Newest Literature Essays

Moby Dick is widely considered one of the greatest literary creations in history. The denseness of meaning, infinite possibility of interpretation, and ambiguity of implications give the text many layers. Therefore, knowing that the...

In Sophocles' play Antigone, the two sisters, Antigone and Ismene, have opposing opinions concerning which to value more - the dead or the living. Antigone places greater emphasis on her duty to honor her dead brother, Polynices, while Ismene...

The Modern Prometheus: Reworked Myth in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

As the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein implies, the tragic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his creation takes elements of classical myth and reinterprets them through the...

In the first fifteen chapters of A Passage to India, E.M. Forster prepares for the tragedy of the Marabar visit rather successfully. The tragedy is perceived as the failure of the Marabar expedition and its aftermath: Adela Quested's accusation of...

Military prowess is a quality attributed to many of Shakespeare's male characters. Great military men such as Hotspur, Lear, Hal and Julius Caesar share a proclivity for the military arts with Othello and Marc Antony. As a superior dramatist,...

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a highly unique work, a compilation of many stories carried home by veterans of the Vietnam War. The length of the stories in the 22 chapters varies dramatically, a technique that "demonstrates well the...

Bram Stoker's use of setting to establish some of the key gothic elements to the novel Dracula proves to be crucial in developing both suspense and intrigue. This can be studied particularly closely with reference to Jonathan Harker's narrative of...

Character Juxtaposition: The Twoness of Macbeth

Shakespeare's Macbeth relays the tale of a Scottish general, at first presenting a seemingly brave and noble warrior. Macbeth is eventually prompted by ambition to seek the throne upon hearing a...

Act IV, Scene IV, of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale marks a shift away from the Sicilian, courtly world that dominates the previous three acts and much of Act IV. The chaos and disorder resulting from court happenings, Hermione's apparent...

John Boorman's epic movie Deliverance has long been portrayed as the ultimate 'macho' movie; a rite of passage that separates the 'men from the boys', glorifying strength and physical prowess over ethics and decency. However uncompromising this...

In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare illustrates love in various forms and suggests that, like beauty, the true meaning of love exists in the eye of the beholder. Love is seen as bordering on insanity, a frivolous game of ever-changing affections, and...

Although it was written in 1776, Hume did not actually publish Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in his lifetime; it was published three years after his death in 1779. It has been suggested that Hume, a well-known atheist, suspected that the...

Spenser's The Faerie Queene was written mainly to fulfil an allegorical purpose and to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." However, the moralistic tone is softened by the fact that the whole complex allegory is...

The Old Testament of Hebrew Bible centers on the Israelites' claim and journey to their promised land, a struggle characterized by many wars against the civilizations that inhabit their God-given territory. The Iliad by Homer depicts fourteen days...

In "Soldier's Home," Ernest Hemingway makes use of a small-town setting to provide his readers with insight into the troubled, young mind of Harold Krebs. Harold Krebs struggles to adjust to life in Hemingway's lifeless Oklahoma town shortly after...

Three codes of conduct suffuse "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight": chivalry, honor, and Christian faith. As his mystical pentangle attests, Gawain begins his quest under the auspicious perfection of all three; however, after endeavoring through...

"The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil"

-Cicero-

There are villainous characters throughout the history of literature that capture our utmost fears of hatred, vengeance, and psychotic behavior. The complexity of the...

In Greek myth, Sisyphus repeatedly rolls a giant boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down the peak every time. He serves a sentence of eternal suffering for trying to escape from Death and Hades. Like Sisyphus, the warriors of Homer's...

An exemplary knight of King Arthur's renowned court, Sir Gawain is guided by a complex set of ethos, a collection of principles symbolized by the mystical pentangle. A five-pointed star consisting of five interlocking lines, the figure represents...

In Jane Eyre, each episode Charlotte Brontë tells of Jane's life recounts a new struggle, always featuring a man and his patriarchal institution: John Reed's Gateshead, Brocklehurst's Lowood, Rochester's Thornfield, and St. John's Moor House. In...

In our modern world, the frequency of terrorist activity and the ubiquitous threat of attack has greatly affected the way Western culture has come to regard the religion of Islam. Skewed by the media, society's perceptions have reverted to the...

In Book IV of Virgil's epic The Aeneid, the gods' messenger Mercury advises the hero Aeneas that "An ever uncertain and inconstant thing is woman" (IV.768-7). As Aeneas makes his journey from the ruins of Troy to the potential glory of Latium, he...

Let your women keep silence in the churches:

for it is not permitted unto them to speak.

-I Corinthians 14:34

It is a good thing that women religious writers, especially Marguerite Porete, did not listen to this scripture and spoke up in church....

The very form of the sentence does not fit her.

It is a sentence made by men;

It is too loose,

Too heavy,

Too pompous for a woman's use

-Virginia Woolf, in her Collected Essays, 'Modern Fiction.'

Eliza Haywood's novels are important documents not only...