The Dress Lodger, by Sheri Holman

871 Words2 Pages

The Dress Lodger, by Sheri Holman, is a novel that express the connection between poverty and illness, and how poverty and illness impacted a 15 years old girl named Gustine and her fragile baby boy. Holman attempts to use different writing styles into developing the novel based on poverty and illness in the old periods of time. As Holman started to do that through out the novel, it allowed me as a reader to see the different writing style that would impact the way of me responding to the novel itself. Yet, the more Intersting part of my journey through the novel was seeing Holman's writing style from my classmates' perspective. When asked, " How does the author's writing style impact your response tot he novel?" Serval different points came to mind right away about Holman's writing style. First of all, I felt that the majority of the novel was unclear about the nature of the narrator. Secondly, the understanding of the characters in the novel impacted my response towards the end of the novel. In particular, my group members and I realized the characters development impacted our understanding towards some characters in the novel. Thirdly, Holman challenged my response to some of the human condition that took place in the novel. The entire novel The Dress Lodger had interesting twists and plot through out the novel.

First of all, my response to the novel was impacted by Holman's writing style due to unclear narration in the novel. The majority of the novel did not refer back to who the narrator was in the novel until the very end. Sheri Holman made the narrator refer themselves as "we" and "us". I was confused to whether the narrator is omniscient or actually a group of people narrating. I had difficulty finding out who the nar...

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.... I found that the use of unclearness in the narration was really confusing but at the same time it gave me an idea that there would be a big twist the end of the novel about the narrator. Also, the Holman challenged some of the characters characteristic and human conditions that our society on girls and how they are viewed by our society that we currently live in. Though out this novel Holman made lots of connection to real world situations and she used lots of different ways to develop the novel so that the reader could find something interesting about her writing style.

Works Cited

Holman, Sheri. "Employment ." The dress lodger. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000. .
Print.
"The Dress Lodger - Literary Essay ." StudyMode. N.p., 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.

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