Newest Literature Essays

Practice What You Preach, Pardoner

"The Pardoner's Tale," written by Geoffrey Chaucer, exhibits several qualities of life, as we know it today. In this story, Chaucer writes about a man who preaches to his audience for money. This man begins...

Voltaire, as an eighteenth century French philosopher and writer, lived in a far different society than the average American college student is accustomed to today. Though Voltaire was a champion of civil liberties, he spent most of his life in a...

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison questions the origin and validity of truths imposed by white standards of beauty. The white standard of beauty is defined in terms of not being black, so in turn, blacks equate beauty with being white. Morrison...

In Franz Kafka's classic, The Metamorphosis, family members of Gregor Samsa, the main character who is a giant insect, ignore Gregor for a majority of the plot. Disregard for Gregor eventually obliterates him. In Oedipus the King by Sophocles,...

In Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," from his book entitled New Hampshire, the poet descriptively evokes a bucolic New England winter ambience (which Frost knew quite intimately) and utilizes a simple narrative soliloquy...

A shrew, a scold, was in fundamental nature any woman that verbally defied authority in public and obstinately challenged the "axiom" of male rule. The late sixteenth century was harsh to deviants of social role and standing, and the penalty of...

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) lived in a period when Europe went through the most massive economic, political, and social changes. He witnessed the two World Wars, the revolutions in Austria, Germany, Hungary in 1917-1918, the uprising of Communism...

Act 2 scene 1 of Julius Caesar, from lines 1-69, is terribly important as it marks a turning point in the play. The two characters appearing are Brutus and his servant, Lucius. Brutus, having had the notion of murdering Caesar planted in his mind...

One of the significant conflicts within Renaissance culture was how to rationalize the many instances of violence which took place in a society with such strong Christian values. While some preached from the New Testament of the importance of love...

On the surface, "The Rape of the Lock", by Alexander Pope, appears to be a mild satire on the recent rise in materialism and the specifically female habit of excessive consumption. Originally published in 1712, the poem was situated among numerous...

Puritans are often mischaracterized as overly strict and moral persons whose lives revolve around killjoy attitudes and laws against all innocent social pleasures. Qualities of sympathy, charity, and compassion are rarely tied to Puritanism or...

The voice of his generation, Ernest Hemingway, captured the many complex emotions of Americans during the World War I era and provided clarity to his peers through his famous collection In Our Time. Through the stories and vignettes, Hemingway...

Aragorn Louis most probably perfectly captured the relationship between McMurphy and Ratched in saying, "Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make...

In his essay, A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift uses the literary devices of organization, point of view, diction and imagery to maneuver the reader into identifying the need for humans to let both logic and emotion govern decisions.

Jonathan...

In the year 632AF (the year 2540AD, 632 years after Ford) the world has finally eliminated many inconveniences including war, famine, dissent, disease, depression and jealousy. This conquest, however, came at a cost: cultural assimilation,...

"Life is a tragedy full of joy." The view advanced by Bernard Malamud, while somewhat morbid, is mirrored in his life's work. To express the futility of life in Russia, Malamud creates a setting which seems entirely removed from this century....

In Plato's The Symposium, a discussion between Socrates and another philosopher, Diotima, arises on how man tries to attain goodness. They agree that man loves what is good and pursues the love of good. The next section of their discussion deals...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the author of Self Reliance, was one of the leading Transcendentalists in the American movement and a truly "American" writer. However, he was not as dedicated as Henry David Thoreau, who spent two years living in the woods...

After Septimus' suicide, we encounter Peter Walsh hearing the "light, high bell of the ambulance," and deeming it, in his mind, "one of the triumphs of civilization" (151). He ponders the "efficiency, organization, the communal spirit," of the...

Stanley Kubrick wrote the screenplay for and directed the film A Clockwork Orange based on the book by Anthony Burgess with the same title. The distinguishing feature of the book is the language the narrator, Alexander DeLarge, uses: Nadsat, a...

"Jerusalem," by William Blake, is a contemplative portrayal of England's development during the time period in question. This poem is concerned with the theme of England's loss of innocence; this is important because it shows that development is...

The genius of Sophocles' Oedipus Plays is enriched through the many levels of interpretation that can be explored by each individual reader. One major area left open for interpretation is sight. It is divided into two categories, "physical" sight...

"Though those that are betrayed Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor Stands in worse case of woe" (Cymbeline, III.iv). Shakespeare's carefully crafted world of deception and trickery within Much Ado About Nothing thrives on deceitful...

At first glance, Jane Eyre might be seen as simply a skillfully written Gothic romance. A closer look reveals layers of gender criticism and feminism. Yet, one of the most interesting readings focuses on the layers of class and Marxist commentary...