Newest Literature Essays

In Camus’ The Stranger and Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the protagonist finds himself in an extraordinary situation that challenges his will. In both novels, this initially unsympathetic character struggles to redeem himself. In so doing, his identity...

Are Winston, Julia and Offred eventually made into ‘reluctantly-selfish’ victims of totalitarian regimes or are they innately ‘pragmatically-selfish’ beings? Discuss in relation to The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984.

Offred and Winston, the main...

Moby Dick ends with the unexpected death of everyone on the ship but Ishmael. Throughout the novel, the ship and its mates serve as a microcosm of the society for Melville to critique. Each character represents certain qualities and ideals that...

In David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, Song Liling and Rene Gallimard engage in an extramarital affair that positions male against female, and East against West. Hwang uses the affair, along with its power dynamics, to challenge traditional notions...

In his first and most famous work, Night, Elie Wiesel relives his experience in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime during World War II. Wiesel, who was born and raised a devout Jew and excelled at Talmudic and spiritual studies, recounts...

Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway is known for its flowing, stream-of-consciousness narrative form that connects external events and the thoughts of all of the characters. Ironically, one of the novel’s most prominent themes is that of...

Beneath the most obvious plot line in Frankenstein lies a more subtle relationship between Walton, Victor and the monster. The three characters are very closely linked; their existence depends on one another. Walton represents the youthful desire...

Narrative structure is often one of the most crucial and strategic rhetorical elements of a work of literature. This is particularly true when the narrator is essential to understanding the themes and purposes of the text itself, such as the...

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë explores the gender identity of both herself and her characters. She published the book under the name of Ellis Bell, which many readers took to be that of a man. As critic Nicola Thompson points out, most...

In Pride and Prejudice, society features as an important aspect of every individual’s life. Each character is inextricably enmeshed in the web of society, and must perform various roles in accordance with the demands of society. In the comic mode...

The Aeneid, Virgil’s well-known myth about the events leading up to the founding of Rome, curiously seems to contain two distinct voices. While Virgil’s friendship with Augustus (one of Rome’s great emperors) and the historical period may have...

Critics disagree about Robinson Crusoe’s religious convictions, but they generally concur that Crusoe’s faith begins when he acknowledges that his sins are a major cause of his island captivity. Beyond that, opinions diverge. Karl Marx writes that...

William Wordsworth’s poem “A slumber did my spirit seal” compels different interpretations with different readers. In this case, two critics, Cleanth Brooks and F.W. Bateson, analyze the poem and produce two contrasting interpretations. For the...

The central conflict in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is the self-discovery, or “awakening,” of the protagonist, Edna Pontellier. Throughout the course of the novel she transforms from the bored, submissive wife of Lèonce Pontellier to a vibrant,...

Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ is one of the most simultaneously celebrated and contested of all his works. In scholarship, there is debate over many facets of the tale, including the sanity and reliability of the narrator, the cause of Rowena’s...

Anne Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees contains many Gothic conventions – an eerie mood, an isolated house and castle, supernatural encounters, and secrets from the past that advance the plot. However, MacDonald’s characters do not conform to...

Shakespeare’s plays employ many allusions to religious stories and beliefs. Hamlet and Measure for Measure, for example, both address religious themes and incorporate religious imagery. However, Shakespeare’s personal religious beliefs have never...

The four canonical gospels of the Bible all intend to educate religious groups about the existence and purpose of Jesus Christ. However, the four gospels do not portray this teaching in the same manner. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew and the...

Several of Shakespeare’s plays, including historical and tragedy, involve the political intrigue which results in the killing of a king. While the action revolving around this event may involve many more obvious themes, it is interesting to note...

Shakespeare’s comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, focuses a great deal on the character of Kate, the “shrew” of the story, and her transition from an unlovable, temperamental harridan into the picture of a perfect wife. Surrounding this tale of...

Among the many and varied plotlines interwoven throughout Shakespeare’s comedy, The Merchant of Venice, the story of Bassanio’s rivalled affections for his friend Antonio and for his eventual wife Portia is one of the more significant. Bassanio...

Shakespeare frequently makes use of the adjective ‘weird’ in his tragedy Macbeth. Along with bringing to mind the supernatural and unearthly, the word also forces one to consider the nature of the word’s antonym – what is normal? Macbeth’s...

One of the primary objectives of the Enlightenment was to promote reason and rationalism as a method of achieving social and political reform. However, Voltaire, a powerful and renowned philosopher and writer during the period, often criticized...

In Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, narrator Humbert Humbert exerts the power of memory as he attempts to manipulate time to suit his devices and desires. Realizing that the nymphet stage which occurs in the lives of a select number of girls...