Donna Tartt’s debut novel The Secret History is an enthralling contemporary murder mystery novel for many reasons, including its furtiveness, beauty, and archaic values. One particular facet that makes it unique from other mystery novels is its shocking introduction; a murder has been committed, and the culprits are the victim’s friends and main characters. What makes the novel so fascinating is the lack of details leading up to the murder, which are slowly revealed as the narrator retells this story several years after the crime. The entire novel is a flashback of the months prior to the murder and the later consequences the main characters must endure. Richard Papen, the protagonist, sets off to Hampden College in Vermont in hopes that he can leave behind his miserable and working class life in Plano, California. When he is initially rejected from taking a Greek course, he pursues the only five Classics students, and becomes enraptured by their strangeness and beauty. Once admitted to their exclusive clique, he goes to great lengths to fit in. Soon, he notices abnormal behaviors within the group and secrets that exclude him, and, although he cannot fully understand what is occurring, he is pulled into the dangerous mess the others created under the influence of their Professor. When matters become worse, it’s an endless …show more content…
choice between protecting oneself by revealing the secrets of another, or risking everything to save each other. The novel encapsulates daily life in the late 1980’s and the Classical Studies of Ancient Greece and Latin.
The characters’ lives revolve especially around their literary interests; their morals, expectations, and diversions are all influenced by it. The Dionysian quality of the novel pulls readers into another century; even some of the main characters lack knowledge of the modern world (Richard recalls, “Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me that men had walked on the moon”). Besides Greek and Latin, French and German phrases are used at times for dramatic or humorous purposes, showing the lingual diversity of the
novel. Tartt’s writing appeals to young adults due to the novel being narrated in the first person view of a young adult Richard’s narration isn't all formal sentences and eloquent speech; at times his thoughts appear in rapid succession, or he'll zone out and allude to another work of literature. He makes the reader feel comfortable by coming straightforward with his thoughts, making the language conversational in addition to its already figurative and scholarly nature. Tartt’s idiosyncratic style is another engaging quality of the novel (“one last look at the body and one last look round, no dropped keys, no lost glasses, everybody got everything?”) along with her articulate and descriptive vocabulary. Throughout the novel, more and more secrets were unveiled, leaving me wanting to know which surprise awaited next. It was exciting reading page after page, trying to discover what horror lay next. As I read the epilogue, I felt almost mournful that this thrilling adventure was ending. I found Tartt’s attention to human relationships and morality especially interesting; she admits to human imperfection but does not condone the crimes of the students. I believe that other high school and college students would find the story appealing, as many can relate to the busy academic life and newfound ability to make independent choices.
Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation is a humorous exposé on the sites of murdered presidents and how they are used commercially instead of historically. Vowell takes a series of trips to the murder related sites of presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, pointing out the lack of historical context in each of these areas. The use of history and her personal experiences captivate the audience in an emotional level, creating a platform for her argument. She opens the reader to the true history of these events and adds to it in her own humorous way. Arguably, her modernized language and sarcastic style of writing is the strong point that expresses the dissatisfaction these sites bring to a true appreciator of history. By the use of her historical knowledge, the first hand accounts of her trips, and tone Vowell’s argument induces change in the information found in United States landmarks.
“The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson: A True Story of Love and Murder” is studied as a historical non-fiction novel, in which Lois Simmie shows the reader the actions of a man who sets his life up in a series of lies and betrayal. Her purpose is clear, to intrigue the audience with a true story of the murder of Polly Wilson, which had not yet been heard. Though not a lot of people had ever heard of John Wilson, the first ever Saskatchewan RNWMP officer who was found guilty of a crime, being that he killed his wife, and hung to his death. She writes her novel that is not only entertaining to her audience but also serves the purpose of educating fellow Canadians about the true life events that followed John Wilson and his fellow RNWMP officers.
