Literature Essays

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Essay on Allusion in 'The Odyssey'

3 Pages 1160 Words
The Odyssey is a classic ancient Greek poem credited to Homer, following the Greek hero Odysseus and his extensive journey home after the fall of Troy. In his absence, his wife Penelope “is sieged by suitors who want her hand in marriage and with it her kingdom” (Morford, Lenardon, & Sham, 2019, p. 520). Despite having over one hundred wilful...

Essay on Archetypes in 'The Odyssey'

1 Page 492 Words
Sirens, synonymous with their seductive and tempting voices in Greek mythology, which bewitch men causing their deaths, is one archetype intertextually present in both O Brother Where Art Thou and Homer’s Odyssey which the film is loosely based on. Through strategic employment of diegetic sound, the careful and thought-provoking composition of the mise-e-scene, and numerous camera shots, the archetype is...

Thesis Statement for 'The Giver' Essay

2 Pages 749 Words
Freedom and Choice A utopian society has been created for people in the book so that they have no rights and no individual thoughts. Every individual is much the same. Daily, everybody takes a pill that erases all memories, pain, and tension. Jonas, the protagonist, is selected to inherit all the world's memories and discovers that anyone he cares for...

The Giver' Argumentative Essay

6 Pages 2882 Words
President Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States of America, once said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world...

The Giver' Persuasive Essay

2 Pages 1003 Words
In the science fiction book, The Giver by Lois Lowry, the protagonist, Jonas, lives in a community that is excruciatingly controlled. The members of the community could not even make most of their own choices. Almost everyone who lived within the confines of the community never had to experience anything gruesome like pain or hunger, nor did they understand the...

Essay on 'First Impressions' by Jane Austen

3 Pages 1501 Words
Pride and Prejudice is a novel on manners, social customs, and etiquette based in early 19th century England. One of the most notable themes in this novel is, of course, reputation and impressions. Austen originally titled this novel as First Impressions. While Austen does make numerous references to the importance of first impressions, this essay will primarily focus on the...

Essay on 'Emma' by Jane Austen Summary

2 Pages 1106 Words
The upper class is responsible for creating friendships, initiating invitations, and more importantly, being charitable to those in a lesser position. When someone violates these social norms, they are met with indignation as evidence of Mrs. Elton not understanding entirely her social position in society. Mrs. Elton is insufferably conceited about new money and only has money because of her...

Essay on 'Antigone' Conflicts

5 Pages 2347 Words
The idea of conflict between the state and individuals and the theme of civil disobedience remains prevalent throughout society today. Despite 'Antigone' and 'Fahrenheit 451' being written nearly two thousand years apart, both texts share the same societal issues of conflict between the state and the individual but in different contexts. Both Sophocles and Bradbury are influenced by the political...

Essay on Haemon in 'Antigone'

3 Pages 1626 Words
In Sophocles’ Antigone, the two characters of Creon and Antigone represent unreflective and polarising moments of Greek life, highlighting the conflict and divide between male and female, and “polis” and “Oikos”. Throughout the drama, Creon displays a near-existential fear of female transgression. He first introduces the theme of a male-female conflict when he says. Indeed, now I am no man,...

Essay on Character Traits of Antigone

3 Pages 1499 Words
Antigone as a character within Jean Anouilh’s modern re-creation of Sophocles’s Greek classic, ‘Antigone’, is surrounded by ambiguity. Within Sophocles’s version, Antigone is presented with clear, rational, and understandable motives for defying Creon and the oppressive state in which he struggles to uphold. However, unlike Sophocles, Anouilh teaches us nothing of Antigone’s motivations and instead creates a depiction of an...

5 Paragraph Essay on Anne Frank

1 Page 541 Words
WWII Nazis exhibited extreme adversity and conflict against the Jewish people of Europe. Diaries written like Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl and Bloeme Emden’s first-hand account in Hidden Like Anne Frank represent methods the Jews cope with the ongoing conflict against them. But while they more specifically represent the Jewish people of WWII, they also represent people universally...

Their Eyes Were Watching God' Literary Analysis Essay

3 Pages 1178 Words
The concept of “a new beginning” is a recurrent theme that prevails in African American literature, predominantly, in the geographical form of The South. Used as a literary terrain, The South is more than a characterization of the savagery that African Americans endured during the period of slavery. It is within this landscape that African Americans advanced society and culture...

Their Eyes Were Watching God' Symbolism Essay

2 Pages 1003 Words
“That was the end of her childhood”: Journey for Love in Their Eyes Were Watching God In the foreword of Zora Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Edwidge Danticat, the author of the short story Krik? Krak!, notes the complex trials that Janie Crawford, the protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God, “as she attempts to survive her grandmother’s...

