Literature Essays

“Salvation” is a short story which appears in the autobiography “The Big Sea” by Langston Hughes.  In  the story, a twelve year old boy learns a very difficult lesson when attending a church service and the experiences described in the story as well as the fresh language used to describe …

In the given passage, Captain MacWhirr, a simple yet mysterious sailor, recollects his past choices and relationship with his now deceased parents. Although the achievement of becoming a captain would normally be praised, the disapproval of his parents reduces the accomplishment in the eyes of the reader, which reveals the …

            Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the best revenge plays written, and has gained a lot of interpretations by different people. One of them is Franco Zeffirelli, who conceived Hamlet’s film version, The Zeffirelli Hamlet. One important element of the film adaptation is the portrayal …

The achievements of arriving at a conclusion by deliberation through the means of rational self-argumentation have meaning in so far as it refers to actual or possible experience of the individual. The task of such an argumentation was to lead oneself and the audience to understand the nature of the …

The Bait, a poem written by metaphysical poet, John Donne, during the early seventeenth century, tells the story of a woman whose physical attractiveness and coquettish behaviour prove destructive as they succeed in ruining her chances of finding a pure and meaningful relationship. This poem is recounted from the point …

Edwige Danticat’s “The Book of the Dead” is a short, historically based fictional story which describes the reign of a corrupt Haitian dictator, Dr. Francois Duvalier, and the adverse effects of his oppressive rule. In the story, Annie, a sculptor, discovers that her father, who she idolized for his heroic …

“I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person…These seemingly fragile people are the strong people really (Williams: Twenty Years after Glass Menagerie).” Tennessee here captured the very essence of Arthur …

‘The Crucible’, written in the 1950s by playwright Arthur Miller, is a dramatisation of the Salem witch trials of 1962. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism in American during the 1950s. The play explores the notion that a functional society cannot exist without a balance in power. …

It has been a long while since I read an autobiography and this one, contrary to most everything else professors have assigned to read, was pretty decent. Camara Laye’s The Dark Child is at first glance your run of the mill coming of age tale, with a few different odds …

The story ‘The Lottery’ was written by Shirley Jackson, throughout the piece the author builds up suspense towards the climax. The story takes place in a small village, where the people are close and tradition is paramount. A yearly event, called the lottery, is one in which one person in …