Newest Literature Essays

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a tale of suffering. Placed in an environment that is “encircled by disaster” (Baldwin 1615), the narrator constantly attempts to escape from the suffering around him. He avoids all contact with those around him...

Narrators of questionable credibility are common in American literature, forcing readers to think for themselves and make decisions about what to believe. Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Herman Melville’s Billy Budd: Sailor contain multiple...

White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, provides complex characters whose psychology provides insight into the meaning of the novel. Samad Miah Iqbal is one character whose psychosis corresponds with the main theme. He chose to immigrate to England in order...

When Napoleon III assumed power in 19th-century France, he immediately established himself as a man dedicated to progress. The programs of his Second Empire established remarkable achievements, spanning from a revolutionary new banking system to a...

The conflict between the ideal and the reality has long been the center of the debate in the history of political philosophy. Many famous philosophers have constructed an imaginary world upon which their entire theories are based. They believe an...

Milton’s Paradise Lost deviates significantly from the unadorned version of man’s fall from grace found in Genesis. This, however, was not a problem for Milton who (as a Puritan) believed that the embellishments he wrote were divinely inspired...

The Socratic method of investigation, the elenchus, is explained by example in Plato’s Five Dialogues. In Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, Plato’s character of Socrates employs the elenchus as a way to challenge interlocutors. If an Athenian claims...

Toni Morrison uses the color red in multiple ways in her novel Beloved. On one hand red is a symbol of vibrancy and life, often revealing life in unexpected places. It also symbolizes pain and death, though death does not signify absence in a book...

Ophelia’s situation in Shakespeare’s Hamlet not only invokes pity in the reader but also provides an example of the nature of men and women and accentuates Hamlet’s tragic flaws. Shakespeare so beautifully links the female with the liquid,...

As in his Hamlet, Shakespeare uses “reason in madness” throughout King Lear by using unexpected characters to help with his overall theme of recognition and realization. However, reason in madness can also refer to Shakespeare himself, because in...

Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy is a series of novels that explore various marginalized subjects in WWI-era Britain. Originally set in a mental hospital, she is particularly interested in exploring concepts of madness – how a society decides...

When studying Restoration and early 18th century drama, a predominant theme that appears is the suppression of women. Plays from Vanbrugh’s The Relapse to Etherege’s The Man of Mode utilize humor, wit, and satire to criticize the imprudence and...

Sigmund Freud theorized that the primary motivating force for all human behavior is sexuality. Freudian theory greatly influenced the “lost generation” affected by World War I. Those who were coping with the effects of the war on society had begun...

Dario Fo, author of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997 and the Swedish Academy while awarding him the prize noted that Fo’s “works are open for creative additions, dislocations, continually encouraging...

Robert Browning wrote his poetry during the British Industrial Revolution, a tumultuous time in which society was going through major cultural and lifestyle changes. The modernization of England led to the distribution of newspapers and other...

Introduction

Giovanni Boccaccio’s medieval masterpiece “The Decameron” is a collection of stories, chronicled over ten days, which highlights the best and worst of human nature. Boccaccio’s tales deal with themes such as adultery, love, premarital...

In "The Raven," Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates his mastery of symbolism and repetition. He uses these devices to gradually build anticipation, climaxing at the third stanza from the end with the speaker entreating the bird whether there is word from...

In the poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Walt Whitman writes of a speaker who is exposed to the knowledge of the stars in the sky and the Milky Way galaxies, but is restricted from fathoming a deeper understanding in those observed...

Homer said in The Iliad that “revenge is sweeter far than flowing honey.” In Eliza Haywood’s The City Jilt, vengeance stems from ruthless passion and unbridled drive. Glicera, the protagonist of The City Jilt, epitomizes one who feeds off...

In psychology, one of the most frequently debated topics deals with the issue of environmental and societal impact on one’s upbringing. It is commonly believed that society plays a tremendous role in how one behaves and how one readily conforms to...

America: a land of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity; a country that highly advocates the amalgamation of conglomerating cultures. Ironically, however, in Gary Shteyngart's novel Absurdistan, the Russians transcend Americans in their pursuit...

The relationship between the ideal and the reality is many times pictured in black and white. The ideal can be defined as a conception of something in its perfection, whereas reality is defined as something that exists independently of ideas...

In John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse; or Virtue in Danger, Act I, scene i. plays a crucial role in establishing the theme of appearance versus reality. Because this play is a continuation of Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift, it is imperative that the...

George Etherege’s The Man of Mode is a play that utilizes humor, wit, and satire to criticize the foolishness and vulnerability of women. In this illustrative and vulgar play, Etherege examines the mannerisms, dialogues, and behaviors of different...