Newest Literature Essays

King Lear and Don Quixote use madness to acknowledge the unpleasant truths of humanity. Don Quixote entertains a fundamentally comic madness; while, King Lear offers a more tragic interpretation of insanity. Both protagonists, King Lear and Don...

In the Inferno, Dante responds to the sinners’ torments with fear and compassion. Compassion comes from the Latin root meaning “to suffer with” and Dante often engages in the sinners’ suffering. He cries for the magicians in Canto XX, lamenting...

The poem “The Secretary Chant,” by Marge Piercy, holds many characteristics that are meant to pull the reader in. As with any poem, the words mean more than they appear to. Each line is written with a purpose. Every word has significance and...

The poem “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake is set around a dark background of child labor. In the 18th and 19th centuries, boys of four and five were sold because of their small physical size to work as chimneysweepers. In this poem, one of...

In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell uses several literary techniques to develop the theme that totalitarianism is destructive. He does so by using extensive imagery, focusing on the deterioration of the Victory Mansions, the canteen where...

Resurrection is a term that is often used to describe the rebirth of someone, not only after death, but often as a new person in their own lifetime. In A Tale of Two Cities, a novel written by the famous English author Charles Dickens, the idea...

John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles” (Adams & Institute...

Tom Buchanan is an important figure throughout the course of The Great Gatsby, and is used as Fitzgerald’s symbolic representation of the moral and emotional decadence of the era. Tom forms part of Fitzgerald’s social critique of the upper...

In Virginia Woolf’s novel “To the Lighthouse” the author explores the theme of light through her characters Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe. Both women identify light differently in their lives, figuratively and metaphorically, and use light as a...

William Shakespeare puts forth his definition of what makes love true in his untitled sonnet beginning with “Let me not to the marriage of true minds.” Shakespeare does not deny other views of love, but instead insists on a certain characteristic...

I Felt a Funeral in my Brain presents a narrative image of one slowly descending into madness and gives the reader a first person outlook on the whole ordeal. This poem, written by Emily Dickinson, a depressed antisocial poet, was written in 1862...

In Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, Edna's marriage is complicated. Her marriage is both a source of positive and negative influence on her, in that it both confines, imprisons, and depresses her while also providing her with an impetus,...

Heart of Darkness has long been considered a triumph of 20th century English-language literature and its exploration of the darkness inside man has long provoked analysis by critics. But renowned Nigerian author and preeminent scholar on African...

In Romeo and Juliet, many ironic situations foreshadowing their doomed result. In the passage where Tybalt and Capulet debate at the masquerade feast, there are many lines that directly foreshadow two important components of the play: Romeo’s...

In Richard III, a morality play by William Shakespeare, the “undefeatable” characteristic of the vice excites the audience by allowing the main character to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks and get away with them. The action of Richard wooing...

Since the focal theme of “A Streetcar Named Desire” is that of integration and adaptation, the relationship between Blanche and Stella is important and its function evident: Williams establishes a contrast between them. For example, when Stella...

It is easy to accuse Shakespeare of absurdity and shapelessness in The Winter’s Tale, because, as a play, it shifts between genres (tragedy and comedy) and certain events are beyond reality. However, The Winter’s Tale is a work of art, and a...

Chaucer’s Pardoner is hypocritical, selfish and unreliable despite his tacit desire to preach and encourage others to pursue a life free of blasphemy, gluttony and materialism. The Pardoner appears to be highly familiar with the Bible and the...

Anna Karenina is a story of split, conflict, schism and divide. Anna’s battle for love, her struggle between what she needs and what she desires, her hatred of lies and her usage of them, her vacillation between libre penseur – liberal values- and...

The popularity of gothic fiction varied in Victorian England. During the Romantic period Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto (1764), which is often considered the first gothic horror story. Many more stories followed but the popularity...

Written in 1889, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is regarded by many scholars as the most important of American Arthuriana. Twain strips Arthurian legend of much of its glory and grandeur, thereby making it possible for...

There is an enigmatic quality to Art Spiegelman’s survival guilt, a guilt which presents itself subtly in Book I and much more palpably in Book II. This ambiguity, so to speak, stems from a perplexing notion. That is, how could one of the only...

The tragedy in A Streetcar Named Desire can be interpreted through the medium of not just watching it, but reading it. Williams achieves this through the use of stage directions written in poetic prose, which create imagery with likeness to a...

Both Clare, from Passing, by Nella Larson, and Esperanza, the protagonist of The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, seek to find a figurative ‘home’ in society, a place where they are accepted by those around them and free to express...