Some may think Daphne Du Marier’s Rebecca is a well written tale with extremely complex characters, who throughout the book go through enormous character development. They might say the dark, bruiting feel of the novel keeps the reader wanting, and coming back for more. They could say the erotic and criminal elements of the story; make the novel interesting for both genders. Yes, this could be true for the 45 year old mum trying to re-live her younger, more erotic years. Or to the most boring person on the planet willing to spend hours, or even moments of their lives reading this insufferable garbage some people think is literary genius. Du Marier really doesn’t delve much into any of the characters backgrounds except for Maxims, and even his isn’t really anything to great. She gives very few details about anyone’s past personal lives, and only makes small indications towards them. Take for example the unnamed protagonist, all we know about her is that, she has no family and her dad was an artist. So how are we meant to empathise with this character? How are we meant to do that when we only know two minor things about her life before Manderly and we don’t even know her name? She’s not even considered a person, and we’re meant to empathise with her, how does that work? Next is her personality, she is a dull, uninteresting, immature, naïve girl and this sets a bad atmosphere for the rest of the novel.
I will admit that there is a small amount of character development in the novel; however we can only see this in the narrator. All that happens is she gives Mrs Danvers an order, yes well done, gold star to you, but to be perfectly honest that’s a bit pathetic. You want her to slam her fist and yell at her, but no she is unab...
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... a paragraph without getting nearly three pieces of imagery exactly like this. So the writing as a whole becomes way too hard to read and gets extremely boring very fast.
As a whole I didn’t like the novel, and I don’t think anyone from the ages of 5-35 would like this novel. Characters are poorly written and there’s more character regression than progression. It’s too anti-feminist to the point when most woman would get offended and the writing made it too hard to read.
Works Cited
“And all the while, there’s Maxim, patting her head like a dog if she pleases him, frowning if she doesn’t. I saw too many signs of a perfect victim within his wife, and it greatly disturbed me. She became constantly aware of his moods, adjusted her own behaviours to compensate for them, steered conversations if she worried that they might be heading down roads that might upset him.”
The book had a few characters that I liked, but a lot of characters that I disliked. For example Yasmine was a character that I disliked. I didn’t like her because she brought pain to Paige’s life. Yasmine and Paige were best friends for months in Sixth grade. They were constantly doing fun activities together, like having sleepovers or planning each other’s birthday parties, but all that was ruined by a mistake Yasmine made. Paige and Yasmine were at a school dance, when
Over this entire novel, it is a good novel for children. It train children how to think logically, and notes people we should cherish our family, and people around us, very educate. Children can learn true is always been hide.
My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book.
I really enjoyed this book because it was not a story about the middle of the Second World War. Instead it was right before, when things were not as bad, but they were bad enough. It helped me understand how people lived before the hatred grew and how families were torn apart right from the beginning. Likewise, it gave me hope to see that not everything was destroyed and that some people were able to escape. I would recommend this book more for boys but for girls as well, between the ages of 13-15. Even though Karl’s age throughout the book is 14-17, the novel was written more for my age group. Once again this was an amazing book that I could not put down, and I am sure many others were not able to either.
*All in all I would say that this novel is definitely a good read. I found my self at times relating my own thoughts and experiences to that of the characters in the book. This is the very reason I would recommend that you give your class next semester the option of reading either this book or another. From my point of view, I think that most men can not relate to certain situations that occur, which lessens the overall significance of her writing.
Rebecca is humanized by Scott in this novel by Scott creating her to be smart and kind especially in the instances of: defending herself when in the face of danger with Brian de Bois, “a predicament from which she … rescued herself by her own courage and quick wits” (Mitchell n.p.); nursing Ivanhoe back to health, showing how she is amiable; and giving Gurth money out of generosity. Characterization is a technique used by authors to create a certain type of personality within characters in a novel to allow readers to fully understand them ("Characterization - Examples and Definition"). Scott uses this technique to create social change with Rebecca, a Jew, to be intelligent and kind. These personality traits in Rebecca cause the reader - just like with Isaac - to rethink previous negative attitudes and opinions on the Jewish people. By characterizing Rebecca the way he did and making her a crucial character to the novel, Scott correctly advocates changes in social
The book is mostly about death, loss and depression, which is not the sort of book some people would want to read. Even though the depressive atmosphere is well described in the book, it also makes you feel bad for the different characters and depresses yourself. Also, the notes and poems Lennie writes throughout the book are quite confusing. They are challenging for the readers at first, because there is no reference to the notes and poems in the story until the end. You have to read the book again if you want to understand the notes from the beginning and how they connect to the story. It will be a pleasurable experience for those people, who enjoyed reading it the first time and like connecting hidden hints from the beginning of the story to the outcome of
I found the book to be easy, exciting reading because the story line was very realistic and easily relatable. This book flowed for me to a point when, at times, it was difficult to put down. Several scenes pleasantly caught me off guard and some were extremely hilarious, namely, the visit to Martha Oldcrow. I found myself really fond of the char...
