The presence of supernatural elements is a defining characteristic of Gothic literature, serving not only to create an atmosphere of fear and suspense but also to explore deeper themes of human psychology, morality, and the unknown. By integrating ghosts, curses, and other unearthly phenomena, Gothic novels delve into the complexities ...Read More
The presence of supernatural elements is a defining characteristic of Gothic literature, serving not only to create an atmosphere of fear and suspense but also to explore deeper themes of human psychology, morality, and the unknown. By integrating ghosts, curses, and other unearthly phenomena, Gothic novels delve into the complexities of the human mind, societal fears, and the thin line between reality and the supernatural.
Analyzing the role of supernatural elements in Gothic literature offers valuable insights into the historical and cultural contexts from which these works emerged. It allows for an exploration of how authors use the supernatural to challenge readers' perceptions and to comment on issues of their time. Furthermore, such an essay can illuminate the enduring appeal of the supernatural in storytelling and its impact on readers' engagement and imagination. Writing on this theme encourages critical thinking about the ways in which the supernatural influences narrative structure, character development, and themes, making it a rich topic for literary analysis.
Popular Novel Essay Topics
Exploring the Evolution of the Hero's Journey in Modern Novels
The Dichotomy of Utopia and Dystopia in Science Fiction Literature
Character Development and Moral Ambiguity in Crime Fiction
Technology and Society: Analyzing the Predictions of Sci-Fi Literature
These topics are designed to provoke thought and encourage a deeper understanding of various literary genres and themes. They offer a wide range of exploration opportunities for students and scholars alike, providing a platform to analyze novels from multiple perspectives.
Daphne du Maurier’s gothic romance novel Rebecca touches on a young woman, who remains unnamed throughout the novel, and her self-inflicted life of misery. Being recently married into a high social class, the protagonist, Mrs. De Winter, faces internal and external struggles with her new...
In Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita, many types of sin and corruption are exemplified in both Moscow and Yershalaim: people are rude and curt to others for no reason, accept bribes, act and speak hypocritically, spy and betray others, and so on. In...
In the novel The Smell of Apples, written by Mark Behr, Behr uses a first-person perspective through the main character Marnus, an eleven year old boy. The book uses a first-person narration, through Marnus, to relay both the events of when he is older and...
Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic weaves together history and fiction to create an extremely personalized account of actual events. Two of these stories, that of Frederick Douglass coupled with those of Jack Alcock and Teddy Brown, are particularly interesting because they are predominantly concerned with the bodies...
‘Toyota Celica / A long moment passed before I realized this was the name of an automobile…The utterance was beautiful and mysterious, gold-shot with looming wonder. It was like the name of an ancient power in the sky.’ Made-to-order essay as fast as you need...
Throughout Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, themes of marriage, love, and intimacy are carefully woven into the lives of the Ganguli family; namely Gogol and his parents. The novel begins with Ashima and Ashoke, Gogol’s parents, and the beginnings of their arranged marriage, and follows for...
Charlotte Brontë’s Villette revolves around the myriad cycles and seasons of life. Lucy Snowe traverses from place to place, witnessing different stages of life and yearning for her own fulfillment of elusive experiences. Lucy’s introspections focus particularly on death, even comparing people to and calling...
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, written in 1897 during the Victorian era depicts and delves through the historical context of what society was like in the past. His extraordinary piece places a strong emphasis on sexuality by contrasting it with the conventional and stereotypical views towards...
The Day the Cowboys Quit is a novel that was based on the events that took place at the old Tascosa in the Texas Panhandle in 1883. The Day the Cowboys Quit is a novel written by Elmer Kelton, in 1971. Kelton was born April...
The central female protagonists in Nella Larsen’s novella Quicksand and Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire embrace material culture for a multitude of reasons. Helga Crane’s love of colour is both aesthetic in the clothing she adores and it serves as a metonym to...
Set in the dismal future of planet Earth, player one, Wade lives in “the stacks” of Oklahoma City. Towers of RVs placed one on top of the other up to 24 units high, from the stacks and his home. As the world’s gas crisis continues...
