Newest Literature Essays

Identity is a prevalent theme of young adult literature. To an adolescent target audience, this concept and its associated questions are very relatable to their confusing, change-filled existences. Nimona, a graphic novel by ND Stevenson, presents...

Charles-II’s restoration to England’s throne in 1660, marked the theatres’ reopening, earlier closed by the Puritan Government. The middle-class and the poor stopped visiting theatres, owing to its immorality and unaffordability, respectively. The...

Graphic novels are often overlooked as valuable contributions to YA literature due to their reliance on illustrations. In reality, however, graphic novels can be a powerful tool in the classroom, one that can be used to hone, articulate, and...

The realm of cinema has consistently been a mirror of societal norms, biases, and reforms. Few films are as evocative of this reflective capacity as Leigh Whannell's 2020 adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic tale, The Invisible Man. The film serves...

The film Moonlight explores its themes of love in seemingly opposite manners: the absence and aching for love, as well as the impact that even a little bit of love can have for someone. The movie follows its protagonist, Chiron, through three...

Have you ever identified so completely with a story that it digs its way into your subconscious? Relatability in literature is a powerful thing — in some instances, it has the ability to write over your own memories and experiences like an...

In Aneeka Henderson’s chapter of the book African American Culture and Society After Rodney King : Provocations and Protests, Progression and ‘Post-Racialism' (Carina and Metcalf), she discusses Dee Rees’ 2011 film, Pariah, in relation to the...

Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse is an evocative depiction of personal and cultural identity growth amidst attempted individual and cultural genocide, abuse, and trauma. The story is set in the late 1950s and 1960s when residential schools were...

"The Right Word" is a poem by Imtiaz Dharker which was published in 2006 collection titled The Terrorist at My Table. The subject matter of this selection from that collection comments upon the larger thematic thread unifying it with other poems....

The poem “Crossing the Swamp” by Mary Oliver features a relationship that, at first glance, seems relatively simple. However, through further analysis, there is a deeper connection and relationship between speaker and swamp. The speaker in this...

The Irish airman in William Yeats’ “An Irish airman Foresees His Death" is preoccupied with his death. He visualizes the circumstances in which his death will transpire with a high-level certainty. Being an airman, the man has witnessed numerous...

Conflicts and wars are never the solution to any problem, yet it is a worldwide concern today with many organizations working to prevent the doom of mankind. How many wars is it going to take to convince what unity and peace could bring? Having...

The novel “The Marrow Thieves” from Cherie Dimaline fully incorporates real world problems into her dystopian novel. She is presenting problems that first nations had to go through and problems that first nations are still going through to this...

Thomas Keymer proclaims the first American edition of Rasselas, brought out in 1768 by an Irish immigrant, Richard Bell, most reflective of its “practical as well as philosophical importance”. He observes the interpretative perception of Rasselas...

The subject of religion is prominent throughout many of Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters, having experienced many aspects of Muslim and Christian cultures whilst traveling the globe with her diplomat husband, Edward, the British Ambassador in...

In "Backwards," the persona and her sister cope through a technique referred to as regression. The coping makes them walk backward on a mental level. During the walking, they experience both good and bad memories from the past. The employment of...

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) made an insightful comment on fiction writing when he proposed his “iceberg theory” in his work Death in the Afternoon (Borkiewicz 45-6). This theory proposes that if a writer is deeply familiar with an experience,...

A novel of a heroic quest for selfhood against an imposed silence, The Color Purple revolves around the American cultural understanding of feminine and racial mythologies: preconceived notions that Walker goes on to subvert and reconstruct. It is...

"12 Angry Men" is a classic film directed by Sidney Lumet in 1957. The film is a masterpiece of the courtroom drama genre, exploring the tensions and conflicts among the twelve jurors who are tasked with deciding the fate of a young man accused of...

In Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, the reader is presented with a mystery to be solved and is given access to the same information as the novel's various investigators. The reader is thus placed in the position of an active participant in the...