Seabiscuit Meaning

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Organization: The Organization of Seabiscuit is an interesting one. The novel is split up into parts and each part is split up into chapters. Each part can best be described as representing an age or era for the story of Seabiscuit. For example, in the beginning of the novel, the chapters each follow a certain character so they end up covering the same 30 years or so, just in a different persons eye. The rest of the novel however falls into a perfect chronological order, ending even with a “future” section that resembles the ends of movies where it tells what each character did with their lives after the events of the story. Each chapter follows a certain small set of time within the larger era that the part encompasses. These chapters are …show more content…

The title isn’t really explained in the book from my inspection, however it is explored. Meaning that the author describes how Seabiscuit became an american legend, and doesn’t really straight up mention the title. Also the book is about Seabiscuit, so it makes sense that the book would have that in it’s title. The author wants the reader to come away with a sense of american pride, almost as if they are doing a service to their country by reading the novel. The title doesn’t really change in meaning before and after reading the book, however you still feel the vibrations of emotion and American pride when reading the …show more content…

For example, on page HUGH, Red Pollard was afflicted with blindness in his right eye, yet he never told any of the other characters, so that is then dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the reader knows something that the character does not. The reader knows that Red is blind, however characters such as Tom or Howard do not. Another example of irony is found on page HHJS, when Red is hospitalized and he can’t ride Seabiscuit, so he gives the new jockey, Woolf, advice. This advice is later determined to be the reason why Woolf lost a very big race. This is situational irony because Red’s advice was supposed to make Woolf win, however it caused the loss. One more example of irony is on page HFG, when Howard replaces the horse as the primary transportation with the car. Howard later comes to living on a secluded ranch with a love for horses. This technically falls into the situational type of irony. Laura Hillenbrand doesn’t enjoy pointing out irony. However she does take pleasure in sprinkling it within her works, and making it a sort of easter egg hunt to find irony. As such I can’t determine how often she uses irony, because I can’t find all of the uses. She mainly places her irony in plain sight, yet hidden amongst her narrative.

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