Newest Literature Essays

The Power of Music in Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

In Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, the narrator is able to marry the two halves of his musical identity in a way that he is unable to do with his racial...

Cormac McCarthy, the author of No Country for Old Men, said about the purpose of human existence, “The point is there ain’t no point.” This nihilistic outlook on life became common long before McCarthy's time. The highly industrial and...

In her 1960 poem “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” American-born Sylvia Plath relays the feeling that a miracle has alighted in the form of a black rook. The bird’s beauty takes her off guard in a preternatural way on an otherwise dreary day, and she...

Rajiv Joseph’s characters in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo wander through the war-torn Iraqi landscape looking for answers and finding none. The characters span a wide range of humanity: from young, ignorant American soldiers to a former...

A hero is a man with distinguished courage or ability. Many people identify heroes in their lives, and often, one models his or her ambitions around those heroes' example. Children, young men in particular, often have a hero of some sort that they...

Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer has remarked: “Unlike our ancestors, white people never reveled in their names, they glorified in knowledge and power. But the deceiver is still the deceiver, the liar is still the liar with his knowledge...

Sutton E. Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes bring to consideration the connection between the physical body and one’s state of citizenship within the United States. Published on the brink of the twentieth...

Since the rise of the subculture, punk rockers have been re-appropriating a variety symbols and everyday items. The primary intention of this bricolage is to shock on-lookers and make some sort of statement. An interesting example of this appears...

"[Wit] means something pithy, penetrating, profound, aptly and forcefully expressed (and by extension, someone who is apt to speak in this way)" (Palmer 136). The female figure of wit was widely unaccepted in 18th and 19th century Britain. It was...

Michel Foucault begins his essay “We ‘Other’ Victorians” with a description of what he calls the “repressive hypothesis” (Foucault 10). This hypothesis holds that openly expressing sexuality at the beginning of the seventeenth century was...

The technical innovations of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane range from the depth of focus to his lightning mix. He utilized graphic and acoustic matches to depict the narrative of a man’s meteoric rise to power and his painful slip into oblivion....

During the Modern period, writers were concerned with discarding Victorian literary traditions, addressing new topics and using new forms. Many of them had become disillusioned by the devastation of the First World War, and they were fed up with...

In Interpreter of Maladies, the book of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, the protagonists are often in an unknown place. The reader can gain insight into the characters based on how they act during while in an uncomfortable situation. In the short...

Erin Erkocevic

8 December 2010

An Analysis of Human Nature in Frankenstein, As it Connects to Freudian Psychology

In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley skillfully laces a chilling tale of horror with social commentary to create an exploration of...

Ariel Dorfman's play “Death and the Maiden” revolves around a husband and wife, Gerardo and Paulina, living under an unstable democracy after a long chapter of oppressive dictatorship. In this moral thriller, Paulina accuses a man named Roberto of...

“Everyday Use” from an Antipatriarchal Perspective

According to feminist theory, cultural definitions of gender roles can be patriarchal or antipatriarchal (Tyson, 83-86). In the short story “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker depicts her characters'...

Along with the Fourth of July and apple pie, baseball is a celebrated symbol of America. Since its invention over 150 years ago, the game has served as a powerful metaphor for the American dream, and the hopes and democratic ideals that accompany...

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a story about the futility of self-deception, but it also examines the definition of "success" in post-WWII America and the danger of suppressing one's own inclinations to meet the expectations of others....

The legend of Judas is a constant background murmur in Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker. It begs us to wonder: is Gertie Nevels a victim or a betrayer? Many believe that Christ's betrayal was preordained and that Judas, with his kiss, was obeying...

A "coyote" is someone who profits from sneaking immigrants across the U.S.-Mexican border. It's also an animal stereotyped as a scavenging coward. In The Tortilla Curtain, T.C. Boyle draws frequent parallels between coyotes prowling the edges of...

Jim’s search for identity throughout David Malouf’s novel Fly Away Peter is represented largely through his actions and interactions with others, as well as through his thoughts and interests. One of the strongest representations of this search is...

Power exists in many forms: weapons, threats, size, and even words. Amidst the violence and volatile power that exists between Israel and Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish attempts to influence people's feelings through his poetry. In Darwish’s...

The Relation To and the Importance of Henry Dawes, and the Dawes Act, to Green Grass, Running Water

Henry Dawes was not culturally enlightened, especially when it came to American Indians. Although as a US Senator, Dawes was very involved in...

When Shane was published in 1949, it was considered a very unusual western fiction novel. Unlike other books at the time, the book’s hero was the title character. Still more unusual was the fact that Shane himself was not a cold-blooded killer....