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
The defining weakness I found throughout the entire book, was Jessica Valenti’s insistence in talking in forced “teen speak” and the abundance of unnecessary profanity. It is hard to focus on important feminist issues when the author is complaining about her childhood enemies and how that one boy did not like her because of her nose. While it may work for some readers, it was so casual that it seemed more like a blog post then an educational book. There are many ways to keep a book fun and informal without losing credibility and failing to make readers think critically. It seemed as though she purposely dumbed-down her language in order to seem more accessible to young feminists, which in turn actually harmed the arguments that she was making. For example, in her most serious chapter, “The Blame (and Shame) Game”, she still uses made-up words like “fuck...
The aspect of this afterword that I found the most intriguing was Hall's critique of Mrs. Penniman. "Morris Townsend is revealed as her fantasy of an oedipal lover" (230). That line really struck me for it seemed to be the first comment that I had read that was unusual and new. Anyone reading the novel could, rather quickly, deduce the general personalities of the characters. The author's observations about Catherine, Dr. Sloper and Morris do not reveal any new character dynamics. But, his ideas about Mrs. Penniman elaborate beyond the usual "annoying and selfish" remarks.
The first thing I would like to talk about is Kings use of language in this story. He begins by describing Miss Sidley as a small, constantly suffering, gimlet-eyed woman. He also mentioned that she knows she is getting old, and the word Miss before her name allowed us to know that she is not married. She is an unhappy woman. We can gather what kind of person she is from her reference to the children as monsters, bitches, evils, who have nasty little games. The diction of the story emphasizes wickedness. King uses metaphors, and almost every one of them suggests a likeness with something evil, taking for example the giggling, like the laughter of demons...or they were ringed in a tight little circle, like mourners around an open grave. Irony also exists in this story. Sidley seems to be the ideal teacher, who is efficient at her job and knows how to keep her students quite in class, when actually she is the one who has a disturbing behavior and ends up surprising her colleague in school when she is found about to kill one more child. King also used an interesting style to introduce a new character to the story: Buddy Jenkins was his name, psychiatry was his game. As soon as we read it, we immeadiately know he will have a destiny such as Sidleys because that was exactly the way she was introduced (Miss Sidley was her name, teaching was her game). The writer also uses italic writing to emphasize the teachers toughts. However, the presence of one or two loose words in the middle of sentences will contribute to cause an eye effect, to catch the readers attention to those words, such as admit, change and she.
The book and the movie were both very good. The book took time to explain things like setting, people’s emotions, people’s traits, and important background information. There was no time for these explanations the movie. The book, however, had parts in the beginning where some readers could become flustered.
This book may not be for the faint of heart who enjoys novels where everyone lives happily ever after. At times, it felt like 90% of the things that happened centered around tragedies. The moment when things started to brighten up for the heroine, Rachel, something came up to make her situation 100 times worse. For example, after losing her family, she finds loves and acceptance by her aunt and starts to become a bit happy, but then the aunt dies. Besides Rachel’s story, Nella’s story illustrated the ways in which a character can completely destroy an innocent person. Personally, Nella’s story was the most touching of them all and at the same time the most painful. The author does wonder with creating the character, but the consistency of multiple tragedies may be too much for some readers. Another negativity towards this novel may be towards that ending that comes out a bit flat and rushed. The end can cause the reader to ponder upon what happens next, as it leaves off the stage where Rachel who had such a sad life had finally found herself, and what she want to do. It’s only natural to want hint reading what will happen next when the reader becomes deeply connected with the
In the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier tells the uncommon, suspenseful love story using a small range of characters with many different personality traits. The reader begins to feel as though they truly know these characters only to discover the unseen truth as their masks fall off. As these personalities develop throughout the novel one can discover that the narrator, Mrs. de Winter, strives to please people and feels very insecure in her identity. She tries to stick up for herself, but her words have no effect on her cruel, manipulative, controlling husband, Mr. de Winter. Mr. de Winter appears as a gentleman in the very early chapters of the book; however, the reader soon discovers that Mr. de Winter seems not to care about other people’s feelings, and that he contains controlling characteristics. Besides being controlling, he also verbally abuses his wife. In simple and plain terms, Mr. de Winter is a jerk. Later in the book, another malevolent and controlling character becomes introduced, Mrs. Danvers. Mr. de Winter’s controlling, abusive ways and Mrs. Danvers malevolent tendencies collide together as the new Mrs. de Winter strives to please them.