I have read and evaluated Jennifer Banash’s novel titled White Lines. This melancholic book is jam-packed with poetic writing, deep metaphors, realistic scenarios, and a fantastically described setting.
The only thing that helps Cat escape the horrifying world around her are the white lines that she inhales in the raunchy bathroom of an underground club. After endless nights of clubbing, Caitlin is left without sleep and a will to do well in school. Without these two things, Cat drifts through her monotonous day indiscriminately. This grievous book contains intermittent thoughts from Caitlin’s oppressive childhood. In the days of her adolescence, Cat was abused by her despicable mother. The abuse was not only physical, but emotional as well.
…show more content…
In the presence of the book, the eighties, Cat lives alone in an apartment in New York’s East Village. Her downtown apartment is paid for by her distant and unconcerned father. Caitlin is envied by several of her classmates, but she consistently feels lonely and disregarded. The writing style of this book is strikingly compelling and poetic; for example, “-the red velvet drapes whispering as they swing gently shut, the door way gaping like a rotted tooth.”(-Banash, page 1) This writing style captivated me into the story.
White Lines is filled with metaphors, which helped me understand the thoughts and actions of the main character, Caitlin. “The mirror spread out over my lap in a river of silver, my reflection looming and distorted as I bend toward it, white powder disappearing up my nose, a magic trick, whoops, there she goes again, a rabbit plunging into a black satin hat. Now you see me. Now you don’t.”(Banash, page 1) Jennifer Banash captures the feeling of the use of illegal drugs into unquestionably powerful words. “A lush, elongated feeling lengthens my muscles as I fall to the floor, my body useless and limp, my bones hijacked.” (-Banash, page 76) I find this extremely important due to the significance of cocaine in Cat’s life. It helps the reader understand what you would think doing drugs feels …show more content…
like. I found White Lines to be an extraordinarily realistic novel because of how Banash echoes the disconsolateness of being a teenager.
I can’t say that I relate to Caitlin’s disastrous background, but considering the fact that I am living through my agonizing teenage years as I type this, I do relate to the emotions of youth that Cat is feeling. For example, being excluded from certain cliques. “We still have the same bullshit categories as any other school: the jocks, the popular girls, the nerds, and the untouchables.” (Banash, page 23)
The author astonishingly painted a three dimensional scene of New York City. There was a feel of grime as I read, which made me as if I was there in the pizza shop or in the clubs with Caitlin. “- into relief by cigarette butts crushed out on the dirty subway platform-”.(-Banash, page 108)
The dialogue was seldom strong; therefore, the narrative in this book dulled the excitement of the depth of the characters. Although each character had their own unique personalities, vague dialogue created bore from time to time. For instance, when Julian questions Cat about her previous life. “So will I?” He asks. “Will you what?... “Get to know you better.” (Banash, page
30-31) For some readers, reading eloquent, prolonged sentences can lead to confusion; therefore, this book may not be for everyone. Reading this novel required me to be focused at all times; multitasking was not an option. Banasch's outstretched writing style is showcased in this sentence: “I’m sitting on the stone steps at school, pretending to enjoy an apple that I bought from an Asian grocery store a few blocks over, when all I’m really thinking is about how long I have left until I can go home and start getting ready for the clob, every stroke of makeup on my skin sliding me further from daylight.” (Banash, page 22) I have read and evaluated Jennifer Banash’s novel titled White Lines. This melancholic book is jam-packed with poetic writing, deep metaphors, realistic scenarios, and a fantastically described setting.
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
Sasha Dawn’s Oblivion is about Calliope Knowles a 16 year old girl who has a compulsion to write which is also known as graphomania. Calliope’s compulsion to write was brought on by the disappearance of her father the reverend of the Holy Promise church, and a young girl from the church Hannah Ryne’s, as it gets closer to the anniversary of the disappearance Calliope starts to write and remember more of the night. This book is enjoyable because it doesn’t just focus on Calliope’s urges to write it also looks into her past before the night she was found in an abandoned apartment writing “I killed him” on the walls, the book also goes into detail about her foster family and her relationship with her friends.
