Literature Essays

Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman were both poets of the nineteenth century that both captured their readers by their unique style of writing. Dickinson grew up in a wealthy family where her father and grandfather were lawyers. Although they were very outspoken, she was very introverted and put words to paper. Her lifestyle led to […]

In his poem ‘Mending wall’, Robert Frost presents the idea to us of the physical labour involved in repairing a wall, and the significance of this, showing the effect it can have between people. This literal idea also hides a double meaning, presented to us through poetic techniques such as metaphors, imagery, structure and humour. […]

A creative person is someone who uses their imagination and intuition to create something new or to make changes to something that already exists. Creative people have many attributes such as openness to new experiences, observance, curiosity, personal freedom, a willingness to take risks, self reliance, persistence and the freedom from fear of failure. Intrinsic […]

There are a variety of different techniques used in the play “The Shoe Horn Sonata” that enable the text to be distinctively visual in conveying a point of view. Dramatic effects such as music, dialogue and flashbacks create the perspective of two women looking back on their memories and experiences of World War 2. Similarly, […]

Love is a theme that can be written and expressed in many ways, using many different literary devices, such as metaphors, similes, personification, allusion, etc. The poems, Sonnet 29 written by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Sonnet 43 written by Elizabeth Barret Browning, are both very different from each other as they both are conveying […]

The poem “Season” written by Wole Soyinka makes use of various poetic devices and techniques. The poem is set in the time spent waiting between autumn and winter and is seen through the eyes of corn garnered. In the poem, Soyinka depicts the feeling of the corn garnered and the fields he occupies. Primarily, this […]

Through rich, sensory details with flowing, enjambed lines, “The Visitor” by Gibbons Ruark is an elegant prose poem which elaborates on the sensuality of music through the vivid experiences of the first person narrator instead of the visit of a piano tuner, the inferred visitor in the title. Utilizing the narrator’s impressions, Ruark portrays the […]

The two poems I have chosen to compare are The Daffodils and Darkling Thrush. Both poems are about nature and convey the poet’s feelings about nature. William Wordsworth the poet of The Daffodils talks about flowers and has a happy and joyous feeling throughout meanwhile Thomas Hardy talks about a bird and the landscape and […]

“The Welsh Hill Country” begins with a devastating picture of a landscape which was beautiful many years ago but which now has lost its lustre. The poetic speaker firstly describes the desolate moor and in the last stanza he introduces a farmer who in spite of finding this gloomy panorama is still farming the land. […]

In this poem the 20th century poet Cheng refers to the 19th century poet Wordsworth who referred to the 17th century poet Milton. So he is thereby indirectly referring to Milton and there is a Consistency of style. He is urging him to be here at this time because Where Wordsworth wrote about the beauty […]

In Hughes’ poem RED, the last in his anthology, Birthday Letters, Hughes adapts/ subverts Plath’s style of utilising colours to represent various feelings and ideas. Early in their marriage Plath wrote to her mother claiming “I am so suggestible to colours…I’m sure a red carpet would keep me forever optimistic” Hughes plays on Plath’s decision […]

An anonymous author once stated, “There are times in everyone’s life when something constructive is born out of adversity when things seem so bad that you’ve got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it. ” This quote states that life often hands us struggles that we must overcome. Some are often easy […]

In ‘Mid-Term Break’ by Seamus Heaney and ‘The Lesson’ by Edward Lucie-Smith a similar impact is achieved through alternative means; Heaney uses language to set up a contrast whereas Lucie-Smith uses irony. Both techniques are striking and subtly interwoven throughout the poems, in order to describe the devastating theme of death from a child’s perspective. […]

Judith Ortiz Cofer, a native of Puerto Rico center her work of art on biculturalism and creative process in lieu of her belief in freedom of expression and in the need to propagate the literature and ability of the many people contributing to the culture of their realm. The author expounds the meaning of Quinceanera […]

Our modern times today pronounce that there should be equality amongst men, that there ought to be democracy and justice that transcends the restrictions of race, color, and ethnicity. But before the rise of such contemporary ideas and thoughts, it was apparent that discrimination owing to race and specifically color was present. During those times, […]

“Song of Green Mountain” is one of the Koryo poems from The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry. Although it was my first time to read it, I previously heard about the poem when I was still attending schools in Korea and knew it was a famous poem from the Koryo period. When I first […]

Generally, the mood of the poem, The Husband’s Message, is a sense of incompleteness or sadness and profound love. The poem tells the story of a man who was exiled from his homeland and forced to leave his wife because of a certain “feud. ” After the “feud” ends, the man then carves a message […]

The poem, The Husband’s Message, is not an epic poem because it lacks the characteristics that are essential to an epic poem. One of the basic characteristics of an epic poem is that the main protagonist or the hero should generally be “larger than life” and possess traits that can make him a legend someday. […]

When the characters of District 6 are analysed superficially they are not admirable. Mary is a prostitute; Zoot has a criminal record and beats people up. And Mrs Knight goes to church every Sunday and is happily married with 3 children. If you judge these people superficially, you would think Mrs Knight would be the […]

In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury one character unifies the story, Caddy Compson. She is central to the story and Faulkner himself said that Caddy was what he “wrote the book about” (“Class Conference” 236). However many of the criticism’s of the novel find Caddy less interesting than Faulkner’s other characters: Quentin, Jason, […]

Cathy Song’s poem entitled “Stamp Collecting” is an illustration of culture of several countries. The narrator discussed the use of stamps – to sell tourism in a country. The narrator gave various examples to justify the claim. She shows that stamp collecting is a depiction of cultural heritage. Not just a simple part of the […]

The first stanza of the poem “They ask me for verses”, speaks of the time when Jose Rizal was writing this poem. In the first stanza Jose Rizal used a lyre to symbolize his writing; The members of the society requested him to write a poem, even though he doesn’t find it easy to write […]