essays Archives - The Hyacinth Review

Passion Realized, Passion Repressed: Symbols of Passion in The Scarlet Letter

Abbie Mourey — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a novel suffused with symbolism. Indeed, Hawthorne introduces his novel as a symbolic act: an examination and apology of the role his ancestors played in the Salem Witch Trails (6–11). The best-known symbol within the work is the scarlet letter itself, which Hester Prynne wears on her dress for…

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Motherhorror: On the Uncanny Art of Raising the Unknowable in Schweblin and Ferrante’s Novels

Mirela Dialeti — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0000

“Strange can be quite normal. Strange can just be the phrase, ‘That is not important,’ as an answer for everything. But if your son never answered you that way before, then the fourth time you ask him why he’s not eating, or if he’s cold, or you send him to bed, and he answers, almost…

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The I In Literature

S.M. Gamez — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 03:00:00 +0000

If we are what we eat, then we are the stories that sate our minds and souls. A heartbreak, an adventure, a haunting – however they’re spun, stories reveal much about who we are. So we often enjoy talking about literature because it’s another way of talking about ourselves. As a teenager, I liked the…

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The Mythification of the Other: Reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles in Light of The Second Sex

Abbie Mourey — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 03:00:00 +0000

In her seminal piece of feminist criticism, French existentialist author Simone de Beauvoir lays out her theory of a universal female experience that transcends different historical periods and societies . De Beauvoir argues that women share various experiences regardless of what time or place they live in because of an action she calls “othering” (1218).…

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The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Symbolism of the Self

Terri Pinyerd — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Throughout his lifetime Oscar Wilde was known by the public for his wit and vibrant character. A self-proclaimed Aesthete, Wilde integrated his love of beauty and the arts into every aspect of his life, most notably in his writing. However, despite his generally aloof attitude, Wilde struggled with conflicting realities which, when they eventually merged,…

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Klara and the Sun: A Binary of Human and Machine

Lisa Hana Delaney — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 03:00:00 +0000

Ishiguro’s latest work is one that meshes dystopia with science fiction, narrated from the point of view of Artificial Friend Klara. It has a distinct vagueness to its worldbuilding that speaks of the necessarily limited worldview of a machine, and the sparing glimpses into the history of a fictional world which privileges genetically edited children…

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When Everything Ends, What Comes After?: Narration, Time, and Memory in The Ruin

Eleanor Ball — Wed, 17 May 2023 03:00:00 +0000

“The slain fell on all sides, plague-days came,and death destroyed all the brave swordsmen;the seats of their idols became empty wasteland.” The Ruin, lines 24-26 Although this imagery seems like it could come from a vision of our own future—or present—it actually comes from visions of the ancient past. These are lines from The Ruin, an…

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The Problem of Truth in Medieval English Verse: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Troilus and Criseyde

Lisa Hana Delaney — Thu, 04 May 2023 03:00:00 +0000

‘In the hierarchy of values by which most historians live, truth stands higher than fiction, and prose higher than verse’: where, then, does this leave the works considered so seminal to our understanding of the medieval era, when such works are often in verse? Historian Gabrielle Spiegel considers prose to be ‘a language of fact’,…

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A Reconciliation of Faith: Al-Ghazali, Sufism, and لفلسفة اإلسالمية

Irteqa Khan — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 03:00:00 +0000

A Reconciliation of Faith: Al-Ghazali, Sufism, and لفلسفة اإلسالمية “Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me.” – Imam al-Ghazali Born Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali in eleventh century Iran and known simply as “Algazel” in the West or “Al-Ghazali” across the Islamic world,…

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Delightful Deception

Daniel A. Rabuzzi — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 03:00:00 +0000

Let’s consider Vase of Flowers in a Window by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, a classic Dutch still life, reproduced above. He has, in exquisite detail, rendered the likeness of some dozen flower species (he apparently knew several botanists where he worked in the Netherlands). At first glance, you might well think you are looking at…

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