In Native Son, the main issue for the main character, Bigger, is that he has killed Mary Dalton. However, just like many other elements throughout the novel, this issue is simply a surface level issue. The deeper problem is that Bigger wants to be free,...
The female driven novel, The Forgotten Waltz, written by Anne Enright offers readers insight to the role and importance of women in modern-day Ireland. The protagonist, Gina Moynihan, throws herself into an affair and in doing so, is left to re-evaluate her relationship with the...
The universal refugee experience of fleeing and finding homes was very difficult for refugees. A refugee can be anybody that is forced to flee their homes due to conflicts, wars and more. In the novel “Inside Out and Back Again” by Thanhha Lai tells readers...
François-Marie Aroused, more commonly known as Voltaire, was an 18th century philosopher, and writer known for his, satire and wit, and influence on the age of enlightenment. The Ancien Régime or old regime is a word to describe the social and political system of France...
Fight Club is a 1999 film version of the Chuck Palahniuk’s satirical novel, “Fight Club” starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Written by Jim Uhls and directed by David Fincher, this movie illustrates the life of a white, young men narrating with hindsight, how he...
Jasper Jones is a novel written by Craig Silvey; it was set in the 1960s in Australia within a town called Corrigan. In Jasper Jones being the ‘other’ in a small-town results in discrimination towards characters. Bullying was one, it was demonstrated in the novel...
The short story I chose to write about is “Where Are you Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates. The main character in this short story is Connie. She is a young teenager who is going through a moment of confusion and change...
Biography Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton , a village within the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester in Dorset, Britain. Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. Hardy was trained as an architect in Dorchester before...
With an intense mix of ambiguity and power, author Herman Melville provides the novella, Benito Cereno, in which Captain Amasa Delano, a friendly captain from America notices a ship coming from the distance clearing from a gray fog. Deciding to sail over and find out...
The settings of The Great Gatsby and how they are illustrated by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of imagery, are the underlying elements to the formation of characters and the overall plot development of the novel, and operate to challenge or cement my understanding of the...
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat is a Kenyan novel written in English, a language traditionally associated with colonialism and oppression in Africa. Despite the fact that the novel is written in English, Ngugi still uses language to speak to the novel’s theme of...
The journey from childhood to maturity is guided primarily by the search for meaning. In All the Pretty Horses, protagonist John Grady Cole leaves home to find the place where he belongs in the world. Throughout the novel, John Grady chased the ideal vision of...
As Daniel R. White writes in Nietzsche at the Altar: Situating the Devotee, “To laugh at the literal behavior of other characters in the social drama, is to change the truth value of what those characters do so as to undermine its seriousness, its claim...
The birth of the novel occurred in in 1719, with the publication of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. This literary form quickly became the most accessible and enjoyable style; therefore, novels began being published rapidly. With nothing for comparison and no pre-issued sets of standards,...
Much of the tension in Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons arises from the conflict between the two main characters, Bazarov and Arkady. Bazarov is a nihilist and the catalyst for much of the action of the novel. He does not share the romantic views held...
In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, David is a heterosexual man with homosexual desires. This desire to be with men leads him desensitized to how he actually feels when he is with all four of his lovers – male and female. Each and every relationship he...
In Edith Wharton’s novel, The House of Mirth, the beautiful but helpless Lily Bart is never able to escape from the follies and superficialities of the society that she is born into. According to a verse in Ecclesiastics which the novel was titled after- “The...
There are certain foods that evoke emotions inside everyone. Some people, when they inhale the aroma of a warm soup, are taken back to cold winter evenings snuggled by the fire. Others, when taking the first bite of a PB&J, are reminded of childhood sandwiches,...
An old Chinese proverb states that, “A family in harmony will prosper in everything.” In the 21st century, harmony looks different in every household––especially queer households, which are not always conducive to the harmony of heteronormative family structures. In her essay “With friends like these:...