In May 1966, Richard Poirier wrote an article on Thomas Pynchon's novel, The Crying of Lot 49. Clearly a fan of Pynchon's earlier work, V, Poirier praises what he calls another example of Pynchon's "technical virtuosity" and "apocalyptic satire," of "saturnalian inventiveness" comparable to John Barth and Joseph Heller (Poirier 1). He admires Pynchon's adept confidence with philosophical and psychological concepts, "his anthropological intimacy with the off-beat" (1). Before addressing what he believes to be flaws in the author's narration (the heaviest focus of the scope of his opinions), Poirier starts with a broad survey of Pynchon's intentions with form. Poirier suggests that the various interwoven quests of the protagonist Oedipa Maas are willfully elaborate to reflect the intricacies of the mind, a wasteland of suspicion and imagination. The imagination of the novel's characters "first creates and is then enslaved by its own plottings, its machines" (1). Late in the novel, as connections to the Tristero cult stack up, Oedipa wanders into the dense environs of nighttime San Francisco, dizzy with her imagination (or was it?) of the underground symbol: "This night's profusion of post horns, malignant, deliberate replication . . . one by one, pinch by precision pinch, they were immobilizing her" (Pynchon 124). Like the characters in V, Oedipa Maas runs from the responsibilities of love and finds herself in a maze. Pynchon mocks these situations "devoid of love" with "Byzantine complications of plot" (Poirier 1). Concerning Pynchon's characters, Poirier also notes their desperate efforts of communication. Pynchon has an extraordinary metaphoric skill illustrating his reverence for the human endeavor to code, decode and leave messages, to communicate; his own cry at the pathetic and haunting failure to communicate. Finally, Poirier states that the largest character throughout The Crying of Lot 49 is Pynchon himself, whose voice moves passionately "with its capacity to move from the elegy to the epic catalogue . . . like a survivor looking through the massed wreckage of this civilization" (5).
Works Cited
Poirier, Richard. "Embattled Underground." New York Times on the Web 1 May 1966. 22 September 2000.
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006.
“The Great Escape” came out on July 4th, 1963. It is based on a true story of a group of Allied prisoners who managed to escape from an allegedly impenetrable Nazi prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III, on March 24, 1944. Directed by John Sturges, it follows the true account of the escape very accurately. With a perfect balance between comedy and adventure, “The Great Escape” keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Siebert, Wilbur H. - The Underground Railroad From Slavery to Freedom , pp. 125, 156.
The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley follows Alette's journey through the underground subway system, which ends up being a whole different world. Alette's mission to take down the oppressive tyrant that controls this underground world, symbolizes her desire to confront male hegemony. Through refrences to the thesis, form, and historical context it is undeniable that the author is taking the reader on a journey through Alette's struggle with patriarchy.
Crichton, Michael. The Great Train Robbery. First Ballantine Books ed. N.p.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Print.
Although establishing rights for many different members of society, the voting rights act isn’t the end of this concern. We can learn from history that the interpretation of voting rights will always be in question by some new player. The best we can do is to understand that voting rights in American history has had much to with time and place, thus the reason for the ongoing change in the interpretation.
To understand the depiction of the Arab Muslim woman in William Beckford’s Vathek and in its contemporary Oriental fictions, we need, at the beginning, to trace her development in the Western fiction long before the 18th century. This chapter examines the representations of Arab Muslim woman in Western literary texts , covering the period from the eleventh century to the seventeenth century ,and examines how these representations pave the way to her representation in the eighteenth century, and to what extent Vathek’s women can be recognized in them.
The public and the police, whom also see them as deviants, label them. They don’t live like we do in clean houses that have electricity and running water. They live a different standard that makes most uncomfortable. Toth explains how New York also has a high rate of substance abusers and mentally ill in the underground population (41). This proves that there is a broader problem here that reflects on how the structure of the U.S society. Based off of conflict theory, the reason the “mole people” are like this is because we secluded them from our society, with alienating them. They end up turning to drug use for an escape or some of them became this way because they were addicts and mentally ill and we didn’t supply the help needed to fix them. Our society is set for the individual and what we can do to improve ourselves that we often forget to help the less fortunate. In a capitalist system, the definition of alienation is defined as being unconnected to one’s work, product, fellow workers, and human nature. Reading the numerous accounts of people Toth has interviewed, we learn about the homeless that ended up there due to a poor upbringing or some who used to be somebody that sadly ended up homeless and seeking refuge in these tunnels. Some choose this life others are destined here because of the fault in the U.S
What is in the spring of your life if the spring of a life refers to your first twenty years in your life? The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel by Silvia Plath, describes Esther Greenwood’s harsh spring of her life. Narrating in the first person, Esther tells her experience of a mental breakdown in a descriptive language, helping the readers visualize what she sees and feel her emotions. The novel takes place in New York City and Boston during the early 1950s when women’s roles were limited to domesticity. The repression of women’s roles in the American society during the 1950s and other influences such as her lack of confidence, her hesitance, her mother, and her feminist point of view seem to affect her mental breakdown.
One of the most famous contemporary ethnographic studies of women and gender within Islam is Erika Friedl’s Women of Deh Koh, in which her main concern seems to be providing he...
Bellow, Saul. "Man Underground" Review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Commentary. June 1952. 1st December 2001
Fanger, Donald. Introduction. Notes From Underground. By Fyodor Dostoevsky. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. NY: Bantam, 1992.
Fanger, Donald. Introduction: Notes From Underground. By Fyodor Dostoevsky. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. NY: Bantam, 1992.
The email that Obama was addressing did have some truth to it though, but these small facts were taken completely out of context. Obamas Middle name is Hussein, and his father and step father were muslim, but he spent his childhood in catholic schools and not that he is older, is a christian. Thes...
Religious values of the predominately Muslim culture in Nadia al-Faqih in A Woman of Five Seasons are at a point where their practice will bring great adversity to her new found way of life. Nadia is married into a life of luxury where her husband Ihsan is in a constant state of yearning for greater wealth and lusting after other worldly gains. She is pushed into a life where what she should want, the latest fashions, perfumes, and celebrity magazines are constantly thrust in her face.
Daniels starts the chapter by stating that men historically have had more advantages than women. Men could be writers without being judged while women were unable to do so due to their lack of education. It is because of this that men could express their opinion while women were kept shut. Literature served as an insight of the culture and society of the time period. In Arab literature specifically, women are often portrayed in the familiar cultural stereotypes. Alifa Rifaat, a Muslim feminist, took a twist on the average Arab literature and she instead wrote stories about what it means to be a woman in an orthodox Muslim society in Egypt. In Rifaat’s book, Distant View of a Minaret, she discusses themes of human rights, sex and gender roles in her stories that would allow the reader to come to their own conclusion about such rights, or lack of, regarding women, hopefully in protest of such. Rifaat’s book contains thirteen short stories in which Muslim women are faced difficulties in their arranged marriages. Throughout her stories it is made clear that in Egypt and other orthodox Muslim societies women have little to no say in economics or major decisions, as well as little to no education. Women are expected to be under the control of their husbands, or their older brother if they are single or widowed. A major theme in all of Rifaat’s short stories is the deprivation of sexual satisfaction and lack of emotional attention many of the women suffer from in their marriages in orthodox Muslim societies. This then leads to a tyranny of masculinity that make women passive and unable to fight back. Not only is it the religious rules that have oppressed women in orthodox Muslim societies but it is also the tradition in such cultures. Such rules and traditions have