The Notebook: A Film to be reckoned with
An analysis of Aristotelian Poetics
The great Aristotle is considered to be the father and founder of many things, one of the major ones being logic. Aristotle has a very narrow view of many things, these views stemming from his extensive research throughout his lifetime, in an apparent attempt to reach the highest level of academia in regards to writing and more specifically, drama. Aristotle has identified a very sound structure for a dramatic presentation, and this structure to this day has been the most effective in bringing about pity and fear in an audience. Aristotle’s influence in the world of poetry and drama is insurmountable, as one author, Barrett, would agree, “From this time on, the influence
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Jones identifies the protagonist, “At once it will be objected that we have here a quibble over terms: the word hero does not appear in the Poetics, as it happens (and there is nothing surprising about the absence of the Greek heros); but the idea of the protagonist, of the central figure—that very wide and flexible idea is obviously there in some form.” The protagonist of The Notebook would be the man, surprisingly this time, Noah. He is the hero who stays with the woman who is quickly slipping away into a delusional world all because of the Alzheimer’s disease. The tragic fall that Noah experiences is when his life and sadness is determined by fate as he tries to get the love of his life back, and yet it seems he cannot. Noah sent his lover letter after letter in the proceeding days after their dispersion. However, her parents kept the letters from her, convincing her that Noah did not care about her. This plunges Noah into a perpetual cycle of sadness, as he never forgets his lover who he was kept from, by fate. This tragic fall, as Aristotle would have it, was a direct result of the situation, though Noah could not control it. He is still the hero, though, after this tragic fall because it is the very identification in the entire film of how heroic and loving he was to his …show more content…
The Notebook is identified as having a complex plot because of the idea of how Noah is telling the story from his old age. This film is filled with flashbacks and as the story moves along, the audience does not cease to find out more and more. Some things are known to the audience and not the characters, and sometimes it is the other way around. This string of events that finally lead to the climax at the very end, though there are debatable two climaxes, are all events which need to be considered and examined before deducing the meaning and implication in relation to the ‘older’ Noah who is telling the story in the first place. Crowhurst puts this importance of complexity into words as follows, “Various strands of research during the past 15 years have seemed to indicate that syntactic complexity (i.e., such features as sentence length and clause length) is positively related to the quality of written composition.” The Notebook displays this idea in how many events are put together, similar to a puzzle, to reach the final
To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic novel written by Harper Lee. The novel is set in the depths of the Great Depression. A lawyer named Atticus Finch is called to defend a black man named Tom Robinson. The story is told from one of Atticus’s children, the mature Scout’s point of view. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, the Finch Family faces many struggles and difficulties. In To Kill a Mockingbird, theme plays an important role during the course of the novel. Theme is a central idea in a work of literature that contains more than one word. It is usually based off an author’s opinion about a subject. The theme innocence should be protected is found in conflicts, characters, and symbols.
The science fiction novel Unwind by Neal Shusterman has a central idea, being ‘life’. This novel opens up our ideas to when a human’s life actually begins which is a sensitive topic for most people. This is a concept that everyone has their own opinions on usually based on the way you were raised; however this book opens up these ideas and decisions for you to make. It relates to abortion and the controversy over it. One example of how Shusterman gets us to think about life is when Connor (one of the main characters) is in a crate with three other unwinds. They are discussing life and what happens after you are unwound. In reality we know very little about life so we come up with our own conclusions. This unwinding experience that Connor Lassiter has really changes who he is as a person and his outlook on life.
The story The Outsiders By S.E Hinton is said to be “timeless” because kids can relate to the characters and themes of the story. In my opinion the story The Outsiders is not timeless because kids these days can’t relate to the characters in the story The Outsiders. Kids today aren’t riding in rodeos, roll drunks, jump smaller kids, walk to a stranger's house, or get in a stranger’s car, also they get arrested at the age of 10. Saying the statement “The Outsiders is a “timeless” book “ is an invalid statement. So, Kids today often don’t relate to The Outsiders anymore in many ways.
