Jennifer Government by Max Barry

1220 Words3 Pages

Imagine a world where your last name is the company you work for. Imagine a world where the United States includes all of North American, all of South America, all of Australia, the Pacific Islands, South Africa, India, Thailand and Russia. Welcome to Jennifer Government. The novel can be looked at by a reader as a simple, yet innovative story. The novel can also be seen as a deep, catawampus story with plenty of plot twists that are nicely blended together. Each successive chapter is told from the view from a different character; each chapter holds a different plot twist that keeps the reader guessing from one paragraph to the next; each chapter delves into sense of human emotion. Max Barry focuses strongly on the use of political satire plot of his story while using a unique style of third person limited point of view to bring about a story of deceit, and scandal.

Within the first few chapter of Jennifer Government, the reader will notice a unique style of narration. First the reader is following behind Hack Nike in his office building. Next the reader is behind Hayley McDonald's, a student. A few turns of the pages and the reader is behind Buy Mitsui, a stock broker.

Barry takes the traditional style of third person limited and adds a spin to it. In traditional third person limited, a narrator becomes a shadow of character, follows that character around, and tells what he or she sees happening. Barry's style of third person limited takes on a slight twist though. A reader could imagine there are several different narrators in Jennifer Government.

This style of point of view adds a new feeling while reading the novel. The reader will be looking through the eyes of someone shadowing Jennifer Government and seeing it in one style, but then on the next page, the reader will see what's happening through the eyes of someone shadowing Billy NRA. Even though the narrator may change, the story will progress. You can compare the technique to a basketball game. One moment, the person is in the audience watching the game. The next moment the person is a player on the bench. Then the person becomes a player on the court taking shots. After that, the person changes into a referee calling the game. At the end, the person becomes the coach and calls the shots of the game.

Show More
Related

  • The Hot Zone Point Of View Analysis

    573 Words  | 2 Pages

    The point of view is considered to be omniscient third person narrative, meaning that the narrator, in this case Preston, knows everything about what will happen at future points in the book, but decides not to let the reader know it all just yet. The novel is told as if a grandfather is sharing his childhood memories to his grandchildren, where he himself knows all how it will end, but his young listeners do not.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Consumerism In Max Berry's Jennifer Government

    728 Words  | 2 Pages

    The United States includes North America, South America, Australia, and the United Kingdom, to name a few. The company a person works for is taken as their surname. And outside the Government, the NRA and the Police are two other organizations of power. These are only a few descriptions of the world that Max Berry has created in his novel Jennifer Government. While the novel may seem like any other fiction book, reading the book closely will reveal Berry’s true purpose of crafting this type of world. In this fictional story, an aspect of life that Berry makes prominent is consumerism. For example, the book is built from the mistake of the first character that is introduced, Hack Nike. Hack works for the Nike Company, and when he receives an opportunity to receive a higher salary, he mindlessly signs a contract, sealing the deal. However, the contract has required him to execute certain illegal activities.

    Read More

  • Point Of View In Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes

    202 Words  | 1 Pages

    Ray Bradbury uses point of view in the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes as a way to reveal the thoughts of multiple characters and their personalities. For example, Charles states that “For… it's a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well,” (page 57-58) meaning that women and children are never awake and have no regret. He is proved wrong, however, when we see that Ms. Foley, Jim and Will are awake at that hour. Another example is Charles’s assessment of Jim’s character. He states “but Jim, now, he knows it happens, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, he sees it finish, he licks the wound he expected, and never asks why; he knows.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of A Girl's Story By David Arnason

    1604 Words  | 4 Pages

    David Arnason begins the story in the first person, then moves back-and-fourth to third person. In this type of writing, the readers have an opportunity to enter the text and understand it and the author more. Arnason uses techniques, such as circular

    Read More

  • My Beloved World, by Sonia Sotomayor

    1403 Words  | 3 Pages

    The American Dream has never been available to minority citizens as easily as it is to American-born citizens. Affirmative action was first implemented around the year 1972, however it was not widely accepted or practiced. During this time society was just getting used to including women in higher education institutions so the concept of including minorities in higher education was almost non-existent. My Beloved World, by Sonia Sotomayor shows the challenges that a first generation, Puerto Rican, lower socioeconomic female had during this time. Through her autobiography she shows the struggles she faced throughout her life, focusing on her application to college, college experience and insight into her cultural background. My Beloved World present the ideology of White Supremacy and other phenomenon’s such as structural inequality, and socioeconomic inequality that interfere with Sonia’s inability to receive preparation for college and these things show the that America has not made good on its promise of equal opportunity for all.

    Read More

  • My Beloved World By Sonia Sotomayor

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    The United States is known as the “land of the free” attracting many immigrants to achieve the “American Dream” with the promise of equal opportunity for all. However, many groups, whose identities differed from the dominant American ideology, discovered this “American dream” to be a fantasy. In the 1960s, movements for civil rights in the United States of America included efforts to end private and public acts of racial discrimination against groups of disadvantaged people. Despite the efforts made to empower the disadvantaged groups, racialization and class differences prevailed leading to social inequality. The novel My Beloved World is an autobiography written by Sonia Sotomayor illustrating her early life, education, and career path, explaining the unresolved contradictions of American history and how they continue on in society. Prejudice against certain socioeconomic classes and races prevented equal opportunity. Sotomayor’s text explicates the racialization and class differences that many Puerto Ricans experience while pursuing a higher education, revealing the contradictions between the American promise of equal opportunity and discrimination against Puerto Ricans.

