Newest Literature Essays

People have the tendency of proving to others and themselves that they are right when it comes to what they do and what they say. It is simply a mechanic to protect the person’s ego based on the notion that nobody likes it when they are proven...

In her poem “Daddy”, Sylvia Plath speaks to her deceased father, explaining to him how his death caused her pain throughout her life and why she needs to “Kill” him. Sylvia Plath's father died when she was very young. In her poem she shows that...

Our founding fathers were committed to creating a perfect society, free from the “corruption and oppression of the west they left behind” (Holtan). As America aged, this idea of American perfection developed into an image, The American Dream. By...

The Five Stages of Walter Morel

Sometimes, it is difficult to understand how important a certain problem is unless it is examined on a microscopic level. A broadly stated dilemma is abstract and thus difficult to relate to; on a micro level, it...

Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Remember’ is a 14-line sonnet that explores the ideas of loss, grief, and separation. As often observed in her poetry, strong visual imagery alluding to the concepts of life, death, beginning and end, is elicited through...

In the late 1960’s and 1970’s, the social construction of gender became a heated topic of debate amongst feminist theorists. The argument that the patriarchal values embedded in American culture (rather than purely biological factors), were...

The leadership of the Leviathan, or, the ‘mortal god’, is a central theme in Thomas Hobbes’ theoretical masterpiece, The Leviathan. Literally, the word Leviathan comes from the Hebrew word livyathan, which etymologically denotes “to wind, turn,...

The Age of Enlightenment brought a new era of political consciousness to Europe. No longer would the destiny of the Western world be limited to the clergy and their bewildered notions of Divine Command Theory – instead, rational intellectualism...

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the parent-child relationships that are introduced are surprisingly critical to the manner the novel plays out. Through each literal and metaphorical pair, the course the child leads is in direct relation...

Toni Morrison’s Sula and Song of Solomon examine the ways in which black people in black towns with black ideologies can be physically and emotionally destroyed by the infiltration of any and all institutions that are orchestrated and controlled...

A white picket fence and 2.5 children is the standard model of the American dream. It is an often quoted ideal and the literal dream of many people in the country. However; there is a problem in the definition of this dream in that the very nature...

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique created a social revolution in the 1960s by addressing the role of women in society and its effects on their emotional and mental health. Her words opened the eyes of many American housewives who felt...

The themes of William Shakespeare’s classic plays still ring true today, and audiences everywhere continue to enjoy them, both through the traditional play performances and through more contemporary interpretations. Shakespeare’s The Taming of the...

Problems faced by characters in literature often repeat themselves, and when these characters decide to solve these standard problems, their actions are often more similar than they first appear. This idea is evident when comparing the actions...

Cleopatra, “Egypt’s Queen,” is arguably Shakespeare’s most resilient and enchanting female protagonist. She is personified as the embodiment of her country, ‘the soul of Egypt’, and defies the reductive Jacobean “most monster-like” perspective of...

All language exists with two definitions. The primary, literal meaning is defined as what the object physically is, and the secondary, symbolic meaning is what the object represents. An object’s literal meaning remains a stationary constant, as it...

Throughout the Romantic Era, young women struggled to balance the traditional values of their elders with the revolutionary ideals of the period. Radical female writers such as Jane Austen attempted to give women a voice in the literary world so...

To act as an ‘example’ is to influence another’s actions. If the effects are, as Johnson claims, ‘powerful’, a responsibility of care accompanies the role of example. This responsibility may seem unnecessary, as the example seizes the ‘memory’,...

As Derek Brewer comments, the Gawain-Poet creates an “honour-driven”[1] society. From this, almost everything within Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is assumed to be in a chivalric context, specifically Gawain’s through the romance typically...

The term "social criticism" refers to a type of condemnation that reveals the reasons for malicious conditions in a society which is considered deeply flawed. Indeed, both Ibsen and Osborne, in their respective plays A Doll’s House and Look Back...

In the play All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Kate Keller - Joe’s wife, and Chris’ as well as Larry’s mother – shows the audience that, at the end of the day, she is still mainly concerned about her own family instead of about paying the rightful...

Published in 1975, The Woman Warrior turned autobiographer Maxine Hong Kingston into one of the most prominent female voices of her generation. As gender/feminist studies programs developed at major Universities across the United States,...

In 1898, Tolstoy wrote in a Letter on Suicide that “suicide is immoral.” He vehemently condemned the act of it, by qualifying it as unreasonable and wrong. However, in his earlier books, such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy treats...