Many of the works have proven to show how the representation is different from the truth or reality. Native Guard, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and Fun Home all contain this idea. The author uses their representation to reveal the reality of a situation. Natasha Trethewey uses poems to convery her thoughts, Brugel uses imagery, and Bechdel uses a comic book to reveal the truth behind their representations. In a specific poem, Trethewey discusses how on the outside anything can look beautiful, but after examining deeper things can actually turn out to be worse. Bruegel uses his painting to describe how society appears to be, but actually is. Bechdel uses the idea of “artifice” and reality to reveal the truth about her father. In …show more content…
a specific poem, Trethewey is describing her feelings about a photograph from her childhood, talking about how beauty can also be ugly.
Through this idea, Trethewey explains how this photograph looks beautiful on the outside, but actually reminds her of all the suffering that happened inside during the storm. The photograph only captures the surface level, while below it is other problems. The ugly parts are hidden behind the beauty to attempt to hide it from others. Trethewey describes the storm that forces her family into the house for days, then moves to describe all the damage the storm has done outside and to her family. A couple lines that truly stand out are, “why on the back has someone made a list / of our names, the date, the event: nothing / of what’s inside – mother, stepfather’s fist?” (Trethewey). Through these lines, Trethewey reveals the abuse that happened in her home during the ice storm. The photograph captures …show more content…
the beauty of the ice storm, while Trethewey looks at the photograph in disgust because of all the problems that happened throughout the storm. Trethewey does not understand why there are names and a date to remember the moment, when all she remembers is the abuse that occurred in her home. This poem is crucial because it shows how a photograph does not capture the truth of what is happening behind that photograph. The photograph only captures one moment, not showing all the pain and truth behind what happened during the storm. Trethewey believes that the relationship between representation and reality is negative. Representation in her eyes only captures the surface level of things, while the truth is being hidden behind the representation. Bruegel uses the idea of representation and reality to show how society appears to be and then actually is. In his painting, Bruegel uses the people who are doing work to show how much society has changed. The painting shows people doing their daily tasks and focusing in on their work. This appears to be normal, until the viewer notices Icarus drowning in the water. The people doing their work are so consumed with their own lives that they do not even notice Icarus drowning. A specific example of this is the fisherman. The fisherman is looking down towards his on work, focused in on what he is doing. The fisherman is located directly in front of Icarus and does not even notice him. Another example is the plowman. The plowman is plowing fields and does not even notice the dead person in the bushes, located directly next to the field he is plowing. Bruegel represents society this way because he believes they have become too busy with their own lives to see what is happening around them. People are too worried about putting themselves before others to help people who are in danger. Bruegel shows society how he truly believes they are in reality to convey the severity of the problem. Since society is represented as their truth, Bruegel believes the relationship between representation and reality is positive. He likes the idea that representation should show reality and reveal the truth behind everything. Bechdel also uses the relationship of “artifice” and reality in her memoir.
Appearance versus reality played a major role in the relationship between Bechdel and her father. When Bechdel goes to college and realizes that she is a lesbian, she decides to live with her true sexuality. While speaking to her mother about her own sexuality, Bechdel finds out her father is gay and has had many affairs with men. Bechdel is upset that her father never decided to live and accept his reality. Bechdel believes her and her father might be able to find a way to connect around their homosexuality and develop a better relationship. Instead, Bechdel’s father chooses to live behind appearance to hide the truth and be accepted by society. From her father’s appearance, no one ever truly knows the truth about her family and their lives. As a result of Bechdel’s father not coming out, it builds a barrier between him and Alison. Bechdel calls her father an artificer because he has carefully crafted his whole life, which is a complete lie. Her father has been hiding his identity so no one knows it was there. Appearance hinders the possibility of developing a cohesive relationship between Bechdel and her father. Bechdel views the relationship between “artifice” and reality as negative because “artifice” hid the reality the would have allowed herself a better relationship and life with her father. She blames the idea of “artifice” for not allowing her to have a good relationship with her
father. It is hard for Bechdel to understand why he could not live his truth. Both Trethewey and Bechdel view the relationship between representation and truth to be negative, while Bruegel looks at the relationship to be positive. Trethewey and Bechdel both convey how representation can hide the truth, while Bruegel conveys the truth in his painting. Trethewey and Bechdel both found representations that hid the truth in their lives, they had no choice in whether they were able to see the truth. Bruegel creates his painting and allows viewers to see the truth, because he is able to make that choice. Overall, the difference between Trethewey, Bruegel, and Bechdel is the ability to make the decision on whether or not they see the truth. Bruegel was able to decide whether he wanted to show the truth or not in his painting, while Trethewey and Bechdel were not able to make that decision. However, all three authors might agree that representation can lead to hiding the truth or reality. The correct representation will lead to reality, while a wrongful representation will lead to hiding the truth. All three authors wants their readers to realize the truth and recognize how important truth is to their works.
