Per the post title, I hope that you are enjoying some rest and relaxation! I also hope that you are squeezing in a bit of study time.
As promised, I will be posting 3 questions for the week. Answer them when you can.. and remember to have some fun!
QUESTION 1 of 3
In questioning the value of literary realism, Flannery O’Connor has written, “I am interested in making a good case for distortion because I am coming to believe that it is the only way to make people see.” Write an essay in which you “make a good case for distortion”" as distinct from literary realism. Analyze how important elements of the work you choose are “distorted” and explain how these distortions contribute to the effectiveness of the work. Avoid plot summary.
I dont know if I understand this prompt, as in, whether i am supposed to distort or show where an author has distorted. I am going with the former, i think. SO I would use Heart of Darkness, and say that Kurtz is not a seperate entity, but actually Marlow. Marlow sees horror in travelling to Africa. Africa is the land of the uncanny-which we see from the hauntingly amiliar description of Africa. To overcome the anguish of travelling to the dark heart of Africa, Marlow creates this character of Mr.Kurtz. Kurtz serves 2 purposes. First his incredibleness, acts like a force of attraction towards the centre of Africe, wich would otherwise be repulsive. second, Marlow institutes all the abilities, and amorality that he cannot carry, in Kurtz, thus allowing him to reach the truth, which is usually veiled by moral inhibitions. (The ambiguous nature of the last part of my answer is because the book is incredibly ambiguous.)
ReplyDeleteI feel like this question really lends itself to One Hundred Years of Solitude. We see the confusing, exaggerated repetition of names which makes he point of the repetition of history. There is also the unrealistic mass amnesia of the town after the arrival of Rebecca and the Banana Company massacre. The former demonstrates the power of memory and language while the latter is a criticism of events in Colombian history.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Simon - actually, the first word I saw in this prompt was "realism", so before even reading the rest of it, I was thinking about 100 Years of Solitude and Marquez's style of magical realism. The repeated names and the unrealistic progression of the Buendia family tree go along with the theme of history repeating itself, which is a critical aspect of the book's message. Furthermore, Marquez's discussions of Colonel Aureliano Buendia and his nonsensical wars (the wars themselves are reminiscent of those found in Orwell's 1984 in terms of their ridiculousness) frequently involve unrealistic descriptions and events (for instance, the houses being painted blue and then white and then repainted over and over again) are meant to contribute to Marquez's mockery of senseless political fights.
DeleteWide Sargasso Sea
ReplyDeleteIf we can argue for Ant's mental deterioration as the novel progresses, the dreams that she has and the aspects of the setting around her (the laughter, the fever of the unnamed man) can be seen as distorting reality. At the end, with the fire scene and the subsequent suicide scene illustrates the extent of Ant's mental deterioration, as she begins to believe that the land outside the house that she is locked up in is her homeland. The use of binaries of fire and ice, and character binaries, such as Ant and her childhood friend, all the author to create a stark polarization of the events, which add to the setting. Characters such as Daniel Cosway just seem way out of place and time this distorts the definite reality.
HARD TIMES
ReplyDeleteDickens' style does not favor subtlety - it shoves his perspectives on industrialization and education down the reader's throat. This is done through the effective use of distortion. His characters are flagrantly one-dimensional, Bounderby for example being the caricature of a greedy industrialist and Steven the epitome of human decency. Or even more distorted: Mr. M'choakumchild. It is his hyperbolic style that allows him to explore very complex issues in his society at the time, almost disallowing the reader to interpret reality differently than he.
TSATF
ReplyDeleteDistortion is critical here because we get the narrative from four different point of views. First person narration styles are more involving and relate-able, and each point of view contributes something different about a Compson family that is really far from normal. In fact, we don't see just how irrelevant and hilariously pathetic the Compson family is until the final section, told by Dilsey who isn't actually part of the family. We see how powerful a device distortion is because of the tremendous variation in meaning the text would take on with and without Dilsey's section. Moreover, without distortion in the text, Jason, Quentin, and Benjy would not have been able to develop as deeply as their distorted perception of the same events makes them the characters we know them to be.
