Newest Literature Essays

Famous Authors like Edgar Allan Poe have maintained their renowned title because few have come after who can capture the truly gothic and gloomy nature of their works. Fast forward roughly 150 years, and new age authors have begun to re-envision...

In the gothic novel Wieland [1], Charles Brockden Brown confronts the anxieties of the early United States Republic regarding the sense of the threat posed by “wandering anarchists, dangerous foreigners and murderous savages.” As a work of the...

Ernest Gaines’s novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman [1] may be considered a representation of the black Southern experience, with the titular heroine serving as a symbol for the collective of her ethnicity as opposed to a character who...

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey was published in 1962. The fifties and early sixties were a time of conformity versus rebellion in the United States. While the average breadwinner was returning to a suburban living room lit up with ...

In Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy uses nature to influence the actions of his shepherd and shepherdess protagonists, Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak, in two separate episodes involving rain storms. The conflict of Hardy’s Far from the...

In Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury[1], time and the past appear as crucial but complex themes. As a novel constructed around past events which have taken place before the time of narration, the past seems to be very much alive within the...

Thousands of immigrants arrive in America every year with the hope that a new life, a better life, awaits them. The come in search of “the American Dream,” the hope that there are higher paying jobs, quality public schools to send their children...

Words are important. But, as is commonly said, ‘actions speak louder than words.’ In speech-act theory, there are two types of utterances, constative and performative. Constative utterances can be identified as true or false. Performative...

In the late 700’s, the Vikings began their raids in England. Their excursions first targeted monasteries on the coast and slowly spread across the nation until the English and Nordic cultures blended into one. The history of the invasion is well...

In The Bloody Chamber, Carter espouses setting as a tool which contributes towards the reader's emotional reaction when delving into the corrupt themes of her stories. We can therefore become more engaged with her stories as the settings allow...

Sheila’s character changes massively throughout J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls, often in a manner that registers increasing maturity. At first, Sheila is presented through stage directions as a ‘pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased...

The entirety of Coates’ letter writing and consciousness in Between the World and Me shows the influence of the provocative writings and speeches of Malcolm X. After all, Malcolm X became Coates’ favorite writer. The image of a young Malcolm...

As long as history has been recorded, a woman’s role in society was dictated by man, for a long time women accepted this patriarchy. This arrangement can be seen in different societies and cultures throughout history; after all, the great...

In society, many problems are often ignored and stigmatized. Among these are suicide and mental health issues. These dilemmas have become more common to talk about in recent years; however, society as a whole still has a long way to go in...

Thomas Campion and Christopher Marlowe have explored the concept of ‘the ideal’ in ‘A Man of Life Upright’ and ‘Come Live with me, and be my Love,’ respectively. Campion delves into the idea that a man may be more content in life by upholding...

"Uncle Eugene is not a bad man, really. . . . People have problems, people make mistakes" (251). These words are spoken by Kambili, who is trying to explain that the violent Papa is not a “bad man,” but instead a person who has good qualities as...

American popular culture pervades not only America itself, but many other cultures as well, and it says so much about the people and society as a whole that it attempts to define. American Indians are a group not usually connected with the network...

A key motivator to the horrific violence and machiavellian betrayal that is present in King Lear is inter generational rivalry. In modern England the older generation held power and authority over the young, yet in Shakespeare’s Jacobean tragedy...

High school is a time for great physical, mental, and emotional changes in youth. Some students experience a one-foot height change, others, an epiphany. These changes happen over the course of high school, but can be brought about quickly under...

Do you remember how your parents would always say too much television will "turn your brain to mush?" This just so happens to be the case in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which poses an eerily similar problem. This novel is about a society caught...

Michael Runmaker argued that Ginsberg’s "Howl" espoused “hysterical language” and “non-exact vocal,” making this poem antithetical to qualities such as “resonance, historical associations, beauty, or rightness for the particular context” which...

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is set against the lavender scare and the sexual psychopath laws of the 1950’s. During this time, the United States at large was horrified by the apparent rise in sex crimes in the country. Holden Caulfield,...

In Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, Susan Henchard’s innate dependence on men displays itself in multiple ways and instances. However, the most notable is when Susan reunites with Michael Henchard in Casterbridge after 18 years of...

Although Junior in Salvage the Bones is only 10 years old, his character not only is complicated but also provides complexity to the rest of Ward's novel. His birth resulted in the death of Mama, which leaves the rest of the family motherless and...