Their Eyes Were Watching God' Essay on Relationships

2 Pages 884 Words
In the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, we learn that failed relationships are just as important to character development as thriving ones. Zora Neale Hurston unfolds the story of a young black woman struggling with finding herself due to a lifetime of being told that she isn’t good enough. Within every relationship, Janie gains a new piece of herself....

Essay on Johnny from 'The Outsiders'

1 Page 578 Words
Johnny is a dynamic character in the novel The Outsiders due to his afraid beginnings, bold experiences, and finally his loving ending. The first character trait that describes Johnny at the beginning of this novel is afraid. Johnny Cade was last and least. If you can picture a little dark puppy that has been kicked too many times and is...

Essay on Loyalty in 'The Odyssey'

4 Pages 1843 Words
Introduction “The Thousand and One Night” is a text that involves a series of different stories that are centered on one major story. These stories have been narrated by a woman known as Shahrazad. She narrates the stories to her husband, the king. Shahrazad tells the story to the sultan every night ending it with a cliffhanger to make sure...

Essay Tiresias in 'The Odyssey'

2 Pages 1057 Words
In Book XI of The Odyssey, in the underworld, Tiresias describes to Odysseus a final journey he must take to 'have a gentle, painless death... with all [his] people there in blessed peace around [him]” (Homer, XI. 155,157). Tiresias says that Odysseus must walk inland with an oar until he gets to a place where people mistake it for a...

Rosemary's Role in 'The Giver'

2 Pages 964 Words
Introduction Lois Lowry’s The Giver presents a thought-provoking narrative that explores themes of memory, emotion, and individuality within a seemingly utopian society. A pivotal yet enigmatic character within this narrative is Rosemary, the Giver's previous trainee. Although she appears only briefly, Rosemary's presence is deeply felt and her influence on the story is profound. Her experience as a Receiver-in-training and...

Essay on Sexism in 'The Odyssey'

5 Pages 2125 Words
In the title, Sherry Simon (1996) refers to linguistic aspects of gender as opposed to biological or social gender. Linguistic gender breaks down into semantic and grammatical gender: semantic gender corresponds to a referent's biological sex; grammatical gender is assigned even to inanimate nouns. English follows a natural gender system, where the assigned gender corresponds to the perceived sex of...

Sexism in 'Of Mice and Men' Essay

1 Page 461 Words
Why was there so much discrimination in the early 1930's? John Steinbeck’s highly renowned “Of Mice and Men” is an outstanding novel that paints a depressingly realistic portrait of America during the Great Depression in the 1930s. In the novel, Steinbeck attacks the many issues that plagued the country during that time. His purpose in writing “Of Mice and Men”...

Heart of Darkness' Sexism Essay

1 Page 642 Words
Although the Heart of Darkness is encompassed with the essence of femininity, this novel does not do women justice. It is safe to say that Conrad's text can be found sexist for the portrayal of women, as demonstrated throughout, are non-complex characters and they simply exist for the male to gaze upon. From Marlow's perspective especially, women are treated as...

Jane Austen Persuasive Essay

4 Pages 1836 Words
Gothic romance novels are mysterious, romantic, and dark works of literature. Authors who write in this genre typically follow a clear-cut formula when doing so. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, a gothic romance film, follows that typical formula when constructing the gothic heroine onscreen. While Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey parodies gothic romances such as Rebecca, she does so purposefully. By rewriting the...

Antigone' Feminism Essay

5 Pages 2503 Words
'But I will bury him; and if I must die, I say that this crime is holy' Once described as a play depicting the complexities of 'state versus personal', Antigone's sheer determination to transgress against the politics of the king, to follow her personal beliefs, presents her as a highly strong-willed protagonist. The idea of a female figure with such...

The Role of Cicones in Homer's Odyssey

2 Pages 952 Words
Introduction In Homer’s epic poem, "The Odyssey," the episode involving the Cicones serves as a pivotal moment that foreshadows the challenges Odysseus and his crew will face on their journey home. The encounter with the Cicones, occurring shortly after the Greeks depart from Troy, illustrates themes of hubris, retribution, and the complexities of human conflict. This event is not only...

Essay on Lessons from 'The Odyssey'

2 Pages 1002 Words
Homer’s Odyssey is an epic set in 1200 BC. It begins with the victory of the Greeks, which Odysseus is part of, against the Trojans. The victory of the Trojan War which lasts 10 ten years. The next 10 years after the war, are Odysseus’s adventures and challenges to get home to Ithaca. Throughout his adventures, important life lessons are...
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