Literature Essay Samples Page 148

Judged from modern perspective Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is an absurd play. Its grotesque, supernatural and ludicrous elements may remind us of the post-war experimental drama of  Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter which came to be known as the Theater of the Absurd. But Shakespeare’s comedy does not share their incoherent…

The Scarlet Letter BY cat Many of today’s classics are read without consulting the backgrounds that the author used to write the novel. This may then cause interpretations of a certain subject or symbol of the novel. In Nathaniel Hawthorns The Scarlet Letter’s case, this touchy subject is witchcraft. The theme of witchcraft is carefully…

Shirley Jackson uses symbolism in “The Lottery” to show the importance of remaining faithful to tradition and the unknown consequences that seem to occur when citizens lose touch with their village’s rituals. The idea of a yearly lottery in this small village is a very important ritual that has been passed down for such a…

This site is one of the ost popular places to visit in the world so it comes as no surprise that there have been romanticized stories made up about the Taj Mahal over the years. The culture is known to have a strict hierarchy. For example, India uses a caste system that people are born…

The Schopenhauer Cure (2006), authored by Irvin Yalom, is a novel detailing the journey of a prominent psychotherapist, Julius Hertzfeld, after he discovers that he is slowly dying from a terminal illness. Faced with his own mortality, Julius begins to examine his life through his effectiveness as a therapist and his failures both in his…

Fairy tales play different roles teaching children about morals, right v. wrong and with these teaching it impacts a child and helps them with their growth. In “Fairy Tales and the Existential Predicament” by Bruno Bettelheim he argues that fairy tales help teach children more than parents do, since parents want to shelter children and…

Macbeth, a Play for our Time. The Irony and SymbolismSuch is the genius and so great is the scope of Shakespeare’s writings that there can be little doubt that a common perception is one of an imaginative mind concocting stories. In fact Shakespeare had many sources and much of his work was based on historical…

            Tayama Katai’s “The Quilt” is regarded “as the prototypical shishosetsu” (Fowler xvi) and is often discussed as the first marker for the emergence of the genre which influenced almost every other writer/genre of the period. Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit in her book “Rituals of Self-Revelation: shishosetsu as a literary genre and socio cultural phenomenon” says “…

On a clear morning, June 27th, the townspeople, men, women, and children begin to assemble for the lottery which Is to begin at ten In the morning. The opening paragraphs completely mask the underlying darkness of this short story. As the reader progresses throughout the story, these deeper elements of the story become evident. “The…

Cat’s Cradle Religion  If humans strive to fulfill their void, of a lack of meaning in their lives, their folly will blind them from the truth.  Kurt Vonnegut portrays his inner emotions and feelings of the insignificance of religion through the characters of his novel, Cat’s Cradle. His satiric approach to a subject that many…