Newest Literature Essays

Tyler Durden in Fight Club attempts to subvert the capitalist, consumerist system through civil disobedience and Fight Club itself. Secondly, Chuck Palahniuk uses Tyler Durden and his insurgency to criticise contemporary capitalism, by showing the...

One of the major themes in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is the idea of the public self as distinguished from the private self. This leitmotif encompasses much more than the idea of an individual versus society; it also contains the...

Mohsin Hamid's 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' is an intriguing story of questionable identities and betrayal. The protagonist, Changez, finds himself in a teahouse in Lahore, Pakistan, where he engages in an extended monologue describing his life...

Mrs. Alving: "But I’m inclined to think we’re all ghosts, Pastor Manders; it’s not only the things that we’ve inherited from our fathers and mothers that live on in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and old dead beliefs, and things of that sort....

Minor characters may not be the center of action or attraction, but novelists can use them to supplement the understanding of major characters and the thematic purpose of the text. In his novel Slaughterhouse Five, published in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut...

The novel Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie, set in post-colonial Nigeria during the Civil War in the late 1960s, is a bildungsroman that focuses greatly on family relationships as well as religious and cultural ideals. The passage describing...

Andrew Marvell’s Mower Against the Garden is the first in a series of four ‘Garden’ poems. The poem can be read literally, as a pastoral, ecological poem concerned with the destruction of the natural landscape as a result of human consumerism; in...

A.A. Milne’s 1928 classic children’s book The House at Pooh Corner remains a highly effective children’s text nearly ninety years on. This can be accredited to the format, themes and developmental concepts portrayed in the book. The concepts in...

In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles Chesnutt tells the story of social injustice in the Reconstruction period of the late 1800s. He uses a variety of unique characters, ranging from aristocratic white supremacists to vengeful blacks. Chesnutt...

“Alabaster Chambers”, much like many of Emily Dickinson's other works, showcases the theme of death without directly addressing the subject but instead guides the readers to the topic by means of the imagery. The first stanza of the original 1859...

Ideas of social change and progressive ideals are prominent in many nineteenth century works of literature. Charles Dickens’ Hard Times is a prime example of a social criticism novel, putting prominent ideas of the time period, such as...

In Dickens’s Hard Times, Christianity is often alluded to both symbolically and literally. Because of the time period in which the novel was written, the presence of these religious themes are not surprising, but the way Dickens presents these...

“Sonrisas” by Pat Mora is a poem that describes groups of women in two separate rooms. The title, “Sonrisas,” means “smiles” in Spanish, however, the poem isn’t only about smiles; it focuses on the activities of two groups of women. The narrator...

“Silver Sparrow,” by Tayari Jones, is a story told in the first person by Dana, the narrator, telling a story about her childhood while looking back as an adult. It takes place in Atlanta, Georgia during the 21st century, although specific dates...

Nervous Conditions, a buildingsroman by Tsitsi Dangarembga, focuses on the life and education of Tambu, a young girl, living in Rhodesia. After the death of her brother, Tambu moves from her homestead into a mission with her uncle and his...

In Ernest Hemingway’s work of literary brilliance, The Old Man and The Sea, Santiago finds himself pitted against a beauty of nature – a beast in the eyes of man. At first glancetranscending thetask of slaying the marlin is what makes Santiago a...

Examples of women overcoming male supremacy and achieving power can be found in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes, both of which include strong women in a male dominated society....

In interpretations of Allen Ginsberg's “Howl,” it is common to find the assertion that this wild three-part poem is a diatribe against the evils of capitalism, personified in the poem as the ancient, child-devouring god Moloch. Marjorie Perloff's...

With its unforgettable characters, unique love story and dazzling setting, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has been a popular source of inspiration for filmmakers since its publication in 1925. The six film adaptations of the novel to date...

One dominant idea that is recurrent throughout Titus Andronicusis the symbolism of the ‘body of Rome’, which acts as a metaphorical parallel to the events of the text. This motif follows the changing statuses of the characters and power structures...

In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Pi Patel too uses his faith in God as a vital coping mechanism to survive in the vast Pacific Ocean. His faith in God proves to be a crucial part in Pi’s survival as it guides him through his ordeal. Pi, a...

A central theme in "Much Ado about Nothing" is that of the literary tradition of a heroine within the social conventions surrounding women. The literary tradition of the time (and indeed, in many cases, up to the present day) bestows the...

Robert Anthony once said, “The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity”. Zamyatin’s We depicts the advantages and disadvantages of conforming to a small group of people, an authoritative society in general, and to the extreme...

Music has historically been a means of expression and a way of portraying the conditions of the time in which it was written, and the feelings and circumstances of the person by which it was created. This way of expression through music can be...