The ambiguity of this couplet within “Pale Fire” encourages a variety of interpretative possibilities: Shade could mean that he is using his own life as commentary within the poem, which is unfinished at that moment, or he could be prophetically predicting that the poem will be unfinished, or the couplet could be a frame-break that slyly refers to Kinbote using his own life as commentary to the eventually unfinished poem. As neither Shade nor Kinbote provides an analysis of this couplet, it seems that the reader is left to decide what it means by him/herself. This striking instance of ambiguity, in addition to other seemingly impossible coincidences in the text, has led critics to speculate that Shade could have conjured up Kinbote, or vice versa. Whichever interpretation is favoured, attempts at interpreting Pale Fire by locating the most authoritative narratorial voice are thwarted by such instances where interpretive possibilities abound. It is for this reason that diagrams cannot adequately represent the framing narratives in Pale Fire, though I have attempted to represent a few possible structures, which are included in the Appendix. The many positions held by critics, together with the intense debates on the NABOKV-L Internet forum, only attest to the seemingly chaotic structure of framing narratives within Pale Fire. The above examples illustrate the way Pale Fire’s interplay of framing narratives confound a search for authority within the text by foregrounding the provisionality of fictional and metafictional devices within the chaotic arrangement of the text’s frames. As such, L. L. Lee argues that the “‘true’ level of Pale Fire is difficult to find . . . . [the] point is that each level is quite as true as the next. The ... ... middle of paper ... ...Person and the female Third, for something to take form, develop, or deteriorate according to the phases of human events. (Calvino, Traveller 141). As the game structure of the text’s second-person narration has already been parodied in the metafictional mode, this passage’s commentary on the second-person address is an explicit second-order commentary in the meta-metafictional mode. The sly reference to the “hypocrite I” as the “brother and double” of the “general male you” lends a heavy note of irony to this passage, as it distances itself from the text’s prior use of second-person narration to refer to the male Reader. The second-degree commentary of this passage implies that the male Reader—the “general male you”—is but another aspect of the secretive “I”, the omniscient yet personally invested narrator (or implied author) of the novel (Calvino, Traveller 141).
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
In “Ardor/Awe/Atrocity” Walter Abish employs an unusual method of restoration as he dismantles original linear order in the narrative. Abish uses fragmentation to challenge the order and frame that other several story plots consist of. Several other stories have a defined frame because “narrative form implicitly speaks of the narrative of the nature of reality and how we experience it (1). Abish imposes unconventional systems to give structure to the chaos that he creates. Abish displays his own version of a frame by displaying each chapter in an alphabetical sequence yet is still fragmented. He also provided sequential superscripts within each chapter name that causes artificial order and “calls attention to certain words-and the nature of words themselves” (2). Abish uses facts that lead to a synthetic analysis that creates an ordering principle that works but does not connect to anything outside the narrative. These three systems help Abish provide his own artificial order and frame to the action.
In the start of Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s thoughts are that fire is good for society. He burns books for a living, and never thought twice about doing his job. That is until he meets characters such as Clarisse, Beatty, and the academics. Montag’s understanding of the nature of fire changes as he becomes enlightened through his relationships.
Fire is very common in basic human life and has many purposes. With its many uses, fire’s symbolic meaning is open to various interpretations. In regards to Fahrenheit 451 fire can symbolize knowledge, destruction, and also rebirth. Ray Bradbury illustrates correctly the ambiguity of fire’s metaphors through Montag. As Montag gains new perspectives on fire readers are shown that fire is a very prominent symbol with multiple meanings.
With an evident attempt at objectivity, the syntax of Passage 1 relies almost entirely on sentences of medium length, uses a few long sentences for balance, and concludes with a strong telegraphic sentence. The varying sentence length helps keep the readers engaged, while also ensuring that the writing remains succinct and informative. Like the varying sentence length, the sentence structures vary as complex sentences are offset by a few scattered simple sentences. The complex sentences provide the necessary description, and the simple sentences keep the writing easy to follow. Conversely, Passage 2 contains mostly long, flowing sentences, broken up by a single eight word sentence in the middle. This short sentence, juxtaposed against the length of the preceding and following sentences, provides a needed break in the text, but also bridges the ideas of the two sentences it falls between. The author employs the long sentences to develop his ideas and descriptions to the fullest extent, filling the sentences with literary elements and images. Coupled...
Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate is the fantastic and romantic depiction of a young Mexican girl named Tita who, in accordance with Mexican tradition, cannot marry because she is the youngest girl in the family. The depravity her situation is only compounded by Mama Elena, her castrating mother, who does everything to make Tita’s life miserable. Tita’s only escape from her monotonous and demanding life comes when a fiery Pedro Musquez asks for her hand in marriage. Tita is crestfallen when she discovers that her own mother selfishly denies her Pedro, but this does not stop the fiery passion Tita and Pedro share. Moreover, in the novel fire and heat are not only representative of love; but also destruction that emanates both directly and indirectly from their powerful attraction. Equivel uses a variety of literary devices to symbolically characterize fire and to give it either a positive or negative connotation. Especially prevalent is the use figurative language, objectification, magical realism and hyperbole to illustrate the dualism of passion through fire.
London, Jack. "To Build a Fire." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 7th edition. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York, NY: Longman, 1999.
“’A storm must have brought it here’. . . ‘Sadly we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many miles it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree” (154). Hurst is marking his start to illustrate two symbols, the storm and the scarlet ibis. Hurst uses parallel imagery to connect these passages and create the symbols. “The faster I walked, the faster he walked, so I began to run…I went back and found…he had been bleeding from the mouth…the vision in red before me looked very familiar” (155, 157). Hurst is creating parallels between the storm and the narrators pride and the scarlet ibis and Doodle. Hurst illustrates the storm pushing the scarlet ibis to its physical limits and he also illustrates the narrator pushing his brother to his physical limits. The narrator’s is the “storm must have brought it here,” to Doodle because like the storm, the narrator pushed Doodle to his limits. Hurst connects the scarlet ibis and Doodle increasingly throughout the text using the colors, bleeding and red. “The vision in red looked very familiar” (157). Hurst exercised “the storm,” as a symbol for the narrators pride and the ibis as a symbol for Doodle to portray pride as a storm that swept in and devastated the narrator’s
Metaphors are an ingenious way to talk about topics such as marriage. In the poem, marriage is compared to many items such as a house, a tent, an edge of a desert and forest, and unpainted stairs.She implies that marriage is not any of those except the outdoor stairs in which the couple sits upon , and ponders how they have survived this far. The end line,” We are learning to make fire,” (Atwood 12), pushes forth the idea a couple with marital problems are not broken and should divorce, but rather bent and can be
It shouldn't be forgotten that in the body of the play those who are masters of a language of extraordinary wit and polish - language that seems to guarantee rationality and good judgement - get things almost completely wrong. The resolution of the play comes via the agency of the people whose discourse is an assault on language, who are dismissed - by Leonato - as 'tedious' when they should be patiently listened to. But, as Borachio says 'what your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light' (V.1.221-222). And even more disturbing, that resolution comes by mere accident: by the chance overhearing of a conversation.
Sasoon, Siegfried. “They.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. 7th ed. vol. 2c. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. p. 2055
... in which the foul air made our torches glow, rather than burn brightly”, foreshadow Fortunato’s outcome in his search for the Amontillado. The sense of foreboding the reader feels adds to the suspense of the story. By using specific figurative language, he is able to arouse emotions in the reader that set the tone.
...ing, not literary genres, which belong to the broader mode of fictional writing. In the same way, meta-metafiction belongs to the broader mode of metafictional writing. These modes of writing are not mutually exclusive to each other, but indicate different degrees of self-reflexivity that can be simultaneously present within the same text. In order to shift from one degree of self-reflexivity to another, the text alternately exposes and conceals the frames of reference—the literary structures—that organise the reader’s experience and interpretation of fictional texts. These frames can range from literary conventions such as the “happily ever after” ending in a fairy tale, to narrative techniques such as stream of consciousness narration in modernist novels like Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), to the framing device of stories within stories in metafiction.
I found that throughout this poem there was much symbolism within it. Identifying that it was written in first person form showed that this poem relates to the author on a personal basis, and that it was probably written to symbolize his life. But when talking about people’s lives, you can conclude that people’s lives are generally and individually very diffe...
The prose is a narrative that allows the reader to maintain interest and the idea of lyrical poetry is delegated to the maintained attention of an empathetic attachment to her story. She writes of despair in relationships and attributes the gain/loss to the early days of the relationship between humanity and fire. Charlotte Pence closes her chapbook the same way she opened it reflecting on fire. Specifically, the origins of the relationship between man and fire and how it speaks to the relationships we all have with each other. Relationships are about the gain of love and the loss of love. She walked the reader through her gain and loss between the fire. The tone of her prose was pessimistic throughout most of the book, yet in the end when she speaks, “the darkness quiets if we watch it together” a sense of hope negates her pessimism. The ability to follow her path throughout the chapbook also lead the way to a self-reflection regarding the connection of present to the