Newest Literature Essays

“It was a dark and stormy night.” A cliché used in many novels to not only display the setting, but as a form of symbolism that contains a deeper meaning about the text. Different types of weather and the seasons are commonly used in novels as...

The epigraph in Coraline by G. K. Chesterton states that “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” (Gaiman 2). This is a fair representation of the function...

The poem, "On the Subway", by Sharon Olds is an insightful piece of work that beautifully examines the impact of centuries of racism and unfair stereotypes on the African American community. The narrator is a member of the “in” group of today’s...

A tender but powerful coming-of-age story, the film Moonlight chronicles the life of Chiron, a young African American boy living in a rough Miami neighborhood during the city’s notorious crack epidemic. Bullied throughout his youth, Chiron feels...

War is not ethic nor moral on the best of days, but even during the most brutal battles, some war rules must be established in order to protect soldiers of both sides. One of these rules, for instance, is that a warrior must never kill a soldier...

While Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War primarily serves as a straightforward historical text—bereft of the grand digressions and parables of Herodotus’s Histories—there are moments that strike one as especially poetic in tone. One...

Idylls of the King reflects the nature and dangers of Victorian idealism through an Arthurian lens. Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, portrays the unsustainability of extreme Christian values in his twelve narrative poems depicting the rise...

Daughters of the Dust is a film of astonishing visual imagery that tells the story of the Gullah clan, descendants of West African slaves living off the coast of Georgia at the turn of the 20th century. Through their isolation from the American...

From the very beginning, it seemed like Lorenzo and Jessica might not make a strong couple. Like any good Shakespearean match, these two were destined to have obstacles to face during the course of their relationship. Lorenzo is Christian and...

When the Emperor was Divine tells the story of a family of Japanese Americans living in California during World War II. During this time the United States Government forced the relocation and incarceration of those of Japanese descent into...

The importance of a narrative lies in its capacity to illustrate how humans perceive themselves as individuals and communities. Groups have been sharing stories since the beginning of time. As a result, narratives are products of their specific...

Numerous scholars have examined Christine de Pizan’s seminal The Book of the City of Ladies, finished circa 1405, as a conscious “reappropriation” of earlier texts by men – most notably as a formal response to Jean de Meun’s popular additions to...

The story of Bisclavret is a lais poem, written by Marie De France in the 12th century. The titular character is a knight cursed with the ability to change into a wolf. However, the true monster of this story is made out to be his unfaithful wife....

Many feminist scholars have lauded Edith Wharton for her refusal to shy away from portraying the misery of married women. A common interpretation of Wharton’s intentions were that this misery stems from the dissatisfaction her characters suffer at...

As one grows and matures throughout their lifetime, countless relationships are created and changed. These shifting relationships help define who a person will ultimately be. Many of the reasons for relationship changes come from social situations...

According to famous American actress Marilyn Monroe, “Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together”. At times when it seems one’s world is falling apart and life is not worth the unbearable pain, something unexpected...

Within contemporary culture, it is generally assumed that to speak for oneself is an exercise of inherent power – while speech signifies autonomy, silence implies subjugation. Yet Aeschylus’s Agamemnon complicates this dichotomy through its...

“We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking,” Jane Eyre reports fondly in the conclusion of her eponymous novel, describing the marital bliss she has finally achieved with Mr. Rochester...

In Andre Alexis’ novel, Fifteen Dogs, a group of dogs are given the ‘gift’ of human intelligence by the Gods Hermes and Apollo. Each dog experiences their new consciousness in diverse courses, for instance by rejecting or embracing it. Prince, a...

Within the canon of English Romantic literature, John Keats’ work is distinguished by its willingness to portray beauty as a blissful and unfathomable mystery. In contrast to the founding generation of Romantics most prominent during the late 18th...

There are a million people, men and women and children, who share the curse of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can stand and see, for just enough to keep them alive; who are condemned till the end of their days to monotony and weariness,...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” deals with the theme: “Undervaluation of Women”: the plot merits a feminist criticism because it brings to light the extent to which that men can go to have “trophy wives” that are impeccable. In the quest to...

In the novels The House on Mango Street and The Bell Jar, the two authors, Sandra Cisneros and Sylvia Plath show very contrasting motherly figures. Both novels are telling the general story of the respective authors through pseudonyms, Esperanza...

Prior to the events of the Stonewall Riots, queer and LGBTQ+ movements within the United States ran primarily underground and parallel to the rest of American social activist movements. Marginalized writers and authors during the early- to...