Newest Literature Essays

Mythological accounts constantly transform themselves in crossing cultures and enduring time, but two versions of the story of Dido and Aeneas, one by a shy, serious, government-sponsored poet; the other by an often lighthearted author, a future...

Duty is a recurring theme throughout Virgils The Aeneid. It plays a crucial role as a key character trait for the individuals that we encounter. If one takes the protagonist Aeneas aside and analyzes his persistent adherence to his own destiny,...

As a modern reader approaching the epics, one inevitably brings certain expectations and standards formed throughout the course of our experiences; one's literary appetite is accustomed to a certain kind of satisfaction, and one of the most...

'I sing of arms and of the man, fated to be an exile', begins Virgil, and it is on precisely the issue of this man of arms that critical debate in recent years has tended to centre. Scholars continue to disagree on whether or not Aeneas is...

Even though Tom Sawyer is just a young boy in the chapter "Here a Captive Heart Busted," his actions cross the boundary of child's play and enter into the boundaries of wrongdoing. This comical, yet tedious chapter in Mark Twain's The Adventures...

Tom Sawyer is a boy's boy. He's mischievous, he's adventure seeking, he's fascinated with bugs. Yet while much has been written about these first two personality traits, it is the third one the unexamined territory of Tom's insectuous...

"But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody" (Twain 95). As is epitomized by the preceding quote, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain one of the central conflicts is that of the...

Mark Twain's satiric masterwork The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has, over time, manifested itself as a novel of pronounced controversy proportionate to its tremendous literary worth. The story of an "uncivilized" Southern boy and the intrigues...

"My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses, and hypocrisies," Mark Twain once reflected. Morality does not flourish in such a society, as illustrated by its rampant...

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain paints, through the southern drawl of an ignorant village boy, the story of America as it existed in the quickly receding era of his own childhood. While written about childhood adventures,...

Written during a time in which racial inequality is the norm, and people of color are looked upon as lesser beings, Mark Twain, in his landmark novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, pens a character in Jim who is the epitome of restrained...

Picaresque -- what a scary word. What can it mean? By definition, the word picaresque is an adjective, which describe a genre of prose fiction that depicts in realistic, often amusing detail about the adventures of a roguish hero of low social...

In "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" Mark Twain depicts various characters in the story according to his own moral and social beliefs. He portrays some characters as admirable or virtuous, and others as dislikeable or amoral. These portrayals...

"I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any...

Life and death, beginnings and endings. The death of one person: the ending of two lives, or the beginning of both? Sylvia Plath, tumbling through madness toward suicide, created a collection of poems titled Ariel, and used the theme poem to...

With his novel about a young adolescent's journeys and struggles with the trials and questions associated with Huck's maturation, Mark Twain examines societal standards and the influence of adults that one experiences during childhood. The...

"O, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do. Dey's awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey skyers me so. Please to don't tell nobody 'bout it, sah, er ole mars Silas he'll scole me; 'kase he say dey ain' no witches. I...

Whenever Huck Finn steers his raft from the free currents of the river to the brambles on the banks of the Mississipi he renews his interaction with the society of the American south. When Twain's narrative comes ashore with Huck, the narrative...

The Aeneid clearly reflects the influence which Homer's Odyssey had on Virgil's writing. Among the several common aspects shared by these two epic poems, each author's depiction of the Underworld provides an interesting basis for comparison....

"The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer,...

A hackneyed expression states that one should never discuss religion or politics in certain social settings. Religion has been, is, and always will be a topic of debate and disagreement. Literature is a major media in which religious sentiments...

Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Maya Angelou. What do these writers have in common? Sure, they are all great American authors, but there is something else. They are all "banned." Censored. Forbidden. Who has not read a book by at least one...

American authors tend to write about life in their times. Mark Twain lived in the 1800's and witnessed the Civil War era. At that time, our nation was divided over the issue of slavery. The inhumane treatment of slaves moved Twain to use his...

The greatest recent event -- that "God is dead," that the belief in the Christian God has ceased to be believable -- is... cast[ing] its shadows over Europe. For the few, at lease, whose eyes....are strong and sensitive enough for this...