Newest Literature Essays

A heroine can be defined in two different ways: the first, as the principal female character in a novel; or in the second way, as a woman noted for a courageous action or significant accomplishment. The heroines of King Lear, Crime and Punishment...

In his novel Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky uses nightmares to develop the story of Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, the depraved sensualist, to its dnouement, in which he fully accepts his dire situation and its inevitable outcome....

Fyodor Dosteoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a renowned 19th-century novel that has captivated audiences for generations. Part of the appeal for this classic text comes from the densely interwoven and constantly evolving thematic motifs and...

"The extraordinary...have the right to commit all kinds of crimes and to transgress the law in all kinds of ways, for the simple reason that they are extraordinary." [1] Dostoyevsky's main characters are divided into two philosophical categories....

Madness and sanity seem to exist on opposite poles of a binary; one is defined by the absence of the other. However, this binary, though present in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, is problematic. The...

Dreams are considered a link to one's unconscious, able to offer explanations that "... the dreamer could not invent for himself in his waking state," (46). Sigmund Freud made revolutionary strides with the psychological implications of dreams in...

Fyodor Dostoevsky once stated, "Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience. But nothing is a greater cause of suffering" (Eiermann). Existentialism insists that human life is understood in terms of one's unique experience....

The primary conflict in Crime and Punishment is the internal development of Raskolnikov's character. In Raskolnikov's mind are two contrasting personalities, each demanding control over him. One side, brought out by poverty and egoism, is the...

George Crabbe's The Village has long been perceived as a response to the flowery pastoral poetry of the late Eighteenth century, a genre marked by its praise of the countryside and the simple lives of shepherds and peasants. Indeed, Crabbe...

Deception and disguise, classic elements of comedy, are found in both William Wycherly's The Country Wife and Richard Steele's The Conscious Lovers. These devices rely on gaps of knowledge between different characters, or between characters and...

Particularly interesting in a genre that by its definition is meant to be a crowd-pleaser, Shakespeare's play Coriolanus provides a protagonist who is not particularly likeable. Constantly insulting in his speech, prideful and short-tempered,...

"What he cannot help in his Nature, you/account a Vice in him." 1. This is the reason it is so difficult, and yet so necessary, to sympathise with Coriolanus. His virtues work in conjunction with his vices and for a modern reader, with little...

Mention Tonya Harding, Timothy McVeigh or Monica Lewinsky, and immediately the infamous deeds of each individual come to mind. Each of these names meant nothing until actions such as sex and violence became associated with them. Monica Lewinskyâs...

The American Dream, once a noble ideal of freedom and individualism, has been replaced by a ruthless game for money, at the expense of freedom and morality. In his novel Continental Drift, Russell Banks highlights the interplay of money and...

As society's rules and ideals have changed over time, so have their

definitions of evil been completely revolutionized. While today evil is something morally wrong, a violation of some universal law, it was not always seen in the same light. St....

Saint Augustine dwells upon the nature and origin of evil throughout his Confessions. Morality is an inextricable part of religion and religious doctrine, but the question seems to hold some greater weight for him beyond the teachings of the...

She told him about...country sounds and country smells and of how fresh and clean everything in the country is. She said that heought to live there and that if he did, he would find that all his troubles were city troubles.

-Nathanael West, Miss...

All Christians desire to be closer to God, and ultimately, to be with Him after death. But how does one grow closer to God? There are two possible answers to this question. The simplest answer is that all one needs to do is have faith in the words...

Karl MarxÃÂÂs infamous statement that, ÃÂÂI am not a MarxistÃÂ? holds a profound truth deeply connected with his philosophy. It could be understood to mean that he disdained the hundreds of interpretations of his work following their publication....

Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto was most appealing to and revolutionary for the industrial workers of 1848 (and those to come after that time). The call for unification of the proletariat and abolishment of the Bourgeoisie was an urgent one during...

In the short story "In Another Country" Ernest Hemingway explores the differences between American and Italian soldiers' conceptualizations of the physical and emotional tolls of World War I. In particular, the story shows that the long-term...

The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, has become one of the world's most influential and significant pieces of political propaganda ever written. It contains the viewpoints and ideology of the world-view that Marx and...

One of Shakespeare's earliest plays (its first recorded performance in December 1594), The Comedy of Errors has frequently been dismissed as pure farce, unrepresentative of the playwright's later efforts. While Errors may very well contain...

Raymond Smith once wrote, "Hughes attempted to integrate the two facets of double consciousness (the American and the Negro) into a single vision - that of a poet." Langston Hughes, possibly the most prominent black American poet, incorporates...