Essays on Fantasy

Every four years, two children from the village of Gavaldon are kidnapped. They’re taken to the famed School for Good and Evil, where they are trained to be either storybook heroes or villains. The lovely but arrogant Sophie can’t wait to be kidnapped. She knows...

Lord Acton, a British historian, once said “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Over the course of human history, the Church has been the focus of many criticisms, including but not limited to the relationship with the state, the persecution of heretics,...

The Self-Sufficient Beauty and the Entitled Beast Growing up means growing up with stereotypes and gender roles following behind like an annoying friend. They mature, starting from being expected to playing with and nursing dolls, or destroying toys and playing in the mud, and from...

As people start hitting the age of withdrawal and are qualified to become a pensioner, the free time cannot be fully utilized due to the health conditions that one faces. No matter how hard one tries, it becomes impossible to avert any health issues at...

During his search to find his missing twin sister, Will Cleary gets drawn into a mysterious crystal-like world parallel to his own. This world is populated by Echoes, a reflection of the Sounds residing in the living world. When a person (or Sound) dies, his...

Absolute monarchies have carried a negative connotation throughout history and have been the source of many rebellions and wars. However, if an absolute monarch learns to be just and execute his power rationally, then his or her reign can be pleasant and the nation can...

During his life, C.S. Lewis writes a collection of seven novels that he publishes into his well-known Chronicles of Narnia series, which sheds light on Narnia’s history. These novels introduce similar themes with the first book in the series named, The Magician’s Nephew. Most importantly,...

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Vladimir Nabakov often told stories of men and women destroyed by unknowing forces and desires driving them to madness....

In “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Nathanael composes a letter to his fiancée’s brother Lothar recalling the terror of the legendary Sandman who would steal the eyes of children who wouldn’t go to bed and feed them to his own children in the moon. From...

The movie I have chosen to talk about is titled “The Wizard of Oz”. Over going each genre and carefully selecting which genre this movie falls under, I picked the Fantasy Genre. One scene in the film that sticks out to me in specific is...

The biggest difference that I noticed between the French version of Beauty and the Beast and the Disney version is the Disney version’s character development. In the French version, it talks about Beauty’s story and how she had to leave her father and fall in...

Though written primarily for a young audience, C.S. Lewis’s fiction overflows with Biblical allusion and religious imagery. A Lewis narrative, indeed, becomes a vessel through which he is able to infuse his writing with his own complex theological ideology. This is evident in the events...

Both C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea tackle the idea of the child-protagonists having to go on a type of journey to defeat their respective foes and partaking in a search for their self-identity...

A mermaid is a creature that is half woman and have fish. The literal meaning of “Mer” means “the sea”. The male version is called a merman. Legends of the Mer go back thousands of years. There are even some skeptics who say that once...

When it comes to works of fiction, it is always most interesting to see where the author draws inspiration for the major characters from and what the underlying message of the story at hand. Disillusioned from faith as a child, C. S. Lewis would find...

Everyone has his or her own idea of literature and what separates a work of literary fiction from a work of popular fiction. Generally speaking, a work must adhere to literary traditions, convey a deeper meaning, and present conventional themes in order to be recognized...

E.T.A. Hoffmann never reveals the true nature of his protagonist Nathanael’s childhood incident, and thus by design creates ambiguity within The Sandman. This ambiguity leads to two possible interpretations of the story, one of reality and one of fantasy. Neither of the interpretations dominates the...

In 1955 C. S. Lewis wrote and published The Magician’s Nephew, a high fantasy adventure story set in early 20th century England, a prequel to the other stories in The Chronicles of Narnia. In the story, Digory Kirke, a young boy, travels to a strange...

I give the book Becoming the Dragon (The Dragon Inside Book 1) 3 out of 4 stars. It’s not my typical genre, but I have really enjoyed reading this. The reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 4 stars is because when the book...