Ambiguity, defined as “capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways” (Merriam Webster), is one of the key elements of modern writing. In fact, Reif Larson, author of I am Radar, says “One thing I think is true about successful storytelling: There’s as much significance in what’s left out as in what’s actually said … This is really a crucial tenet of narration, perhaps the crucial tenet…” (Atlantic). This is most obvious because it forces the reader to read actively and engage with the text. However, beyond this clear usefulness authors and directors use this tool to invoke other reactions in their work, which indeed makes ambiguity’s role in narrative ambiguous itself.
In this case, a novelist uses ambiguity to engage the reader in the argument of the work, by creating an idea of choice. Then, no matter which choice the reader makes, they reach the same conclusion and will then call it their own. In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, she uses this form macroscopically in order to set up several bunches of chapters that examine the multiple ways her father could have died. Meanwhile, in A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki decides to only implement an ambiguous note when Ruth, the character, dreams after running out of words in the diary. Ozeki’s microscopic use of ambiguity challenges the difference between fact and fiction, as opposed to Bechdel’s inability to know any fact or fiction with regards to her father’s death. Both works’ ambiguity
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It has already been shown that Ozeki uses two arguments, which respond to the same ambiguous event, to assert that through some, unknown mechanism the reader’s condition while examining the literature influences the outcome of the material. Literary ambiguity, therefore, relies on the idea that it does not matter which hypothesis is correct, because the answers point to the same
conduct themselves distinctly. Evil and wicked people tends to hurt and harm others with no
Domestic violence is a vicious cycle; one parent abuses their child, their child grows up and abuses their child, and the cycle continues until someone decides to break it. Sometimes domestic violence takes many generations before someone decides to stop the cycle. The parent who breaks the cycle wants a better life for their child than what they had. For most parents this is the ultimate goal of raising children, giving them a better world than the one you had because parents typically want the best for their children. In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Bruce Bechdel wants his daughter to be the opposite of him. He wants her to be a heterosexual woman but once it is clear
Throughout chapter one of Fun Home, Alison Bechdel portrays artifice and art as two very similar but distinct things; both overlapping and making it hard to differentiate between what is what. Art, in her view, is the truth, and a skill that has to be mastered. On the other hand, artifice contains partial, or full, amounts of falsehood; it covers up the truth in some way but contains art in itself. Artifice can be, like art, something mastered, but can also be a coping mechanism to cover up something good or bad. Bechdel turns both art and artifice into a very interlinked, combined, version of the two forms. When truth and falsehood are combined, after awhile, it becomes a challenge to distinguish between the two; evidently true to herself.
We come into this world like a ball of clay ready to be molded into a work of art. Our parents are often our biggest influences. We often learn our values and morals from our parents. Our temperament and what we learn is acceptable in terms of our behavior is learned and molded by our environment. If we are raised by well adjusted stable parents, we have an easier time adjusting to the adult world. When we are raised by someone who has unresolved personal issues from their past or has a personality disorder it is only then when the ball of clay can become a distorted version of its intended vision.
In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Bechdel uses the theme of appearance versus reality to highlight her relationship with her father. Bechdel utilizes her illustrations and short sentences to reveal these things about herself and her father. Bechdel opens her memoir with a chapter entitled “Old Father, Old Artificer”. Bechdel refers to her father, Bruce Bechdel, as an artificer because she sees him as a skilled craftsman. Bechdel describes, “His greatest achievement, arguably, was his monomaniacal restoration of our old house.” (Bechdel 4). Her father restored their old house to make it look like a huge mansion. Bechdel knows that this is just the appearance of their household because it is not an accurate representation of their family life inside the house. Bruce created an appearance that was the opposite of reality to cover up the actual wealth of their family. He hides the fact that his family may not be as wealthy and perfect as they appear to be. In this case, Bruce reveals he believes that appearance is more important than the reality of a situation. Appearance is also important on the inside of the home as well. Bechdel mentions, “Sometimes, when things were going well, I
William Faulkner loves to keep the reader guessing. One of his favorite narrative techniques is to hint at a topic and raise questions and then leave the reader dangling. We are left with a void which we can not fill. The questions that the reader is left with will eventually be answered, but the reader will find the answers before Faulkner comes out and states what is by then the obvious. A good example is in As I Lay Dying where understanding the significance of Jewel is a major part of understanding the story.
It is said that fiction is an essentially rhetorical art and that the author tries to persuade the reader towards a specific view of the world while reading. This is evident in both short stories, A Secret Lost in the Water by Roch Carrier, and He-y Come on Ou-t by Shinichi Hoshi. Although through A Secret Lost in the Water, Roch Carrier displays how fiction is an essentially rhetorical art better than Shinichi Hoshi in He-y, Come on Ou-t (awkard sentence), Shinichi Hoshi demonstrates it better through the use of prognosis. Furthermore, by utilizing the characters, such as the farmer from A Secret Lost in the Water, and the use of symbolism such as the hole from He-y, Come on Ou-t, it is evident that the author makes an endeavour towards persuading
In The Monument by Elizabeth Bishop ambiguity is crucial to the audience's perception of the monument. Bishop refrains from telling the audience the meaning of the monument in order to maintain the theme of ambiguity. By using ambiguity Bishop allows her audience to develop their own interpretation of the monument.
The reader's experience of ambiguity in Obasan begins with the poetically-charged proem, preceding chapter one, which opens with these words:
Douglas Light said that our imagination is better than any answer to a question. Light distinguished between two genres: fantasy from fiction. He described how fantasy stimulates one’s imagination, which is more appealing, but fiction can just be a relatable story. In the same way, Books and movies are very different entities. In the short parable Doubt, the readers are lured in to the possibility of a scandalous relationship between a pastor and an alter boy. The readers’ curiosity is ignited because they are not given all the details. Therefore, their mind wanders further than the plot to create a story and characters that acted on one’s imagination; thus, the story became entertaining- flooded by the questions of what? Who? How? By which the reader can only answer. At this point, the readers create their own movie in a way. They will determine important aspects: how the character speaks, looks like, and reacts. Whereas, in the movie, the reader has no choice but to follow the plot laid out in front of them. No longer can they picture the characters in their own way or come up with their different portrayals. The fate of the story, while still unpredictable, was highly influenced by the way the characters looked, spoke, and presented themselves on screen. The movie leaves little to viewers' imaginations.In order to be entertained by literature or art, the viewer needs to feel that they can use their imagination and not be confined to a plot that reveals all.
Every family has secrets. Taboo secrets are typically the one's we'd like to keep hidden the most. Unfortunately, what's done in the dark always finds itself resurfacing to the light. In Allison Bechdel "Fun Home", she recollects the memories that impacted her life the most when she was in the stage of discovering her true self. The memories we remember the most tend to play a major role in our life development. For Allison, one well-kept secret that her father contained well from her, unraveled many memories of the truth that laid before her eyes.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Trans. Frechtman Bernard. New York: Kensington Pub., 1976. Print.
In conclusion, it is hard to grasp the true meaning of the story unless the story is read a second time because of the author's style of writing.
Moral ambiguity is lack of clarity in decision making. Basically, moral ambiguity is when you have an issue, situation, or question that has moral or ethical elements, but the morally correct action to take is unclear, due to conflicting. The author of The Kite Runner is Khaled Hosseini, the book is about a boy named Amir and how much of a easy life he has at first, but near the middle of the book his life is horrible from there to the end of the book.
Finally we can say that the discussion in the class and the differences in the interpretations showed us clearly the differences between the perceptions of the readers on the same work. In the lights of the reader-oriented theories one can claim that there is no single truth or meaning derived from the text, the responses will change as the readers change.