Newest Literature Essays

“It was a machine like no other.”

The opening lines of Franz Kafka’s work ‘In the Penal Colony’ puts forward a cryptic yet insightful simile that sets the mood of the entire story. Kafka’s simile offers little further clarification, yet categorizes...

In the novella Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, the idea of cultural identity is explored through the symbolic significance of names. Although his name is never stated, it is assumed that the man that Antoinette marries is Rochester based upon the...

T.S. Eliot once remarked that poetry must be difficult. The sentiments of this are expressed in much of his poetry and in his esoteric style, especially in Rhapsody on a Windy Night. If read literally, Rhapsody presents a bewildering scene of...

William Blake’s “Little Black Boy,” Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” James Joyce’s “The Dead” and Sarah Kane’s Blasted each demonstrate how a writer’s use of language can give us intimate access to the time period that in turn informs the...

Tony Harrison’s “A Cold Coming,” William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and George Orwell’s 1984 each display distinct sensibilities that reflect the time from which they emerged....

When Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” was first released to the public, audiences and critics did not know what to make of it. Here was a film with minimal dialogue, long, obscure sequences that seemed to stretch to infinity, and little...

Contemporary political discourse often references George Orwell’s 1984 as an example of how government interference infringes on our rights as individuals while we remain complacent in the face of these violations. For example, the falsification...

In Richard Wright’s autobiographical novel Black Boy, the narrator frequently speaks about his severe physical hunger and the emptiness it brings him. While his physical hunger shapes his actions as a child, the gravity of the emotional and...

The character of the Pardoner in Chaucer’s ‘The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale’ is a controversial, ethically depraved character that, it could be said, represents corruption within the Catholic Church. As the narrator of the tale, however, he...

As Dagny enters Richard Halley’s valley cottage in the cool calm of the night, she is enveloped with music that hits her as a “symbol of moral pride” (717) This pride is not built on what the heart feels is valuable, but on what the mind knows to...

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is his first of two historical novels. Published in 1859, the book discusses the themes of resurrection, destiny, and concealment. Dickens’ novel both demonstrates his view of society, and contains historical...

The relationship between Roark and Keating dominates the first two parts of the novel. Rand uses the comparison between Roark and Keating to express two polar opposites. Roark is Rand’s hero, the epitome of everything Rand attributes to be good....

Loneliness is debatably one of the most horrible feelings existent within society. It strikes every living soul at one point or another, as it takes an immensely deep emotional toll. A profound part of what contributes to the feeling of loneliness...

Blindness is prevalent all throughout human society and more specifically, all throughout human nature. To be blind can mean a myriad of things. Literally and physically, it means to lack proper vision. When taking that definition to a figurative...

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique ignited the onset of the second wave of feminism in the United States. This book is a sociological study about the roots of the feminine mystique and how it turned “into a religion, a pattern by which all...

One of the main themes developed in the passage from the novella “The Moonstone,” by Wilkie Collins, is the indelibility of memories and by consequence, of the past. The past comes back to haunt the present constantly throughout the passage,...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez incorporates and emphasizes different symbols such as the falcon, linen and boat to help foreshadow and characterize the murder of the main character, Santiago Nasar, in the novella “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. Even if...

The poem Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen was written during World War I in 1917, when Owen was recovering from shell shock in a war hospital in Edinburgh. Hence, Owen writes from the perspective of a soldier on a battlefield. The persona...

The poem “Disabled” by Wilfred Owen was written during World War I in 1917. Owen writes from the perspective of a double-amputee veteran from whom the battlefield took away all appreciation for life. This persona decides to reflect upon the...

The relationship between Roark and Keating dominates the first two parts of The Fountainhead. Rand uses the comparison between Roark and Keating to express two polar opposites. Roark is Rand’s hero, the epitome of everything Rand attributes to be...

William Butler Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium (1926) is one of the more remarkable poems from The Tower, a celebrated collection of poems published in 1929. The poem is remarkable partly because of its highly suggestive and ambiguous language, which...

Herman Melville uses the concept of identity to highlight certain features of the characters in his short story Bartelby the Scrivener. The character of Bartelby illuminates the narrator’s unexplained feelings of innate compassion and pity through...

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye depicts a chilling tale of a young girl’s experience with racism following The Great Depression. While the span of the novel is divided into four seasons, “Autumn,” “Winter,” “Spring,” and “Summer,” it is through the...

D. H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers depicts the unhappy marriage between Walter and Gertrude Morel, and their four children. As Mrs. Morel’s relationship with her husband begins to disintegrate, she turns her attention to her sons in the hopes...