Literature Essay Examples and Topics. Page 56

8,575 samples

Heroism of Early Greek and Hebrew Cultures

Joseph stands out to be a hero in The Old Testament because, from the stature of a slave sold to an Egyptian merchant, he grew to be the powerful administrator in Egypt, second only to [...]
  • Subjects: Comparative Literature
  • Pages: 8
  • Words: 2264

“The Grapes of Wrath” the Novel by John Steinbeck

The novel "The grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck is claimed to describe the lives of ordinary farm workers all over the United States of America who moved to California during the period of the [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 10
  • Words: 2861

Edgar Allan Poe’s Fear of Premature Burial

For instance, in The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat the police arrive and stimulate a desire on the part of the narrator to confess his crime and undergo punishment from the state.
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 7
  • Words: 1714

American Romanticism of “The Minister’s Black Veil”

In the story Hawthorne pondered upon the three ways of making God's word clearer to people. The author himself and his main hero saw the mission of a clergyman in explaining the Bible to the [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 750

Gender Equality Question: “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare

For the past few centuries, the rise of various movements have marked a certain change in the ideas and philosophies of man regarding the true nature of his existence, the pronounced inequalities of not only [...]
  • Subjects: Dramatic Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1333

Mina and Lucy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

At the beginning of the novel, Mina Murray is seen as the more deviant of the two women because she is working as a school teacher's assistant.
  • Subjects: Romantic Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 865

Kurt`S Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle Reflection Paper

From the very beginning of the book the problem of evil begins to torment the reader. The work under consideration is the author's flesh back to the past with foreseeing the events of the future.
  • Subjects: Themes in American Novels
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 552

Reaction Paper of the Book “A Child Called It”

Likewise, his position in the family changing from a 'son', 'the boy' and finally to 'it' not only indicates the severity of torture faced by David, but also the writer's expertise in explaining it.
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 697

Orientalism and East and West Conflicts

Today, the lines are blurred as to determine whether it should be an east or west conflict as it could also be any form of war against one ethnic group by a whole nation or [...]
  • Subjects: World Philosophy Literature
  • Pages: 8
  • Words: 2135

The Age of Enlightenment: Overview and Analysis

The Age of Enlightenment centered on France and two of the major philosophers who contributed to this age of Enlightenment were Voltaire and Montesquieu. In the realm of politics, the government was the focus of [...]
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 723

The End of Writer’s Block for Harold Pinter

A masterpiece, "One for the Road" ended a painful period of writer's block for Harold Pinter in a manner swift and strange and led to an explicitly political agenda of his subsequent plays, "Mountain Language" [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 933

Creative Writing for Children in Primary School

This has the implication that the connections for such writing should be strong and should be in line with the ideas that have to be passed to the reader that is from the beginning to [...]
  • Subjects: American Novels Writing Style
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1779

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut is a science fiction writer who tells about Cold War fears and the threat of the Bomb, the lurking dangers of overpopulation and food shortage on the one hand, and on the other government's [...]
  • Subjects: Comparative Literature
  • Pages: 7
  • Words: 2060

Kate Chopin’s Symbolism in Short Stories

The lightning becomes the conflict inside her and the beating of the rain on her roof is the beating of her heart as she finally expresses her passion with Alcee.
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 991

August Wilson’s “Fences” Review

At the same time, Troy tries the best way he knows how to direct the course of his own son's life away from the negative influence of the boy's ancestors.
  • Subjects: Themes in American Novels
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1267

Three Deserving Of Dante’s Hell

Considering the destruction, the loss of human lives and the reduction to slavery of even the Trojan Royalty, aside from the fact that the attack was done in stealth to a sleeping civilian population, Ulysses [...]
  • Subjects: Mythology
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 1217

“The Geography of Haunted Places” by Wilson Analysis

The audience and the nomadic performer are engaged in a dangerous game of discovery, desire, and possession that is intended to make the spectator understand the meaning of this play in the concept of contemporary [...]
  • Subjects: Plays
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1288

Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz

The extent of the openness of futurity for the human being lies in her present position and the objective reality the human being confronts.
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1268