    Read More

  • Dorothy Allison's This is Our World

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    In her work, “This is Our World,” Dorothy Allison shares her perspective of how she views the world as we know it. She has a very vivid past with searing memories of her childhood. She lives her life – her reality – because of the past, despite how much she wishes it never happened. She finds little restitution in her writings, but she continues with them to “provoke more questions” (Allison 158) and makes the readers “think about what [they] rarely want to think about at all” (158).

    Read More

  • Point Of View In Love Medicine By Louise Erdrich

    1982 Words  | 4 Pages

    Point of view is one of the single greatest assets an author can use. It helps to move the plot along and show what is happening from a character’s perspective. An author can make the plot more complex by introducing several characters that the reader has to view events through. The events can then be seen through different eyes and mindsets forcing the reader to view the character in a different light. From one perspective a character can seem cruel, yet, from another, the same character can seem like a hero. These vastly contrasting views can be influenced based on the point of view, a character’s background, and the emotions towards them. The novel Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich showcases some examples of events seen from different points

    Read More

  • Michelle Obama, The Ordinary World

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    Michelle Obama Information about Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American lawyer and writer, she was born on 17th January 1964, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Michelle Obama was the former First Lady of the United States from 2009-2017. She is married to the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. Michelle is also the first African-American First Lady. Michelle has also written 8 books as a writer and is currently worth $11.8 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

    Read More

  • Roswell by Melinda Metz

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    The preserving modern folk tale that is the invasion of aliens, is fully knotted within the cultural fear that one day in the near future, a threat of some unknown origin will be more powerful, more capable at warfare than we American’s can ever be. No mater the impossibility, it is a perceived end to the very short colonization of the North Americas. In 1947 a few miles from Roswell, NW, Mack Brazel found debris from an unidentified flying object scattered in a three-mile arc on his land. According to the myth told by the International UFO Museum Research Center in Roswell, NW, the metal had strange pictorial writings on the “I” beams and were purple in color. (IUFORMC NM Inc.) This tale is so widely told in Roswell, that there has been a whole industry developed there to preserve this ledged of the alien crash landing and the Military’s collection of the debris and cover-up of the visitors from outer space.

    Read More

  • The Secret Lion Literary Analysis

    1488 Words  | 3 Pages

    opposed to a first person point of view, a limited omniscient point of view gives the

    Read More

  • Letters to Jennifer by James Pattersons

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book Letters to Jennifer by James Pattersons, there is an important lesson that Grandma Sam teaches to Jennifer. While Jennifer remembers the summers she spent at her grandmother’s house and all the important lessons Sam has taught her, Jennifer remembers the time she was about to leave and her grandmother gave her a jar to fill up with seashells and sand. Jennifer kept coming back and Grandma Sam kept sending her back outside saying the jar wasn’t full. Finally Sam told her to fit the large shells and rocks in first, then fill it with sand and smaller shells that would fall into the cracks. Sam told Jennifer, “that living life was like putting the beach into a jar. The point wasn’t to fit everything in; it was to attend to the most important things first- the big, beautiful rocks- the most valuable people and experiences- and fit the lesser things in around them” (Patterson 88). This really stuck with Jennifer throughout her life. When something important came her way she shoved the little unimportant things, like the newspaper, out of the way and focused on the big things, Sam and Brendan.

    Read More

  • Materialistic Dystopia

    1702 Words  | 4 Pages

    Max Barry's Jennifer Government and William Gibson's Neuromancer each depict a dystopian image of the world. In both novels, greed and consumerism become the vice that plagues humanity. Materialism is no longer abstract, but a way of life in these alternate realities. Corporations maintain control over the products they sell as well as the individuals they solicit to. Characters in each novel become victims of corporate tyrants when production precedes compassion. Jennifer Government and Neuromancer portray mass consumerism and human exploitation resulting in a societal dystopia.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Everything That Rises Must Converge

    1137 Words  | 3 Pages

    Breaking down point of view in stories can be helpful in determining the central idea, as the two concepts typically support one another. An author such as O’Connor has the ability when writing narrative to use whichever point of view they feel best portrays the story they are telling in the way they would like readers to understand it. By including and excluding certain bits of information, the author can present the story the way they choose, with the option to leave as many or as few subtle or obvious details within the narration as they would like to reveal to

    Read More

  • Point Of View Essay

    840 Words  | 2 Pages

    By using the third person omniscient point of view, the narrator is able to render the characters with information related both from direct description and from the other character's revelations. This way, the description remains unbiased, but at the same time coherent with how the various characters see it. For example, after the narrator tells us that "He was an only child, eleven years old. She was a widow. She was determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in devotion.", we are able to understand why the boy is so emotionally attached to his mother and, at the beginning, unwilling to ask her for permission to go to his beach and, later in the story, unwilling to let her know about his adventure through the tunnel. This also explains why the mother let him go without questions, even if she was very worried about him.

    Read More

More about Jennifer Government by Max Barry

Open Document