I agree with Alex, and think that The Sound and the Fury is a very apt book for this prompt. I think another thing that I would add is the irony of the different narrations: Benjy is the most reliable first person narrator, but his narration is also incredibly disorienting; Quentin is the most intelligent, but he is cursed with debilitating depression that causes him to deteriorate completely; Jason is free from diagnosable mental disorders, but is incredibly delusional and effectively the least reliable narrator. I think that this unreliability of narration is the clearest example of how Faulkner's modernism is distinct from realism. I also think that the lack of chronological ordering in the novel could be another discussion point--by reading the events out of order, reality is quite literally distorted.
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ReplyDeleteI would respond to this prompt with Oscar Wao since the reader never really knows what is the truth is due to the first person narratives. The article I read about the book talks about Yunior as a cunning self-promoting narrator who is really just Trujillo in disguise. In retelling the story of Oscar, the novel really becomes a sort of propaganda for him as well as Fuku which inevitably wins over Zafa in the end. That the story is distorted by the narrator leaves the reader very susceptible to fall into the trap however those that do pick up on the lies come to a greater understanding of Diaz's intentions. In Oscar Wao Diaz seeks to make the reader question the meaning of truth and its role in the world.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I would use Oscar Wao. The distortion in this novel comes from how the story is told. As Eugenie said, the varying narrator helps to distort the story, but this is also done with the shifts in time and how time passes. The story of Oscar comes through while we hear about his mother's childhood, his sister's life, etc. All of these side stories distort the main narrative, but they also give it additional meaning and perspective because of the distortion.
DeleteHi Everyone,
ReplyDeleteI think you have done a fine job answering this question, which, as Suhrud points out, is probably one of the harder prompts you have had to decipher. The focus here is distortion, so we have to figure out what is gained by that distortion- thus, this could point to the social commentary of post-colonial texts like Wao and WSS, as well as the narrative creativity of Faulkner and of course, the all-amazing magical realism of 100 years. I am also smitten with the use of Hard Times here- which- although I would not place it as my first selection (I went with WSS), one could make an impressive argument.
I agree with Eugenie. I would also use Oscar Wao, as distortion, rather than realism, in literature allows the reader to experience a wider spectrum of emotions. From Yunior's somewhat biased narration, to see life through the trauma filled eyes of Oscar's sister Lola, to express Oscar's life through different perspectives adds depth to the emotional tale. These distortions allows the reader to experience the ostensibly distorted feel of teenage life and really have a good understanding of how each character is feeling. In a sense, the distortions and exaggerations are more expressive and accurate than realism. This gives Oscar Wao the ability to emotionally involve the reader and leave them touched.
ReplyDeleteLike Aelx, I too would use TSATF to answer this prompt. I would claim that Faulkner uses distortion to show the failure of the Compson family to relinquish its hold over a false reality. I would use the same evidence that Alex provides (each of the brothers has a completely different view of reality which raises the question of who in the Compson family has an accurate grasp of reality). I would also use each of the brothers' obsessive but distorted vision of their sister as evidence. Each of the brothers holds Caddy up to some moral standard that each of which she fails to attain. Thus, we can see that the distortion in the novel highlights how blind the Compson's are to reality.
ReplyDeleteI would write about Heart of Darkness. The entire novella is written with the idea of ambiguity. The lack of clarity is designed to force the reader to evaluate not only the work, but also to evaluate morals and conventions that we normally accept. Since distortion causes multiple interpretations of a single event, each interpretation forces thought and comparison in one’s own life. Important elements of Heart of Darkness that are distorted are descriptions. As the novella progresses, the descriptions become increasingly auditory, rather than visual. This makes it much harder for the reader to visualize the story, and as a result, they must relate their own experiences to the book in order to understand it. Since the novel deals with the idea of imperialism, one that had previously been accepted as justifying racial superiority over others, the novel makes the reader challenge what ideas today’s society blindly accept.
ReplyDeleteI too would write about Heart of Darkness. The book is written as a frame story, which allows for distortion to present itself in the novel. Between Marlow's telling of his journey and Conrad's telling of Marlow's journey there are many aspects of the book that do become distorted. As the perspective in the book shifts between the author and Marlow, information quickly becomes ambiguous, leaving it up to the reader to interpret the story as he or she may, letting one draw their own conclusions about the story. Marlow's biased telling of his journey is a key factor in the distortion of Heart of Darkness. The way he may describe other character seems to hype them up. As Alyssa said, Mr. Kurtz is a character that is
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