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. To invite a larger variety of responses from readers, ambiguity is a popular device incorporated in text. It creates enigmas, stimulates thought, and enables readers to draw their own conclusions. Ambiguity …show more content…
is the prerequisite of multiple interpretations of text, some controversial, inspiring Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author”, wherein he nullifies authorial intent and encourages liberation from absolute interpretation. Following the idea of authorial dissociation, the high degree of obscurity in Shakespearean works allows me to freely argue in my literature extended essay that the playwright reinforces the Divine Right’s legitimacy in “Hamlet” and “Richard II”, despite the common portrayal of usurpers Hamlet and Henry as sympathetic heroes. My own experience with writing the play “Que Sera, Sera” for the school’s Drama Night has been an investigation into the psychology of omission.
I face the challenge of maneuvering plot elements and structure so as to create the maximum allowance for interpretation while avoiding the infuriating lack of closure, as I understand obscurity to the point of abstrusity risks the inability to satisfy mankind’s need for conclusion and assimilation. For example, it is impossible to discern definitely the subject of Auden’s poem “This Lunar Beauty” without scouting for clues in the poet’s biography. This potentially lowers the social value of the work, though it remains of high artistic merit due to Auden’s mastery over musicality and imagery. Thematically transparent works such as Orwell’s “1984” tend to be more well-known and lauded, yet explicitness in the form of complex, meticulous descriptive sentences, while vivid, can be quite overwhelming - a fact I have come to know when introduced to Faulkner’s works in a summer program studying short
fiction. Being chairperson in the Joint School Chess Challenge denotes taking up the roles of the pacifist, encourager and leader. I learn that articulation of skillfully crafted language, demonstrated in the balance of enunciation and equivocation in speech, becomes the steering wheel driving the team safely towards success. The process of establishing friendships with members of different walks of life reminds me of the danger of reducing people to mere constructs and archetypes, as writers of classical literature often do with their characters for the sake of highlighting themes. As a Go player, reading behind moves and penetrating opponents’ state of mind are second nature to me. My acquaintance with Go - which, similar to literature, is an exploration of human psyche and behavior - has honed my cognitive sensitivity required in recognizing and deciphering subtext. Literature documents centuries’ worth of deftly fashioned prose and verses - the most formidable instruments for influencing the human mind. The power of indefinite language, one that not only informs, but inspires contemplation, is a force to be cautiously appreciated. I hope through reading literature, I can further examine the mechanics of language engineering, and be able to achieve strength and precision in the effect of my words.
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.”
Diction plays a critical role in the development of the tone in a story. The type of words the author uses directly leads to the tone of the entire literary work. If ...
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
Kristeva, Julia. "A Question of Subjectivity--an Interview." Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. Ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, 1989.
According to literary theories and the theories of Fredrich Nietzsche, human beings have an unquenchable urge for power and will use "ethics," and everything else, in order to increase their authority. In Nabokov's Lolita, we see how Humbert controls Lolita in the beginning stages of their relationship but eventually finds himself going mad because of her deceitful ways and the control she has over his sexual desires.
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.
Both Zadie Smith with “Some Notes on Attunement” and Vanessa Veselka with “Highway of Lost Girls” use their essay to tell a story. Yet in analyzing these pieces of writing, it is clear that there are more to them than just the stories themselves. These stories, filled with personal thoughts and experiences, also are full of an assortment of stylistic choices such as repetition and comparisons that emphasize many deep, underlying ideas.
Written stories differ in numerous ways, but most of them have one thing in common; they all have a narrator that, on either rare occasions or more regularly, help to tell the story. Sometimes, the narrator is a vital part of the story since without him or her, it would not be possible to tell the story in the same way, and sometimes, the narrator has a very small role in the story. However, he or she is always there, and to compare how different authors use, and do not use, this outside perspective writing tool, a comparison between Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly will be done.
Throughout this semester’s stories, I have noticed one common motif in almost every literary work: deeper meaning. Authors whom write shorter stories need to provide hidden meaning in their works to arouse profound thought. Many of these short stories display one of the three ironies such as verbal, situation and dramatic. It can be used to provide plot twists, or even reveal to each reader’s inner bias that they didn’t even realize they had. Another annotation used is glossing. Glossing makes a literary work more complex with hidden significance. Each of the following stories displays at least one of these literary devises which gave each short story a sense of complexity for further analysis and controversy.
Although they are intimately involved, the title character of Nabokov's Lolita never fully reveals her true self to Humbert. Likewise, Humbert pours his physical love into Lolita, but he never reveals to his stepdaughter a self that is separate from his obsession with her. These two characters mask large parts of their personalities from each other and the rest of the world, creating different images and personas in regard to different people and situations. One assumption of post-structuralism holds that “persons are culturally and discursively structured, created in interaction as situated, symbolic beings.” In accordance with this idea that people are created by their culture and in their interactions, both Lolita and Humbert have different personalities in different situations and circumstances. However, they ultimately show a more continuous and profound self-existence than just as faces created in their various interactions.
Ambiguity is when a word is used in a sentence but it has an unclear or unfixed meaning. An example of this is in “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, in one scene Holden says “I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I’m quite a heavy smoker, for one thing—that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That’s also how I practically got tubby and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I’m pretty healthy though.” This is an example of ambiguity because the words “they” and “here” used by the speaker are ambiguous. But the readers are allowed to presume from the context that “they” might be the professionals helping out Holden and “here” might be a rehabilitation center.
Literary critic and the novel’s annotator Alfred Appel Jr. claims “what is extraordinary about Lolita is the way in which Nabokov enlists us, against our will, on Humbert’s side… Humbert has figuratively made the reader his accomplice in both statutory rape and murder” (Durantaye, Style Is Matter: the Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov 8). Nabokov employs various literary devices such as direct second reader address, metaphor, and allusions through Humbert Humbert as a means to conjure up feelings of empathy. The reader comes to find that . It is clear that Humbert Humbert uses second person address as a way to control how the reader perceives him. Through the use of this narrative mode, he aims to convince the reader that his sexual violence is artistically justifiable and that the art he creates is a remedy for mortality. I will argue is that art is not a remedy for mortality because in Humbert Humbert’s creation of Lolita, t...
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.
A typical story is littered with details, explaining the history of the world the story takes place in, who the characters in the story are, all the while remaining correlated to the plot and subplots that drive the story forward. The story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson however does not follow these conditions, as the reader is left to interpret a majority of the story on their own as it progresses. Jackson is not the only writer to incorporate a style of selective exposition in their work; Raymond Carver is widely recognized for his rejection of explanation and the use of characters that do not always communicate with one another, both of which are elements which Jackson incorporates into her own story. Initially, a lack of exposition may seem detrimental to the story, but instead it plays to the “mysterious nature of story” according to Charles E. May in his essay ‘Do You See What I’m Saying?’: The Inadequacy of Explanation and the uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver. Therefore, by refusing to expound upon setting, characters, and plot allows the author to create mystery, and the reader to form their own interpretations of the story.