The basis of the story the narrator wishes to write is the idea of the fabrication of letters that he will sell for money, the premise actually coming from the original proposal that Lerner wrote for the book that came to be 10:04. This story, which is based on a story that the narrator hears from his old professor, is an actual truth, turned into fiction, but is ultimately cut from the story (Lerner 37). Instead of focusing explicitly on the way that fiction functions as a type of fraudulent activity, Lerner and the narrator want to spin the ‘real’ details of life into something that is “just as it is now – the room, the baby, the clothes, the minutes – just a little different” (Lerner 54). By translating the story into terms that exist almost exactly as they exist in the real world into the fiction world, the potential for the reader to recognize the ‘fictional truths’ is heightened. The piece comes to fruition as “The Golden Vanity,” sold to The New Yorker for $8,000 dollars and used to pay off Alex’s wisdom teeth bill. The piece is about the crossing of reality and fiction The way that this comes into relief is not through an action that is completed that shows a ‘horizontal extension of love’ of a reader, but instead through the author of the author of the piece, the …show more content…
Noor grew up with “a really strong sense of Lebanese identity,” because her father had one as well (Lerner 99). This sense of identity based on her race colored her life choices in both high school and college, where she majored in Middle Eastern studies and was active in Arab student organizations. After her father died, Noor was planning to go and study in Cairo and visit Lebanon. Using these two boundary markers, race and identity, Noor chose to find collectivity that rests on the exclusive as opposed to the inclusive, an action that could be rendered as a type of negative
By reading a certain print texts, readers are manipulated into accepting or rejecting additional texts. The short story “The Altar of the Family” written by Michael Welding shares many comparisons with the feature article “Boys to Men” written by Stephen Scourfield, and by reading one the reader can make clear understanding of the other. Symbolism, genre and certain values and attitudes are present in both the texts and will be further examined in the following essay to show that a readers understanding of particular print texts is shaped by the reading of previous texts.
Metafiction, loosely defined as fiction about fiction, provides an intriguing perspective on literature. J.M. Coetzee’s novel Foe and Margaret Atwood’s short story “Happy Endings” are able to provide a commentary on fiction writing while still retaining their own identities. Both authors offer criticism of fiction writing as connected to gender issues, societal expectations, and the process and components of fiction writing itself.
Goldman parodies the traditional literary structure by acting as the editor, this allows him to purposely include annotations that mock tropes of the literary process. When the supposed author, S. Morgenstern, is about to explain how Buttercup becomes the princess of Florin, Goldman edits it all out calling it “105 pages where nothing happens” (94). Goldman’s supposed deletion of this large ...
10. What form of figurative language does the author use in lines 4 & 5 of page 215 to make his writing more
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
These are not the only objects of importance the narrator stores in his beloved briefcase, but they are the most encompassing of his story. In the novel’s final chapter, when the narrator is trapped in the dark sewer and must burn the papers from his briefcase to see his way, everything goes. First his high school diploma, then the Sambo doll, followed by a threatening anonymous note. Everything he burns from the briefcase—the “important papers” the superintendent spoke of in Chapter one—is a symbol of the narrator’s plight as the forces pulling his strings run him around.
...k the boundaries of conventual narratives. Martel continues with this new style of writing with fictional authors notes at the start of the novel to set the context for the rest of his novel. The fictional author’s notes are extremely post modern and as a result the boundaries of fiction and reality are blurred. Like Martel, Del Toro uses a dual plot line to help break the convention of the narrative structure. “That's what I love about fairy tales; they tell the truth, not organized politics, religion or economics.” This helps to stress the importance that both Martel and Del Toro believe in the power of narrative.
A critical element in any work of fiction is the narrator, the person who is telling the story. Associated with the narrator is the narratee, the person who is getting the story told too. It is harder to pin down the narratee than the narrator because, in some texts, they tend not to be fully realized characters while in others they are fully described. The relationship between the narrator and narratee is an important aspect of a story and identifying this connection allows for a deeper comprehension of the narration. Although Hemingway’s, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” and Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” use different modes of “person” and points of view in their stories to distinguish the presence of a narrator and narratee, they both rely
Often, the value of a piece of literature is measured by how accurately it reflects certain contemporary social issues or recurring psychological phenomena, as understood not only by scholars, but also laymen. Literature, therefore, is collectively a study of linguistic experiments and human responses. The ability to manipulate diction and syntax to create convincing and original narratives that calculatingly evoke specific emotional reactions strikes me as a weapon as empowering as it is enthralling. Nabokov’s “Lolita”, the epitome of the unreliable narrator trope, commands poetic language that never fails to fascinate and beguile readers; its influence and effectiveness are what I hope to someday emulate in my writing.
The frame narrator, although not a major character in the novella, undergoes significant psychological growth throughout the text. This growth can be broadly divided into three phases - the initia...
Stuart Hall writes that “Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think” (Hall 392). Hanif Kareishi, a visual minority growing up in racially charged England, experiences uncertainty and frustration relating to his sense of identity. Salman Rushdie, author of short stories “The Courter” and “Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” develops characters who experience similar identity crises. In his piece, “The Rainbow Sign,” Kareishi explores three responses to encounters with a foreign and hostile culture: outright rejection of the foreign culture, complete assimilation into foreign culture, or adoption of a synthesis of the two cultures. Kareishi himself embraces each of these different approaches at different times in his life, while characters in Rushdie’s short stories embody specific approaches. Kareishi’s discussion of the interaction between race, class, nationhood, and citizenship points to the need for a loosening of racial and class distinctions in favor of a multicultural, liberal approach for achieving a successful synthesis of cultures.
to Fiction. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 160-66.
Boulton, J. T. Burke?s Enquiry Into The Sublime And The Beautiful. New York: Columbia University, 1958.
de Maupassant, Guy. "The Necklace" Understanding Fiction. 3rd ed. Eds. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979. 66-72