Newest Literature Essays

Iago’s isolation from humanity is ideological and emotional hermitry rather than physical solitariness: he detaches himself from social standards and practices, but continues to weave his diabolical influence as a player in the social scene,...

In a play of jealousies and passions, patience, as a virtue, is presented as a foil to the “raging motions” seen in many characters. There are two aspects to patience in Othello, demonstrated firstly by suspending intellectual judgment and...

For many readers, Montaigne’s Selections from the Essays at first seems scattered both in rhetorical structure and topic. However, as one reads through the individual works, there is one concept that the diverse text consistently refers to: man's...

In Mary Shelley’s chilling novel Frankenstein, certain characters represent major thematic ideas that Shelley endeavors to criticize or praise. The main character, the scientist Frankenstein, is used to exemplify the consequences of uninhibited,...

Jane Austen is commonly viewed as anti-romantic, but her novel Northanger Abbey possesses and promotes many of the ideas prevalent in romantic literature. Heroine Catherine Morland is an especially romantic character whose spontaneity, emotion,...

Bottom’s speech at the end of Act 4, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream marks a transition from a dream world to reality. In it, Bottom struggles to make his dream of an encounter with Titania the fairy queen into something concrete. Bottom’s...

Victorian literature is over-populated with orphans. The Bronte sisters, Trollope, George Elliot, Thackeray and Gaskell all positioned orphans as leading characters in their novels. This trend continued into the Edwardian period, as Frances...

In his poem “Among School Children,” W.B. Yeats describes his feelings upon entering a classroom full of young children as a sixty year old man. The beauty of the children that he encounters in the classroom leads him to question the value of the...

As one of the great stylists of the twentieth century, William Faulkner explores the South’s haunting past throughout several novels. His novel Light in August is one of many set in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional place in Mississippi, where he...

According to Edmund Burke, knowledge of historical precedent can be a valuable tool in dealing with more current issues of a similar nature. He is a proponent of allowing policies and customs from the past to endure not only for the sake of...

In Sophocles’ Antigone, Creon makes reference to an “alliance of spears” as a metaphor pertaining to the necessary allegiance a society has to its ruler. Initially he feels his authority must be proven as absolute and in an act of hubris he...

Great Expectations is the account of a young boy’s transition into adulthood as Pip, the central character, searches for contentment. Born into no particular wealth or distinction, he may have lived wholly satisfied with his modest pedigree had it...

The epistle of Saint John unequivocally states, “Love comes from God” (1 John 4:7). This statement not only explains the source of love but it also provides a means to understand both love and God. If love is from God, then an understanding of...

It is often debated whether one’s character is instilled at birth, or through the environment in which one is raised. Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead Wilson argues the latter through describing the development of two boys of the same age, Chambers...

The hero in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in many ways embodies the self-reliant characteristics advocated by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Huckleberry Finn acts without consideration for his society’s morality, and without concern for...

Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is a meticulously constructed story situated in the age of disillusionment that followed World War I. It frames a loose alliance of the “Lost Generation” and displays a vicarious insight into the forces that drive...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his work Crime and Punishment, makes it clear from the beginning that Raskolnikov, his somewhat unconventional protagonist, is in a “disturbed state of mind” (Dostoyevsky, 13). Derived from the Russian word for “schism,”...

Joseph Conrad’s story The Secret Sharer is a first-person account written in two parts from the perspective of an untried sea captain. The separation of the two segments almost perfectly coincides with a distinction in the narrative voice. In the...

In Act V Scene II, the final scene and crescendo of the play, we see Othello’s character truly unravel, falling into the depths of tragic heroism and despair. In this scene we see at last the resultant action from Iago’s “poison” words, as Othello...

In the words of nineteenth-century critic F. S. Boas, “Measure for Measure” is undeniably a “problem play”, meaning that it is a play that centres around certain moral or philosophical issues. However, as well as simply being a play about...

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the epitome of the Romantic genre in the Middle Ages, one that features both chivalry and courtly love and emphasizes that a knight’s most important duty is to serve God. While most chivalric tales focus on the...

For a large portion of the novel, Isobel drifts through life believing intensely that the key to her happiness is belonging- that if she is a part of a crowd, if she is accepted, she will be “normal,” and it is this goal on which she focuses a...

Evolution of Attitude in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot’s notoriously opaque “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” can be interpreted only by acknowledging that the speaker’s thought process is not consistent throughout...

The Absence of Amsterdam: Confounding Principles of Presentness in Stoker’s Dracula

Doctor Abraham Van Helsing is an intriguing and somewhat problematic character on several levels. According to critic Martin Willis the introduction of Van Helsing...