Virginia Woolf’s work demonstrates how, so often in literature, women are made rivals competing for the attention of the male gaze, thereby legitimising its supremacy. She demonstrates how, in ‘A Room of one’s own’, the relationship between Chloe and Olivia thus signifies some great change, wherein the two are allowed to simply exist together, momentarily undefined by their relation to men- “‘Chloe liked Olivia…’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen, sometimes women do like women.” (Woolf, 1935, p. 123) Therefore, it is clear that the dynamics between women on a romantic scale should similarly undermine this literary tradition, providing a secluded space where rivalry is replaced with tenderness and male validation becomes insignificant to female appreciation for the female.

As the Guardian highlights, ‘Iraq’s oil boom is blamed for worsening water crisis in drought-hit south’. Iraq is the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, where the oil industry is not only important, but necessary, for the Iraqi economy. In 2023, the government received $115 billion in revenue from the oil industry, accounting for 95% of the annual governmental budget. In a world where energy sources continue to be diversified and transitioned, Iraq relies on its expanse of oil fields, which inject millions of barrels of water every day, draining out any last drop of water left. In recent years, the water levels of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have declined significantly, partly due to climate-related temperature shifts, but largely exacerbated by the regional oil infrastructure. How far can this go before change is irreversible, or is it already too late?

At its centre, Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’ is an exploration of the human condition. Set in the 1950s, at a time where women were expected to conform to societal norms, roles, and expectations, it seeks to examine the challenges of finding meaning in a world that often attempts to define us, while highlighting the psychological toll this can bring. Throughout the novel Plath explores themes of existentialism, feminist philosophy, and the ultimate pursuit of authenticity, all of which are displayed through the protagonist’s struggle for meaningful existence.

Colonialism is often perceived as a relic of the past, disconnected with the actions and policies of governments today. Likewise, modern day conflicts are regularly viewed through a vacuum, with little understanding of the historical background behind them. However, to understand the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, one must look at historical events that altered the borders of the regions — The British Mandate, the UN partition of Palestine and 1948 Arab Israeli war that followed, and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The struggles over land, sovereignty, and a representation of identity are results of several border changes in the region throughout the past century. Borders provide a vital sense of clarity and security in an uncertain world and are thus powerful tools. However, when borders fail to reflect the interests of a group of people, they can become a site of resistance and conflict, underscoring the limitations of borders in fully encapsulating the complexities of nationhood and self-determination.

It is true that when a reader approaches a text, their primary and most important tools of interpretation are the words on the page, an idea which lends itself well to the impression that the author is therefore irrelevant in the relationship between reader and text (Barthes, 1977); Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author argument is indeed a convincing one. To apply this principle to Modernist literature, however, is to undermine the form’s metatextual significance. In T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, for example, a hyper awareness of the author is part of what defines the artistic movement as distinct from its predecessors. The text works not just as a poem, but a commentary on poetry, vividly aware of the author’s role as the conductor of the piece. The Waste Land depends on Eliot’s presence—not as a singular storyteller but as an orchestrator of meaning; even in its fragmentation, the poem reinforces the author’s role as a curator of cultural memory. The Modernist literary movement seems deeply concerned with though suspicious of, the role of the author; in a time of social upheaval and moral uncertainty, writers purposefully fractured the established tools of artistic expression, finding them no longer suited to express unique modern concerns. Indeed, as Woolf argues, ‘For us, those conventions are ruin, those tools are death.’ (1924, p. 16) The Waste Land, acutely self-aware, rather than dissolving the author, ultimately reaffirms his presence as an architect of literary tradition.