Holly Janquell is a runaway. Wendelin Van Draanan creates a twelve year old character in the story, Runaway, that is stubborn and naive enough to think she can live out in the streets alone, until she is eighteen.She has been in five foster homes for the past two years. She is in foster care because her mother dies of heroin overdose. In her current foster home, she is abused, locked in the laundry room for days without food, and gets in even more trouble if she tries to fight back. Ms.Leone, her schoolteacher, could never understand her, and in Holly’s opinion, probably does not care. No one knows what she is going through, because she never opens up to any one. Ms. Leone gives Holly a journal at school one day and tells her to write poetry and express her feelings. Holly is disgusted. But one day when she is sitting in the cold laundry room, and extremely bored, she pulls out the diary, and starts to write. When Holly can take no more of her current foster home, she runs, taking the journal with her. The journal entries in her journal, are all written as if she is talking to Ms.Leone, even though she will probably never see her again. Over the course of her journey, Holly learns to face her past through writing, and discovers a love for poetry. At some point in this book, Holly stops venting to Ms. Leone and starts talking to her, almost like an imaginary friend, and finally opens up to her.
If he writes something, he says he cannot read it. The writing is unclear.” However, he is a static character due to him being stubborn throughout the story and always questioning others. He never develops a change throughout the story, even though he accepts that he was wrong, he remains authoritative yet stubborn throughout the end. The central idea is of cultural shock is supported by him having an authoritative
Frisco describes his hallucination: “I lean into the wind, trying to decide whether everything around me seems strange because of the drug, or just because everything truly is strange. Three weeks earlier, a family across town had been sitting at home, watching television, when a single-engine plane fell on them. Snow swirls around us, seeming to fall up as well as down” (Cunningham 230). Frisco experiences skeptical insight as the world stands still as magnified perfection, yet indicates weariness when he references a plane crashing on a family’s home (Cunningham 230). What Cunningham conveys is how unpredictable life is, although people may feel they have control, a person’s fate is not always up to them. Such as America suffered through its heinous history. Wild and free Carlton does not doubt this revelation at all, he simply enjoys the hallucinogen and uses it to amplify his unruliness. Furthermore, this passage describes ignorant America, never doubting the safety of the country; never suspecting the upcoming catastrophic events that the country will soon
Stylistically, the book is arranged in rotating chapters. Every fourth chapter is devoted to each individual character and their continuation alo...
In contrast, syntax provides a new perspective to the narrator s behavior as sentence structure draws attention to her erratic behavior. By her last entry, the narrator s sentences have become short and simple. Paragraphs 227 through 238 contain few adjectives resulting in limited descriptions yet her short sentences emphasize her actions providing plenty of imagery. The syntax quickly pulls the reader through the end as the narrator reaches an end to her madness.
They all become a support system for each other. Precious learns to read and write, and starts journaling daily about the life that she daydreams about having for herself. She feels that her body, looks, incest, and abuse in her home with her mother have caused her life to be unpleasant. She daydreams about dating a “light” skin guy, being in movies, and having a very functional family with her two kids. A social worker by the name of Ms. Weiss helps Precious by discovering the incest and abuse in Precious’ home.
In Paul Austers graphic novel, City of Glass, NYC is presented in a realistic way. The city is drawn mundanely, but for a good reason. The main character’s mind can distort his own perception throughout the story, conjuring fantastical and irrational images. By drawing the city realistically, the contrast between what is happening and what the main character thinks is happening, is more distinctive. This aids readers by giving them insight into the mental instability of the main character, which is not directly stated. The tone of it is similar to a film noir and brings elements of detective and mystery novels to its pages. Written strictly in black and white, it depicts normal sights in New York. The narrator sees the city as a maze, a labyrinth of endless steps in which to lose yourself. (4) The streets themselves have street signs, traffic, and ...
