uses a number of symbols to...