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Literary analysis
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A Captivity Narrative
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The captivity narrative genre is not often a favorite type of literature among most students. Perhaps because of the time in which they were written, students have trouble relating to characters whom lived in a setting more than two and three hundred years ago. Although the genre receives attention in many early level American literature college courses, high school English teachers rarely—if at all—teach captivity narratives. When it is used, students perceive the captivity narrative as a historical document rather than a literary text. In other words, students do not recognize captivity narratives as literature. However, the captivity narrative deserves a place in the high school English classroom because as a genre, captivity narratives provide the foundation for many of the rhetorical arguments found in US literature. In this way, captivity narratives have influenced other literary genres and arguably became the first type of literature to incorporate the American frontier hero, while also subverting traditional gender and racial norms. To encourage an increased use of this subject at the high school level, we need to teach the captivity narrative under the same light its original readers interpreted it. Treating the captivity narrative as a form of popular fiction, and using Mary Rowlandson’s narrative as a specific example, students will discover the literary merit and entertainment value of the captivity narrative genre. Thus, having a class project where students compare captivity narratives to literature with which they are familiar and that they enjoy reading would immediately make the captivity narrative relevant and therefore worth learning.
As one of the earliest examples of its type, Rowlandson’s captivity narrativ...
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...ool students will choose the texts with which they compare to the captivity narrative. First, in his novel, Catch-22, Heller argues that the bureaucratic world of army life in wartime is a wilderness of reason. In being drafted, the “evil” American army forces Yossarian into the wilderness of war and the rule of Catch-22, and the army takes Yossarian from his innocent state of life away from the war and in a world that makes sense. Yossarian spends his time trying to get out of the army, residing in a liminal space where he cannot go complete his commitment to fly the required amount of dangerous missions without his boss increasing that amount and cannot reasonably live in the army without dying. Yossarian grows morally by learning to circumvent the law of Catch-22: his redemption arrives when Yossarian finally abandons logic and sails to Sweden in a lifeboat.
Catch-22 follows the protagonist, Yossarian’s experience during WWII. However, the book is nowhere near chronological and jumps from different time periods of Yossarian’s service in the military. The novel depicts many events of where Yossarian
In constructing “ The Unredeemed Captive,” John Demos uses many styles of writing. One of the most pronounced styles used in this book is an argumentative style of writing. John Demos argues many points throughout the book and makes several contradictions to topics discussed previously in the work. John Demos also uses several major themes in the book, suck as captivity, kinship, negotiation, trade, regional and national development, and international relations. Each one of these themes, in my opinion, are what separate the book into its major sections.
This lecture provided an overview of development of slave narratives as a genre unique to the United States. It divided slave narratives as a genre into several distinct time periods that were characterized by different literary characteristics. The three temporal divisions of the genre include 1760-1810, the 1840’s, and the 1850’s and beyond.
Taking place during World War II, the novel “Catch-22” introduces Captain John Yossarian, who is in the United States Air Force, while in a hospital acquiring from an illness of his liver. He is constantly concerned that people are trying to kill him, proving in postponing his number of missions and going to extremities at times such as poisoning his own squadron and moving the bomb line during the Great Big Siege of Bologna. Yossarian’s character endeavors at all costs to stay in the hospital by reason of "There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily." (175). While he desperately refused to complete his never ending missions in the dilemma of Catch-22, author Joseph Heller classifies Yossarian as a hero because of his loyalty, his ability to remain sane throughout the war, and his heroic characteristics.
Tindall, G.B. & Shi, D.E. (2010). America a narrative history 8th edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. p.205-212.
The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration, written by Mary Rowlandson describes the events that she was taken captive alongside a number of people by Native Indians. The story is written in first person; therefore, it has details on the happenings during and after the captives. Mary narrates her experiences and highlights her views of her captors and the Native Indian community at large. The narratives indicate Mary Rowlandson's position as a female in her society during her time.
Known today as two of the most prominent American satirists, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut both served time as soldiers during World War II, Heller serving as a bombardier in Italy (Scoggins) and Vonnegut as a soldier and prisoner of war in Germany (Parr). Not coincidentally, both Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22 and Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death follow the journeys of young men in combat during the Second World War – Captain John Yossarian of the US Army Air Forces and soldier Billy Pilgrim, respectively. While it is evident that these fictional novels are both set during the World War II era and convey bleak images of war, closer inspection of both texts brings to light the common
Slave narratives were one of the first forms of African- American literature. The narratives were written with the intent to inform those who weren’t aware of the hardships of slavery about how badly slaves were being treated. The people who wrote these narratives experienced slavery first hand, and wanted to elicit the help of abolitionists to bring an end to it. Most slave narratives were not widely publicized and often got overlooked as the years went by; however, some were highly regarded and paved the way for many writers of African descent today.
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...
Throughout literature, there have been many tales told about strong, brave heroes and mighty, wily savages and beasts. However, one story that still speaks to students today is that of a heroine by the name of Hannah Dustan, who killed ten Indians with the assistance of her two fellow captives. Together, they escaped capture, and Hannah Dustan told her tale again and again to individuals she encountered. Because she did not write her story down, others did it for her. In particular, John Greenleaf Whittier and Jonathan Carver both wrote compelling tales of Hannah Dustan’s capture, but it is only by looking at the differences between the essays, the reader gleans a more complete picture of Dustan’s experiences and societal issues that were occurring during the time period. For instance, gender roles, and savagery versus civility, and revenge are three themes running throughout both essays; all of these themes are still echoing throughout society today.
Hunter-Willis, Miya. Writing the Wrongs: A Comparison of Two Female Slave Narratives. Diss. Marshall University, 2008. Dissertations & Theses: Full Text, ProQuest. Web. 22 Sep. 2011.
Nowadays, students describe slavery based on what they read or learned. Students cannot be able to understand the true meaning behind the word “slavery.” The only people that can understand are the ones who went through it. For them, it is hard to look back from the most brutality and sorrowful years of their lives and yet they chose to write their experience. That is why in school, teachers are requiring narrative books for students to understand the main character’s point of view and apply the moral story to the real world. One of the famous books that English teachers are recommending is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave. It also includes two different introductions of Houston Baker and Peter Gomes and an
The main character in Catch-22, which was written by Joseph Heller in 1960, was Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier in the 256th Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Force during WWII. Yossarian's commanding officer, Colonel Cathcart, wanted a promotion so badly that he kept raising the number of missions the men in his squadron were required to fight. Yossarian resented this very much, but he couldn't do anything about it because a bureaucratic trap, known as catch-22, said that the men did not have the right to go home after they completed forty missions (the number of missions the Army demands they fly) because they had to obey their commanding officers. Yossarian was controlled by the higher authority like the doctors restrained Joe. The whole novel was basically about how Yossarian tried to fight catch-22.
The Smith and Rowlandson captivity narratives serve multiple purposes that are clearly different, but the same universal traits such as a sudden attack, casualties, and a sale or trade make up the DNA of captivity
"Characteristics of the Slave Narrative." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington. Web. 28 Sept. 2011. http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/narrativelist.htm