Newest Literature Essays

If cultures are considered unifiable by way of shared stories, it is not inconceivable that cultures may be connected through distinguishable but ultimately similar histories of shame. Whether or not these histories force upon cultures the role of...

Jane Austen is universally known for her uniquely intimate and precise descriptions of every-day life in late 18th and early 19th century England, and her plots are oftentimes focused on the humorous adventures of women who attempt to navigate the...

Before women gained the right to vote in the United States, feminists hoped that the end of suffrage would give women of the future a public voice and subsequently the ability to better their lives. Most middle to upper class women in the early...

Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility and Ang Lee’s film interpretation of the same name share many key similarities. Important transferred elements and cardinal functions are sustained in the jump from novel to film, rendering the plot,...

Since the Greek philosopher Plato banned them from his ideal commonwealth, poets such as Sir Philip Sidney have attempted to defend their work by arguing that poetry and its use of language combine the liveliness of history and the ethical focus...

William Grifenhagen

11 November 2015

Edwin Arlington Robinson struggled with depression throughout most of his life, especially during his early years as an adolescent. When asked about his childhood, Robinson himself described it as “stark and...

Almost every child begins in this world dreaming of fairytales. She imagines herself a princess like Disney’s Ariel or Sleeping Beauty: bursting into song, radiating beauty, and living happily-ever-after. But when this child grows up, she realizes...

Jane Austen’s novel Emma and Douglas McGrath’s film interpretation of the same name share many key similarities. Important transferred elements and cardinal functions are sustained in the jump from novel to film, rendering the plot, atmosphere and...

In the Oxford English Dictionary there exists an irony: a definition of a term, which originated from the Italian politician Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, implies the exact opposite of what its originator argued. This irony is...

The phenomenon of morality and its origination has been a topic of debate throughout history. Specifically, the world renowned philosophers, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, come to a very significant disagreement over the history of morality, the...

“Noah’s children had inherited the flood although they had not been there to see the deluge” (Go Down, Moses 276). This sense of doom follows through five of the major novels written by William Faulkner set in his mythic Yoknapatawpha County. Doom...

Disentangling the Twins of Conrad’s Psyche

Joseph Conrad spoke such truth about the inner working of humankind when he said through his character Razumov in Under Western Eyes, “A man's most open actions have a secret side to them” (pt. 1, ch. 2)....

John Milton once wrote that all of his writings were moved “solely by a sense of duty” to God which propelled him to continue writing despite the fact that for part of his life he struggled with his relationship with the Church of England and the...

Hidden within “No Name Woman” are many underlying symbols and motifs, or reoccurring patterns, that work to shape the story into what it is and to help craft not only the characters’ personalities but also the overarching plot of the story. One...

Two people, one name: an inconspicuous, plain woman versus a poised young girl. A line is drawn between imagination and reality, but that line is blurred. In "Miriam" by Truman Capote, symbolism is incorporated to show that Mrs. Miller is living...

In Ben Jonson’s Volpone, Celia represents the epitome of femininity in Renaissance literature. She is beautiful, submissive, quiet and helpless to resist her husband's control over her every movement. Although it is disturbing that her gender...

During the mid to late 1700s, Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, oftentimes sowed and cemented the seeds of her influence through the diplomatic marriage of her several children, sending them off to serve as her political pawns. Such a concept,...

As one of the most important figures of bravery, goodness and heroism in British legend, the idea that, as a tragic hero, Arthur Pendragon might have deserved his fate, is an uncomfortable one. However according to Aristotle’s Poetics, there can...

While physical life is transient, the notion of the immortality of the soul is central to Christianity. Before Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, the residence of the soul’s afterlife was speculative and enigmatic. Dante filled this vacuum by creating...

‘Measure for Measure’ features female characters from various backgrounds, representing the whole of Viennese society. Women from the upper-classes, such as Isabella, are featured alongside their lower class compatriots, such as brothel keeper...

Virginia Woolf, one of the most innovative and important writers of her time, emphasizes modernist ideals and the importance of the individual in her work. In Virginia Woolf’s novels To the Lighthouse and The Waves, Woolf argues the idea that...

In the novel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, two sisters are drawn and held together through traumatic shifts in their caregivers. They value the dependability and mutual benefit offered by each other. In The Other by David Guterson, two “...

The general rule of thumb when performing handiwork involving screws--ingrained in one’s mind from youth and persisting forever onwards--is that age-old, ever-so-slightly childish mnemonic, “Righty tighty, lefty loosey.” When one expects the screw...

For an author portraying a topic as precarious and momentous as the Holocaust, perhaps the only adequate approach is through a fable, such as The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. In this novel, John Boyne creates main characters and a narrator that...