In midst of the court case, the strategy of backstory is employed as Abina reminisces about her childhood experience with her mother and siblings (Getz and Clarke 22). Cleverly, Clarke illustrated the scenes of Abina 's childhood in such a way that they appear to be brighter in colour than the rest, which implicitly reveals the joyfulness Abina felt during that time, as well as the untouchability of her memories. This effective application of backstory helps Abina and the Important Men to seem more realistic and convincing. Another literary strategy present in the text is that of a cliff-hanger. At the end of the tale, Abina 's ultimate fate remains unknown. Although this is simply due to the lack of records of her life after the case, it remains nonetheless an effective literary strategy as it leaves the audience feeling engaged and curious, ensuring that the work remains a pertinent historiographical
Susan Griffin’s “Our Secret” is an essay in which she carefully constructs and describes history, particularly World War II, through the lives of several different people. Taken from her book A Chorus of Stones, her concepts may at first be difficult to grasp; however David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky say that, “Griffin writes about the past - how we can know it, what its relation to the present, why we should care. In the way she writes, she is also making an argument about how we can know and understand the past…”
This novel is based in various High Schools in New York City. One of the main characters Paul, just moved to New York from Saskatoon, Alberta. This novel takes place in the mid 1980’s. At this high school, Don Carey High, none of the students or teachers care about anything that goes on within the school. They have no team spirit at all, there are no teams or clubs because no one shows interest.
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
Topic/ Thesis Statement: Don’t judge a book by its cover, some people are not who they claim to be, or looks can be deceiving.
In "Our Secret" by Susan Griffin, the essay uses fragments throughout the essay to symbolize all the topics and people that are involved. The fragments in the essay tie together insides and outsides, human nature, everything affected by past, secrets, cause and effect, and development with the content. These subjects and the fragments are also similar with her life stories and her interviewees that all go together. The author also uses her own memories mixed in with what she heard from the interviewees. Her recollection of her memory is not fully told, but with missing parts and added feelings. Her interviewee's words are told to her and brought to the paper with added information. She tells throughout the book about these recollections.
The analysis showed that Shirley’s and Thomas’s work matched in a way that both the stories reflect identity crises and the psyche of a killer. The notable use of typical fictional horror elements such as tragic backstories, harbingers, unseen forces causing chaos and dreadfulness, terror and above all unrealistically portrayed personality disorders makes the stories a baroque blend of supernatural fantasy and moral reality.
This book is a Modern Criminal Fiction novel story that produces suspense, tragedy and mystery. It brings a gloomy kind of mood mixed with action and suspense.
As the book begins, Dr. Scarpetta is called to a crime scene at a garbage dump in Virginia. When she gets there she soon realizes that it must be a horrific scene because everyone there was almost in shock. She walked up to the taped off area and started understanding why everyone was in so much shock. The body at the crime scene was nothing but a decomposing torso. The person’s legs, arms, and head had been cut off. They had found the body when a tractor was spreading the trash around. After examining the entire crime scene, Dr. Scarpetta bought the body back to the morgue to look at it closer. She preformed an autopsy and found out that the body was a woman, older, and had a petite frame. The search for the murderer began.
Griffin, Susan. “Our Secret.” 1992. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. Ed.
Although varied, a majority of secret histories have an active narrator, which provides a running commentary throughout. Hattige provides a perfect example of such commentary with an extensive preface from the translator. The text as it is framed for the English reader has a preface which presents questions as to the validity. As the initial comment on the story, the translator describes one glaring problems with narrator reliability. The first is the assertion made that the editor merely translated a novel he had read. In this way, the actual author is once removed from the narration and is therefore shielded from attack and censor. What this also accomplishes is the room for error credited between the author and the translator. The preface even admits that the translator might not have completely translated the story successfully. He states “how well I have done it, let the Reader judg.” This statement suggests the possibility of mistranslation which can have immense ramifications as words and phrases mistranslated significant changes to the meaning.
To most the detective fiction genre is considered to be “new.” Marking its inception with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841, classifying Poe as the “undisputed father” of crime fiction (Butler). However, Poe is not the creator of the detective fiction genre, and in fact this type of literature can be seen centuries before in Old Testament writings. These writings include “Susanna and the Elders” and “Bel and the Priests,” as well as Greek writings like “Hercules and Cacus” and “King Rhampsinitus and The Thief”(Scaggs 19). Together, these literary pieces have had an ever-lasting influence on crime fiction, and substantiate the fact that Poe was in no way the originator of this genre.
Frey, Darcy. “The Last Shot.” Reading and Writing the College Experience. Huron Valley Publishing: Ypsilanti, 2003. 171 – 192.