Just look at the quote I gave you earlier: “Brooklyn, New York, as the undefined, hard-to–remember the shape of a stain.” He sees it as nothing but a stain on the map. He goes on to talk about “…the sludge at the bottom of the canal causes it to bubble.” Giving us something we can see, something we can hear because you can just imagine being near the canal and hearing the sludge bubble make their popping noises as the gas is released. He “The train sounds different – lighter, quieter—in the open air,” when it comes from underground and the sight he sees on the rooftops. Although some are negative, such as the sagging of roofs and graffiti, his tone towards the moment seems to be admiration. In the second section, he talks about the smells of Brooklyn and the taste of food. He’d talk about how his daughter compares the tastes of pizzas with her “…stern judgments of pizza. Low end… New Hampshire pizza. … In the middle… zoo pizza. …very top… two blocks from our house,” and different it was where he’d grown up. He talks about the immense amount of “smells in Brooklyn: Coffee, fingernail polish, eucalyptus…” and how other might hate it, but he enjoys it. In the same section, he describes how he enjoys the Brooklyn accent and the noise and smells that other people make on the streets and at the park across from his house. “Charcoal smoke drifts into the
At the age of ten, most children are dependent on their parents for everything in their lives, needing a great deal of attention and care. However, Ellen, the main character and protagonist of the novel Ellen Foster, exemplifies a substantial amount of independence and mature, rational thought as a ten-year-old girl. The recent death of her mother sends her on a quest for the ideal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown apathy to both she and her fragile mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’ use of simple diction, unmarked dialogue, and a unique story structure in her first novel, Ellen Foster, allows the reader to explore the emotions and thoughts of this heroic, ten-year-old girl modeled after Gibbons’ own experiences as a young girl. Kaye Gibbons’ experiences as a child are the foundations for this.
The most prominent linguistic aspect of the novel is its lack of dialogue. There is not one line of dialogue throughout the entire novel. This reliance on narration accomplishes several things for Kincaid's protagonist, Xuela Claudette Richardson. First, it allows Xuela to be defined by no one but herself. There...
Another theme is finding one’s voice and recovery. Speak is a first-person, diary-like narrative. Written in the voice of Melinda Sordino, it features lists, subheadings, spaces between paragraphs and script-like dialogue. Throughout Speak, Anderson represents Melinda's trauma and recovery symbolically. After being raped, Melinda does not recognize herself in her reflection. Disgusted by what she sees, Melinda avoids mirrors. Melinda's aversion to her reflection illustrates acknowledgement of her fragmented identity. The reader follows Melinda through her daily life as a teenager. It shows all of the things she has to go through because of what happened to her, and how she copes with them. We're able to see how every aspect of her life is thrown into a tale spin, and just how hard it is for her to pull out and get back on course. Through the novel, she grows, changes and eventually learns how to use her voice once again. Readers share in the pain, anguish and bullying Melinda faces and become investing in the life of this young girl. The story is both captivating and interesting, and hard to put down once you've started
Upon arrival into the jungle of vast buildings, the first thing noticed is the mobbed streets filled with taxi cabs and cars going to and fro in numerous directions, with the scent of exhaust surfing through the air. As you progress deeper into the inner city and exit your vehicle, the aroma of the many restaurants passes through your nostrils and gives you a craving for a ?NY Hot Dog? sold by the street venders on the corner calling out your name. As you continue your journey you are passed by the ongoing flow of pedestrians talking on their cell phones and drinking a Starbucks while enjoying the city. The constant commotion of conversing voices rage up and down the streets as someone calls for a fast taxi. A mixed sound of various music styles all band together to form one wild tune.
The novel follows the protagonist, Celie, as she experiences such hardships as racism and abuse, all the while attempting to discover her own sense of self-worth. Celie expresses herself through a series of private letters that are initially addressed to God, then later to her sister Nettie. As Celie develops from an adolescent into an adult, her letters possess m... ... middle of paper ... ... bservations of her situation and form an analysis of her own feelings.