Hamlet by William Shakespeare: A Filmic Event

In bringing Shakespeare's classic story of Hamlet to the big screen and reset into a modern context, director Michael Almereyda is forced to reinterpret the role of Ophelia due to significant changes in modern women's [...]
  • Subjects: British Literature
  • Pages: 12
  • Words: 3274

A Rose for Emily Literary Analysis

To gain an understanding of the story within a brief analysis, it is necessary to examine the story's plot, characterization, point of view, theme, symbols, and setting.
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 598

“Harry Potter” Movie and Novel: Plot Changes

The changes of the plot throughout the movie in comparison with the original novel are disturbing watchers since the times of cinema appearing and performance of the derivative movies.
  • Subjects: Comparative Literature
  • Pages: 17
  • Words: 4826

Book Proposal: Women of the Romantic Age

It will be dealt with Mary Shelley's biography and will also contain a detailed analysis of the most famous of all her books, Frankenstein.
  • Subjects: Comparative Literature
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1483

“The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger Review

Critics admit that Salinger's depiction of Holden Caulfield symbolizes the dilemma of the idealist in the contemporary world and shows the primary structural framework of a novel.
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 7
  • Words: 2291

Irish Literature In Irish Analysis

The main similarity of pre-WWII period and the Innti generation is close attention to Irish language and folklore. During the pre-WWII period of time, anxiety and desperation dominated in Irish poetry.
  • Subjects: Poems
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 935

Apollonian and Dionysian in Euripides’ “Bacchae”

The opposition between Apollonian and Dionysian can be described to be in the center of modern literary analysis since literary work is a difficult interrelation between form and contents, norm and abnormality, which can be [...]
  • Subjects: Mythology
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1285

Self-Awareness of Emma, Huckleberry Finn, and Asher Lev

This essay will portray the commonalities in these three novels and try to draw a contrast between them and discuss them in the light of three similar literary tools used, i.e.theme, antagonist, and irony in [...]
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 9
  • Words: 2529

American Literature. Harriet Jacobs and Walt Whitman

Whitman on the other hand demonstrates the idea that we are all part of a large whole, he explains, "And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand and the egg of wren".
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1388

Romance in Ying-Ying’s and The Western Wing Stories

The Story of the Western Wing is a love comedy that depicted adventures and relations between Oriole and Zhang. Secret love and romantic relations between a young scholar, Zhang Sheng, and a daughter of a [...]
  • Subjects: Romantic Literature
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1586

“The Kingdom of Matthias” by Johnson and Wilentz

The historical developments of that epoch were deeply connected with the growth and formation of a market society that deeply affected the lives of ordinary men and women and played a great role in the [...]
  • Subjects: Historical Literature
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1478

Nature as an Element in Romantic Literature

That his response to this vista is restorative and necessary is expressed within the second stanza, "These beauteous forms, / Through a long absence, have not been to me / As is a landscape to [...]
  • Subjects: Romantic Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 1002

Webster’s vs. Shakespeare’s Women in Their Plays

The comparison is expected to reveal the differences and similarities in the authors' manner of depicting women and the way they influenced the overall message of the plays.
  • Subjects: Gender in Literature
  • Pages: 18
  • Words: 4623

Sonny’s Blues by Baldwin: Short Story Analysis

It is clear that the narrator disapproves the way chosen by his younger brother."I did not like the way he carried himself, loose and dreamlike all the time...and I did not like his friends, and [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 646

Depression in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gillman

The paper provides a discussion of the short story and analyses the theme of emotion and depression that the main character Stetson Gilman undergoes and her advent into insanity caused by the wrong treatment given [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 1218

Women’s Role in World Literature of Enlightenment

In Hinduism, the reward of a proper woman is rebirth as a man, ancient Chinese women were considered to be the property of their fathers or husbands and in Japan, women were dressing in men's [...]
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1447

World Literature Reflecting Enlightenment Thinking

Literature as a constant reflector of the current events and ways people percept the world around cannot stand aside and fail to exhibit the characteristics and ideas of the new way of thinking.
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1069

