The storyline for many fairy-tales follow the same structure, there is a damsel in distress and a hero is there for the rescue. This simple concept is complexed within many classic novels. Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood shows how overcoming traumatic experiences may transform individuals from their state of despair into a peaceful mindset. On the other hand, Arthur Goldman’s Memoirs of a Geisha focuses on a girl who struggles to navigate through the constant obstacles of life. These two novels demonstrate
Cat’s Eye, by Margaret Atwood tells the story of painter who returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her art. The protagonist and narrator, Elaine Risley delves into her childhood through a series of flashbacks to show the true motives behind her art and rediscover parts of her identity from an older and wiser point of view. For first eight years of her life, Elaine Risley lived a nomadic lifestyle with her parents. When her father, and entomologist, accepts a job to work as a professor at a university
Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye is the non-chronological story of Elaine Risley’s life, told in her voice through vignette flashbacks as she reminisces on her life, preparing for a retrospective of her work as an artist in Toronto. Atwood explores the fractured Canadian identity both through the protagonist’s binary mode of viewing the world, and through the opposing Canadian landscapes on which the story is set. As Goldblatt states, Atwood’s “protagonists' early days are situated in a virtual
In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred, Nick, and the Commander are unorthodox. To begin, Offred defies convention in many ways. The requirement of a Handmaid is to wear a loose, red dress that covers the woman’s entire body except her eyes. The Handmaids are not permitted to wear makeup and they are required to keep their faces covered. The Republic has these requirements in order to keep women from feeling vain. Vanity is seen as a sin in Gilead, and women are not supposed to be
Caroline Space AH 4110 – The Photograph in Contemporary Art A. Grundberg 5 December 2013 REVISED PAPER Taryn Simon was born in New York in 1975. Simon's photography consists of a triad of equal elements: photography, design, and text. Her works examine the impracticality of complete knowledge and unlocks the gap between image and text, where confusion arises, and ambiguity is strong. She archives subjects that do not “officially exist, did not happen, and cannot be seen. Others who possess this
The extract in question is situated at the end of Chapter 20 of Cat’s Eye, where Cordelia, Grace and Carol attempt to bury the protagonist, Elaine Ridley, alive as some sort of sick joke. When this occurs, she is dressed as Mary Queen of Scots and plays along like a game, until she realises that the girls intended to leave her. Elaine then reflects on the traumatic experience and comes to the conclusion that she cannot remember any of her birthdays and other major event in her life due to the ordeal
The Importance of the Narrator of The Handmaid's Tale The creation of Offred, the passive narrator of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, was intentional. The personality of the narrator in this novel is almost as important as the task bestowed upon her. Atwood chooses an average women, appreciative of past times, who lacks imagination and fervor, to contrast the typical feminist, represented in this novel by her mother and her best friend, Moira. Atwood is writing for a specific
Cordelia and Elaine that continue through out the bullying period, for example Cordelia's judgmental attitude "her eyes are measuring" or " Cordelia is looking past me to where my parents are…" To me, this first meeting seems too rich on detail, too unbelievable because of the amount of detail that the adult Elaine has remembered. I cannot remember so far back as to what another person's eyes looked like even yesterday, perhaps what they said made a deep impact and I would have remembered it, but surely
as men. Women would also not be separated or singled out by other men. In the book Cat’s Eye, written by Margaret Atwood, Elaine Risley, who is the main character in the book, is an artist living within the Second World War to the late 1980’s, and participates in the modern art movement. Due to childhood bullying and being victimized by girls her age, Elaine’s adult life is different than others. In Cat’s Eye, Elaine finds her identity by going back in time willfully and accepting the past, along
In Margaret Atwood’s “Cat’s Eye,” Atwood tells the story of a Canadian artist, Elaine Risley. While back in Toronto for an art show, Elaine reflects on the pain of her childhood, and how it has impacted the rest of her life. Atwood relies on the motif of physical structure to illuminate the lack of emotional and personal structure Elaine experiences in her youth - which ultimately resurface as low self-image, as well as the toxic relationships she engages in as an adolescent and adult. Atwood
“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war” (John Adams) In Vonnegut’s science fiction and dystopian novel Cat’s Cradle, the main character, John, demonstrates his personal growth and from that, his enlightened attitude towards the unnecessary horrors that war creates. In the beginning of the novel, John sets out to discover and gather information on what people’s lives were like the day that the atomic bomb dropped. Along his path of discovery, he meets the Hoenikker family, of which Felix was
On the surface, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five are vastly dissimilar works of literature, each with its own creative style and plot. However, when the texts are examined with a discerning eye one can notice multiple thematic undercurrents such as war fate,time and suffering hidden in plain sight. Overwhelmingly common in Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five are strong anti-war sentiments which show all the ways "war is deleterious towards the human condition."(Marvin) Vonnegut
Why has man’s scientific and technological-based society engendered such lack of concern among its people? Kurt Vonnegut explores this concept in his novels Cat’s Cradle and The Sirens of Titan. Vonnegut suggests the following statements to be true. The universe has no purpose other than to exist solely for itself. There has been excessive exploitation of science and technology. Humanity has responded by ignoring morality. In man’s unsuccessful quest for an universal purpose, science and technology
became one of the most eminent satirical writers of his time and was quite perceptible in two of his works, “Harrison Bergeron” and Cat’s Cradle. Kurt Vonnegut led an adventurous and interesting life, which greatly contributed to his writing style that made his works so enjoyable. Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922 in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana where
works, Vonnegut doesn’t steer clear from examining the pointlessness of warfare, the ability to escape your current reality, religion and the immoral aspects of science. Vonnegut’s short story Harrison Bergeron and his novels, Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle were all works that were inspired and reflected off events in his life. The decline of his mental health, his wife turning to Christianity, the growing political and
old one, encapsulated by the classic concept of scientia, a Latin word that means knowledge” (Pigliucci 6). In the book Cat’s Cradle the main topic of debate is clearly science versus religion. In many ways, these two topics are very different, but in others, they are quite similar. Both science and religion have a common goal, to find truth in the world. The main character of Cat’s Cradle is a man named John. At the beginning of the book, John is a Christian who is doing research on Felix Hoenikker
Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle chronicles the wanderings of a writer named John. The book, stylized as if written by John himself, tells John’s perspective of the events that lead to the end of the world at the hands of a dangerous substance named ice-nine. Initially hoping to write a book about the invention of the nuclear bomb, John instead encounters many peculiar characters, including satirical representations of the society that Vonnegut perceived around him. In his writings, John frequently details
Effective Use of Irony and Satire in Cat's Cradle Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut is a satire on the state of world affairs in the 1960's. Vonnegut made a commentary in this book on the tendency of humans to be warlike, belligerent, and shortsighted. The main character of the book, the narrator, is certainly not a protagonist, although the modern reader craves a hero in every story and the narrator in this one is the most likely candidate. Through the narrator's eyes, Vonnegut created a story of black
Satire and Fantasy in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle For this essay, I decided to pick two terms that describe Cat's Cradle. I felt that satire and fantasy were two terms that suited the novel quite well. The book qualifies as a satire because it makes a mockery of things that were of concern in the sixties. For example, the Cuban missile crisis was a big issue in the early sixties. Religion was taken much more seriously, and the family unit was more tightly wound. In the novel, the threat comes
The Masterpiece of Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut, critically acclaimed author of several best-selling novels, uses self-expression and psychological manipulation to stress to the reader his beliefs and ideas dispersed within the context of Cat's Cradle. From reading this novel, one might attribute perplexity pondering over the plot and general story line of the book. Cat's Cradle entangles itself in many interesting changes of events; strange outlandish ideas and psychological