Newest Literature Essays

Keats' ode 'To Autumn' deals predominantly with the passage of time, described within the imagery of the season of Autumn. The ode is a celebration of change, involving life, growth and death. Keats makes use of many literary and textual tools,...

How can a commonplace item such as food entail such profound meanings? How can the incorporation of symbols dealing with food into a novel discussing personal identity and invisibility be possible? Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man, manages not...

In Invisible Man, the trope of invisibility functions as a criticism of racist American society, but it also encompasses the novel's subtext of gender erasure. Both black and white females throughout the novel are underdeveloped and virtually...

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the story of an educated black man who has been oppressed and controlled by white men throughout his life. As the narrator, he is nameless throughout the novel as he journeys from the South, where he studies at an...

In "An Inspector Calls", J.B. Priestley uses the characters and attitudes of the Birling family, especially Mr. Birling, to make the audience feel sympathy for Eva Smith. The family is "prosperous" and "comfortable", and Mr. Birling's ostentatious...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "The Incredible and Sad Tale of Erendira" is a frustrating story. It is full of beautiful images, fascinating characters, and puzzling events. The frustration lies in trying to figure out why the characters behave they way...

Although this is an era when violence is frowned upon and war deplored, still the soldier has remained an esteemed figure. Even more appealing to the imagination are tales of tyrants and the courage of the underground guerillas that oppose them....

John Steinbeck wrote two novels in the thirties concerning human behaviors during the depression entitled The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 and In Dubious Battle in 1936. The Grapes of Wrath is the better novel because it fulfills the requirements of...

Oscar Wilde creates a successful, complex comedy by maintaining consistent conflict and contradiction in the action, dialogue, and characters of The Importance of Being Ernest. Dramatic or comedic action is essentially exaggerated conflict. Wilde...

In the closing lines of the first act of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," Algernon remarks, "I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious," to which Jack responds, "Oh, that's nonsense Algy. You never talk about...

Oscar Wilde frames "The Importance of Being Earnest" around the paradoxical epigram, a skewering metaphor for the play's central theme of division of truth and identity that hints at a homosexual subtext. Other targets of Wilde's absurd yet...

There is a minor ambiguity in this title, which must be clarified for the purposes of this essay. The emphasis on an impression of the characters changing as you read more of the poem, may indicate the effect on a reader's initial interpretation...

Since the advent of bartering, materialism has been a prime concern for human beings. Inherent in our human nature is the desire to improve ourselves. This originates as an individualist need for improvement. The only way the individual can...

War is often referred to as being despicable, atrocious, and appalling, but the opposite appears to be true throughout Homer's epic poem, The Iliad. Though Homer does not attempt to portray war as magnificent, he does challenge his readers to...

The Iliad celebrates the heroics of some of the most famous Greek heroes, yet perhaps the most memorable character to appear in the epic poem is the Trojan warrior Hector. Throughout the poem, we get the impression that Homer treats Hector as a...

Rank was central in Homeric Greek society. Though first given by one's pedigree, a man's standing in society was affected by his aret (virtue). A man of low rank, unless elderly or a seer, was supposed to be physically weak, unremarkable or ugly,...

The drama found in The Iliad of Homer is not characterized by surprises. The reader always knows what to expect because of the gods' explicit prophecies as well as the behaviors of the mortals. The latter more subtly foreshadows future events. A...

"Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but it seldom takes place wordlessly... no speech is so filled with anger or scorn that the particles which express logical and grammatical connections are lacking or out of place." (from...

The ancient Greeks had strict criteria for individuals to follow if they were to be seen as heroes. Above all, a man needed to be a skilled warrior, but this was not the only requirement. To be a hero, a warrior had to respect authority, both...

In "Anatomy of Criticism", Northrop Frye explains a formula that describes the structure of dramatic comedy. Two key points in the formula are the use of "obstructing characters" and the "movement from pistis to gnosis". An "obstructing character"...

It is important for those with problems to seek refuge in a place where they can better sort out their difficulties and find solutions to their predicaments. Different people have different methods of coping with their problems: some attempt to...

"Only connect," E.M. Forster's inscription to Howard's End, is more problematic than it ought to be. It is a typically Forsterian injunction: idealistic, sweetly humanist and absolute, but vague and stated to be challenged. First, to what does the...

Examine the importance of public-school mentality in Howards End and A Passage to India

The public-school system remains unique because it was created by the Anglo-Saxon middle classes - how perfectly it expresses their character - with its...

In Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, the narrator, Esperanza, recounts brief incidents and memories that shape who she becomes as she grows from a child into a young woman. From the beginning, her hope for the future is represented...