Julia Alvarez’s Long Journey to Become a Writer

Being now a famous American writer of Dominican origin Julia Alvarez in the above-mentioned works establishes her goals and reasons for writing and elaborates on the role of reading in her choosing the profession of [...]
  • Subjects: Writers
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1547

“The Once and Future King” by T. H. White

The books referred to were "book 1-The Sword in the Stone, book 2-The Queen of Air and Darkness, book 3-The Ill-Made Knight and book 4-The Candle in the Wind, The author Terence Hanbury White who [...]
  • Subjects: British Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1172

Chapter 33 of “The Old Curiosity Shop” by Dickens

With the end of the Victorian period, the sexuality of the English society that did not find its reflection in the cultural phenomenon was striving to express itself in graphic art and at the beginning [...]
  • Subjects: British Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1309

Emily Dickenson’s Life through Poetry

The travel from the physical world of the body to the world of the spirits is symbolized by the gentle ride in a carriage shared with a pleasant company.
  • Subjects: Writers
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1535

Military Career of Edgar Allan Poe

Often overlooked, however, is the story of Poe's life: the heartbreak, financial struggles, success, mysterious death, and of course his military career. The success of the ominous poem gave Poe a steady income and cemented [...]
  • Subjects: Writers
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1238

Francis Weed in “The Country Husband” by John Cheever

The short story "The Country Husband" by John Cheever reveals the darker side of Suburbia, "the side which traps its residents in a web of conformity," and the protagonist of the story Francis Weed, is [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 641

Feminism in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler

Hedda Gabler, upon the discovery that her imaginary world of free-living and noble dying lies in shivers about her, no longer has the vitality to continue existence in the real world and chooses self-annihilation. At [...]
  • Subjects: Plays
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 880

Greek Goddess Hera Analysis

The myths tell that hera and Zeos were married in the garden of the gods, and in honor of the occasion, a marvelous tree, bearing apples of gold, sprang out of the earth.
  • Subjects: Mythology
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 568

“Empire of the Sun” by J. G. Ballard

In the sky to the northeast of Shanghai, he searches for a flash that temporarily overpowers the dawn and overflows the stadium with a strange light.
  • Subjects: British Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 825

Is Alex in Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” Cured?

He even states this in his assessment: "But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.
  • Subjects: British Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1303

Persian Letters by Montesquieu

I chose the 24th letter from the collection to demonstrate the peculiarities of the author's style that contributed significantly to the book's unfading success.
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 614

Representation of the Sophoclean Hero Aspects

Would God no Argo e er had winged the seas To Colchis through the blue Symplegades No shaft of riven pine in Pelion's glen Shaped that first oar blade in the hands of men Valiant [...]
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1360

Family Relationship: Lawrence and Joyce

The revolt of Stephen Dedalus begins in Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with his rejection of the blind religious attitude found existing in his family.
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 960

Characters in “The Scarlet Letter” and “Hamlet” Film

Hester returns to Boston just before her death, in order to be buried in the same grave as Dimmesdale, with 'A' inscribed on their tombstone. Much to her son's anger and disgust, she marries Claudius [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 622

First World War’s Impact on Sartre’s Works

Through the medium of Drama, Sartre attempted to essentially portray man as he actually is thereby using drama as a medium to enable the people to become conscious of the basic nature and tendency of [...]
  • Subjects: Writers
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 586

Ancient Civilizations. Odysseus and Polyphemus

Odysseus and his men reach the land of the Kyklopes, a rough and uncivilized race of one-dyed giants. Groaning in pain, the giant hurls boulders at them and prays to his father, Poseidon to wreak [...]
  • Subjects: Mythology
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 734

Children Literature. “Peter Pan” by J. M. Barrie

In Peter Pan literature, the writer uses different techniques to deliver his message to the writer. The writer tells a story complete with characters that include Peter Pan, Wendy, John and Jane.
  • Subjects: British Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 690

Analysis of King Lear and Paradise Lost

One son in particular, Edmund, allows the pain of being born a bastard and the rejection of his father to skew his view of the world and the intentions of his ambition.
  • Subjects: World Literature
  • Pages: 7
  • Words: 2131

