Newest Literature Essays

As Othello, Laurence Olivier entreats the Venetian nobles to relate the true account of his actions and motivations. Olivier's words seem almost imploring, suggesting that he is an outsider seeking approval from those with foreign sympathies. At...

Shakespeare is often recognized for a contributing to the canon in a way that causes the adage "there is nothing new under the sun" to ring true. His talent for developing old literary and mythic plots and themes in order to address contemporary...

It is no secret that Darwin's theory of Natural Selection and Evolution, put forth in Origin of Species, has been applied to social theory, giving rise to Social Darwinism. But are we correct to assume that Social Darwinism is simply an extract of...

R.P. McMurphy is not an average mental patient stuck on a ward at an institution. In fact, McMurphy is one of the most unique patients the ward in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" has ever seen. While most of the men on the ward committed...

In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream.

-Bruce Springsteen, "Born to Run"

And I said, "That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and...

Dickens' Oliver Twist , which ultimately celebrates a protagonist who journeys from innocence to experience without capitulating to the evil forces that hinder his progress, addresses the pervasive problem of evil in society and human nature....

"Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eye are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light,which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as the bodily...

Pioneering, or the act of breaking new ground, is what has established the United States as the enormous international presence it is today. From ideals represented by manifest destiny, the Declaration of Independence, institutions such as...

Essay Prompt:

Writers often highlight the values of a culture or society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class or creed. Discuss Bigger Thomas as such a character and show how his...

Courage, intellect, and success: three typical characteristics which could easily be attributed to the hero of any story. Take cunning, manipulation, and eventual failure, and you have yourself the typical villain. In The Name of the Rose, Umberto...

Although considered light and delightful entertainment, Shakespeare's plays of comedy often address serious issues confronting Elizabethan values of propriety and social decorum. Anti-Semitism, death and homosexuality are frequent themes woven in...

For both "The Mower Against Gardens" and "The Garden", the primary terms in opposition are the same: the world of nature, the world of men. The former is a realm of leisure, the latter of ceaseless, pointless toil. And yet the status granted to...

In Fay Weldon's opinion, a good writer does not always need to conclude his story with a joyous flourish in order to satisfy his reader. "The writers, I do believe, who get the best and most lasting response from readers are the writers who offer...

Among the numerous themes and ideas that author Herman Melville expresses in Moby Dick, one of the less examined is the superiority of the primitive man to the modern man. As an undertone running through the entire book, one can see in Moby Dick...

Moliere, who built his reputation writing plays that satirize late 17th French society, develops two title characters in his dramas "The Would-Be Gentleman" and "The Misanthrope," the former, Monsieur Jourdain who attempts to recreate his self...

In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the minor character Hippolyta functions in three ways. Her first role in the play is as an example of mature love in juxtaposition to the two immature Athenian couples. Her second purpose in the...

Salman Rushdie's creation, Saleem Sinai, has a self-proclaimed "overpowering desire for form" (363). In writing his own autobiography Saleem seems to be after what Frank Kermode says every writer is a after: concordance. Concordance would allow...

It is only as an historian that he [the author] has the smallest locus standi. As a narrator of fictitious events, he is nowhere. --Henry James

Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready to be institutionalized. --May West

One of George...

According to the evidence we have, it seems Shakespeare wrote his plays exclusively to be performed. We are repeatedly reminded of this fact; there are throughout many of his plays moments of self-conscious performance, performance that reflects...

What lends tragic literature its proximity to human nature is that the border between being a tragic villain and a tragic hero is extremely thin.

A question that this statement will certainly bring up is whether there is such a thing as a hero or a...

While the connection between Machiavelli and Marlowe is distinctly articulated in the preface to the latter's Jew of Malta, the parallels between Machiavelli's Prince and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure are less explicitly expressed, but...

"Oh I know everything is dead." So says Billy Waldron to Ruth Prynne in chapter two, 'Nickelodeon,' of the third section of John Dos Passos' 'Manhattan Transfer'. This statement embodies several techniques Dos Passos uses throughout his novel -...

In Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, the quest for the sublime and perfect expression seems to be trapped in the inability to successfully verbalize thoughts and interpret the words of others. The relationship between written words and how they...

In Scene 2 of Act 2, Lady Macbethâs master plan to promote her husband to the throne finally comes to fruition. For the first time in the play, however, Lady Macbeth reveals some degree of weakness in her inability to actually murder Duncan with...