1. As I was reading the book Clockwork Orange, I felt like it deserved a 8 out of 10. I enjoyed the book because while I was reading it, I did not have such a clear image of all the rape, sex, and violence. Talking from personal experiences, I did not want to picture those images in my head. Finding out there was a movie of Clockwork Orange kind of scared me but also gave me excitement because I wanted to see how different the the book was from the movie. After viewing Clockwork Orange, I would rate it a 7 out of 10. I rated it a 7 out of 10 because the rape and violence was overused. In the beginning of the movie, there were non-stop sex and rape scenes. For example, when Alex and his goons fake their way into an emergency just so they could attack a older man and rape his wife, who later dies because of this accident. Toward the end of the movie, there was a lot of
Living during the early nineteen hundreds was not easy for African American women. Women gained power through marriage, but they still were looked down upon and treated like slaves. In the story “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston uses diction, symbolism, and foreshadowing to reveal how Janie sought to discover her own identity marrying three different men who helped her discover her independence leading to the fact that women were poorly treated during this time period and deserved more respect than they received.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s narrative entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper” portrays a nameless wife who gradually descends into psychosis due to a prescribed treatment of the time known as the “rest cure.” Gilman’s work is an excellent example of feminine oppression so prominent in the late nineteenth century. Women of the period were considered the weaker sex. They were at the will of their husbands who made decisions concerning all aspects of life, including medical treatments, living arrangements and social activities. The intellectual stagnation and oppression of the narrator can be directly linked to her downward spiral into madness. The uses of literary elements in the story help demonstrate this theory.
Alice Walker has distilled some of the most controversial literature of her time. Her work has been the foundation for many colored writer's ambitions as well as many others. Her work has stroked passion and evoked a copious amount of different emotion among not only Americans but people around the world. Her story The Color Purple is a prime example of the essence of her persona and the messages she tried to portray. Walkers ideas embedded into this story great strike the souls of Americans, even to the point where this story is being banned from high schools around the country. Jacqueline Bobo states in her book, “This analysis will show
Aristotle’s Poetics is a “reservoir of the themes and schemes deployed in ancient Greek tragedy and poetry” (Poetics iii). Written around 330 B.C., it was the first work of literature to make a distinction amongst the various literary genres and provide a proper analysis of them. In Poetics, Aristotle places a big emphasis on the genre of tragedy. When one hears of the word tragedy, one already assumes that something bad has occurred to an individual and an immediate emotion of sorrow occurs, but how does Aristotle see tragedy? Aristotle gives us his formal definition of tragedy on page 10: “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.” He goes on and explains all the components that make up tragedy. A tragedy must fall into two parts: complication and unraveling (also known as the denouement). Aristotle elaborates on that and speaks of four types of tragedy: “the Complex, depending entirely on Reversal of the Situation and Recognition; the Pathetic (where the motive is passion); the Ethical (where the motives are ethical). The fourth kind is the Simple.
Aristotle the famous philosopher outlined several requirements in which a play or piece of drama is to follow.
Aristotle is the most influential philosopher in the history of Western thought. A Greek drama by Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, was praised in the Poetics of Aristotle as the model for classical tragedy and is still considered a principal example of the genre. In this essay I will analyze Oedipus Rex using Aristotle's concepts praxis, poiesis, theoria.
Butcher, S.H. The Poetics of Aristotle trans. Pennsylvania State University: The Electronic Classic Series, Copyright 2000-2013. Web. 24 February 2014.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C. believed that tragedy, as an imitation or mimesis of life as it could be, held more importance than history, which simply records the past. He considered that performance of a tragedy provided the perfect cathartic experience for an audience, leaving them spiritually purified and inspired. He felt spectators seeing and experiencing great hardship befall the play’s hero or heroine would achieve this emotional state and benefit from it.
Aristotle is one of the most important western philosophers in history that has influenced our society in many aspects. Many of Aristotle’s teachings have affected our world for many years and still continue to have such a big impact. Some of the subjects Aristotle has influenced include: logic, physics, government and poetry. Aristotle’s study of poetry mainly focused on the elements to a good tragedy. Some of his elements have been used in Greek tragedies and modern movies. The Greek play, Medea, and the modern movie, No Country for Old Men, use elements from Aristotle philosophy, while using similar and different techniques but both achieving an effective tragedy.
Shakespeare followed Aristotle’s guidelines to a perfect tragedy to the letter. Each and every one of the points is represented in Hamlet as well as his other tragedies. Through his rich use of language and plot, Aristotle’s guidelines were revived and will live immortally through Shakepeare’s works.
Aristotle. The Poetics of Aristotle. Trans. S. H. Butcher. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Print.