Social Norms in ‘Bread Givers’ by Anzia Yezierska

Sara is shocked at the turn of events and their mother is a mute spectator to her daughters' miserable lives. The harsh realities of life have made her a mature woman, a Jewish woman of [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 642

Hero in Plautus’ “Pseudolus” Play

He is some kind of Robin Hood of the times when Plautus lived."As in both the plays of Aristophanes and Mevander, the Roman playwright Plautus addresses the issue of class consciousness and status in his [...]
  • Subjects: Plays
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 581

Human Relations in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” Play

Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is constructed so that readers will become analysts of the cause in the past for a present malaise; they become priests examining the entrails of a story to discover the cause. Using [...]
  • Subjects: Plays
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 874

Family Life in Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming”

The third grotesque view occurs {while Ruth is later dressing upstairs ostensibly to go with Teddy back to America} when Max and the others, realizing that Teddy's marriage to Ruth is in shambles, begin discussing [...]
  • Subjects: Plays
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1129

The Acts of Heroism in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”

The story revolves around Oedipus and his search for the cause of the blight on his city finding it to be himself while Iocaste is Oedipus' wife and mother who was very supportive of Oedipus' [...]
  • Subjects: World Philosophy Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 726

Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” and Alvarez’s “Yo!”

Though Lost in Yonkers and Yo! both address family problems, the play and the novel differ in their approaching them due to the following points: the way the women and their roles in the family [...]
  • Subjects: Comparative Literature
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1622

Family Structure in ‘The Good Earth’ by Buck

The rules in a conventional Chinese family are obligatory, where a wife has to be subservient to her husband, so also the children to their father, and each and every person including the husbands, wives [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 969

Walker’s “Jubilee”: Oral History in Lyrical Melodies

Margaret Walker's Jubilee is a lyrical novel that captures and shapes the saga of the African American experience by using the lyrics of slave songs and spirituals that give testimony to the legacy of her [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 9
  • Words: 2647

David Herbert Lawrence’s “Piano” Poem

The tonal quality of the woman's voice sends the speaker of the poem into a child-time memory that is not actually a single event, but a compilation of impressions throughout the Sundays of his childhood.
  • Subjects: Poems
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 855

Parent-Child Relations in Poetry

Robert Hayden is probably one of the best known for his verses that discover and articulate the African-American practice, from the epoch of slavery, and the times of Civil War, up to the time he [...]
  • Subjects: Poems
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 584

“Jabberwocky” Poem by Lewis Caroll

The meanings in the glossary differed from those in the Through The Looking Glass, therefore, the translation read: "It was evening, and the smooth active badgers were scratching and boring holes in the hill-side, all [...]
  • Subjects: Poems
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1336

Triangle of Time: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

Judging by the sentiments involved in the poem, the lover could be someone as remote from him as a woman he rode in a carriage once, or even a spectator who came to see one [...]
  • Subjects: Poems
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 949

Psychological Issues in “Fight Club” by Palahniuk

The story focuses upon an unnamed narrator who struggles to find a sense of fulfillment in a world in which personal fulfillment is supposed to be accomplished through making the right purchases and having access [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 935

“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison: General Idea

As he stood beneath the lights of the strident room, the inhabitants beam him and make him replicate himself; an unintentional orientation to parity nearly damages him, but the whole thing terminates well and he [...]
  • Subjects: American Literature
  • Pages: 6
  • Words: 1586

Contemporary Literature. Poems and Paintings

The poem and painting chosen for the analysis in this paper belong to the works of the second group, that is the picture came to existence much earlier than the poem which, in its turn, [...]
  • Subjects: Poems
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 614

Character Comparison in Science Fiction Works

While Shelley's work concerns the fantastic events that took place in the time contemporary to the author, the setting of "Oryx and Crake" is a far future when, as the author predicts, the mankind will [...]
  • Subjects: Comparative Literature
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1627

Contemporary Literature. Elements of Short Stories

But what is one to do?" Through the course of the story, the woman transforms from an individual who adores the outside and green growing things to becoming lost in the artificial world created by [...]
  • Subjects: Comparative Literature
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 747