Newest Literature Essays

What do you think of when someone says “children?" Sweet, innocent, and naive are just some of the adjectives that today’s society has placed on the common image of society's own youngest members. Yet in Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the...

Plays are often written to make a statement about the world, or to provoke deeper thought from the audience. While many playwrights share the same overall goal, each playwright adopts his or her own style of writing. After adopting a certain...

Craig Silvey’s Australian novel Jasper Jones stresses the importance of truth and justice in formulating human experiences, shaping understandings of oneself and world. It highlights that events aren’t always positive; justice isn’t dealt out...

What happens to a dream deferred? According to James Joyce, perhaps nothing. Illustrated in his short story Eveline, this Dublin-born author both poses and responds to the age old-question of comfort versus risk. In a time of upheaval throughout...

A key concept to masculinity is being a strong protector, that one should protect one's family and nation. Yet the texts, 'Regeneration' and 'How Many Miles to Basra?' present the argument that warfare promotes a distortion of masculinity; a...

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a first-hand account of one of history's lasting figures in the long-standing struggle for racial equality. Throughout the honest and unfiltered autobiography, we are given a chance to peer into the mind and heart...

The world is full of predispositions that favor the majority and hinder minorities. James McBride’s memoir, The Color of Water, and Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy, both address the disadvantages that minorities face. In these...

Charles Darwin is known for his profound influence of the study of evolution. However, his contributions to 19th century society go beyond his scientific theories; it is undeniable that Darwin affected what writers wrote about life and what...

Trauma is a ghost, and memories can be haunting. Each has the ability to drive a person to madness, or to inspire a certain enlightened strength in him. The capacity of someone to act with resilience, despite the severity of his detriment,...

It is no secret that Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop were close friends. Although written decades apart, poems titled “The Fish” were created by both authors. Upon reading Bishop’s poem against Moore’s, we can see that both of the poems deal...

The story of Lanval is an uncommon one for its time. A helpless, outcast knight meets a beautiful, magical woman. The one term of their love, set down by the unnamed woman, is that Lanval can tell nobody about her. When he breaks that rule and...

In Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, readers may find it easy to view Sophie Mol and Velutha as the Gods of Colonial circumstances. However, by viewing the characters solely as the embodiments of colonial circumstances, readers fail to see...

Throughout the course of history, marriage as an institution has changed drastically, weaving in and out of various phases and forms. What began as a purely reproductive relationship evolved into an emotional companionship. Or has it? Does...

In both "Before You Were Mine" and "Brothers," Carol Ann Duffy uses descriptions of memory as a means of re-living past family life. Throughout "Before You Were Mine," Duffy writes about her mother, and imagines her life before motherhood. This...

Theodore Roosevelt once stated that “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” Often, illusions of comfort blockade the mind and sway an individual’s ability to clearly see the...

Because essentially all faiths propose a set of moral and behavioral laws upon which one is expected to base one’s life decisions, religion and criminality are inexorably linked. While today in our society we aim to separate the two controversial...

Refreshing yet practical, Jim Wallis’ timely book Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street provides a taut argument and solution for the current state of the nation. Both readable and challenging to the inner psyche of...

Human life is complicated. With all of the activities we pack into one day, it’s a wonder how we get any time to just breathe and take in the beauty of life. For dogs, it is just the opposite. A dream come true is to get few scraps of leftovers...

“He choked -- choked badly. His face contorted, turned purple. He gasped for breath -- then slid down off his chair, the glass falling from his hand” (Christie 74). So begins Justice Wargrave’s murderous machinations on Soldier Island. In the...

One of the most distinctive and immediately impressive things about Ernest Gaines’ novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, is the way the author opens his story with an introduction of a collective of speakers, his cast of...

The Turn of the Screw has been read by some analysts as a straightforward ghost story and by others as a psychologically accurate – whether pre-or post-Freudian -- portrait of mental illness or repression breaking out. However enjoyable it is...

In The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a young girl discovers the importance of the relationship between humans and the natural world. At the start of the novel the orphaned and contrary Mary Lennox is brought from her home in India to...

The novel Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh, explores the meaning of love and the many incarnations it can take; love of family and friends, romantic love, and love of God. The novel follows Charles Ryder through his youth and into adulthood...