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
On page 113 she tells her brother to call her a man's name instead of her name so that she could fit in as a boy, not a girl. “Call me Albert instead of Alison” (Bechdel 113). Whenever her brothers were looking at a naked women calendar Alison had the curiosity and need to look at it. That may have helped her realize that she was actually interested in women, not men. When she left for college she started to experience and putting in place her sexual orientation. She got a girlfriend which actually supported her during hard times in her life like her father’s
“ The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies” (Zusak 175). The device is used in the evidence of the quote by using descriptives words that create a mental image. The text gives the reader that opportunity to use their senses when reading the story. “Somehow, between the sadness and loss, Max Vandenburg, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed” (Zusak 188). This quote demonstrates how the author uses descriptive words to create a mental image which gives the text more of an appeal to the reader's sense such as vision. “She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whisker coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose” (Zusak 201). The quotes allows the reader to visualize what the characters facial features looked like through the use of descriptive words. Imagery helps bring the story to life and to make the text more exciting. The reader's senses can be used to determine the observations that the author is making about its characters. The literary device changes the text by letting the reader interact with the text by using their observation skills. The author is using imagery by creating images that engages the reader to know exactly what's going on in the story which allows them to
In Alison Bechdel’s comic “Compulsory Reading”, she creates an image of how she feels about the world of creative writing. Bechdel mentions different authors and well known titles like “Beloved”, Romeo and Juliet”, and Charles Dickens. She also mentions her distaste to novels as well. Bechdel uses media and design, rhetorical patterns, and tone to communicate how she feels about literature.
His outside actions of touching the wall and looking at all the names are causing him to react internally. He is remembering the past and is attempting to suppress the emotions that are rising within him. The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ... ...
This shows how he never leaves the false impression he leads people to believe, the art or artifice he expresses to people. __________________________________________________________________________ In her graphic novel, she explores the art and artifice in her life. Alison decides that art is the truth and must be mastered, something beautiful. On the other hand, she comes to the fact the artifice is the falsehood she has encountered in life.
Throughout the story, Walker uses brilliant imagery in describing each detail of what the mother sees through the eyes of her world. This imagery in turn creates a more interesting and imaginative story, and allows the reader to experience what the narrator is experiencing. The theme of imagery is not within the story, but how the story is told. However, the theme of love of one's family heritage is within the heart and not on the wall.
In Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel entitled Fun Home, the author expresses her life in a comical manner where she explains the relationship between her and her family, pointedly her father who acts as a father figure to the family as she undergoes her exhaustive search for sexuality. Furthermore, the story describes the relationship between a daughter and a father with inversed gender roles as sexuality is questioned. Throughout the novel, the author suggests that one’s identity is impacted by their environment because one’s true self is created through the ability of a person to distinguish reality from fictional despotism.
In her novel, Bechdel’s complex sexual self-development is a powerful struggle for her to figure out and acknowledge her sexual orientation. One can simply observe the pain and struggle Bechdel encountered in his process of self-development especially in one of her monologues when she discusses the impact of finding out about her father’s homosexual ways in his past. She states, “Only four months earlier (to her fathers suicide), I had made an announcement to my parents, ‘I am a lesbian’ but it was a hypothesis so thorough and convincing that I saw no reason not to share it immediately… My homosexuality remained at that point purely theoretical, untested hypothesis” (Bechdel 58). After receiving the news that her father was...
In Fun Home: A Family Tragic Comic, Alison Bechdel uses the graphic novel technique of bringing visuals and concise text to her audience to reveal the relationship with her father in a perspective that can not be modified through the readers perspective and interpretation. Bechdel employs this type of writing style to help visualize a better interpretation of how she describes the differences in both her and her fathers’ gender roles throughout the novel. This tactic helps discuss and show how these gender roles were depicted as opposite from one another. But, in this case being opposite from one another made them gain a stronger relationship of understanding and reviling that these differences were actually similarities they also shared.
In Julia Alvarez’s short story, “Snow,” an immigrant student, named Yolanda is learning the American way of doing things. She learns that there is ugly and hatful war going on in the world around her. Sister Zoe, Yolanda’s catholic school teacher, explains to her and her classmates what a bomb is; a mushroom shaped explosion with white specks of dust filling the air. However, when Yolanda sees actual winter snow for the first time, she confuses this snow as bomb dust. After Sister Zoe explains that this is snow that Yolanda is seeing, and not a bomb, Yolanda realizes that snow, unlike a bomb can be a beautiful thing to witness. Julia Alvarez’s last sentence of her short story epitomizes the true meaning of snow, and how it can represent human beings. Julia Alvarez writes, “Each flake was different, Sister Zoe had said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.” Key words from this sentence are, “flake,” “different,” “person,” “irreplaceable,” and “beautiful.”
In chapter one, “Old Father, Old Artificer”, of her graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, the young Bechdel generated her identity through the tensions and mysteries that engulfed her family the home. Masculinity, physical strength and a modern outlook were her personality traits as she grew, becoming the “Butch to [her father’s] Nelly” (269) and his opposite in several aspects. A conscious effort was made on her part to set her own pace from what her father expected of her. He was a strong, influential figure within her life. Expressing emotions towards her father was strictly not allowed in the home. Bechdel was left “rushing from the room in embarrassment” (273) on the one unforgettable occasion that she went to kiss him goodnight. She...
In her novel Fun Home, Alison Bechdel recalls the difficulty to communicate to her father who seemed to live in an entirely different world than her. Her father is a mystery; hiding his homosexuality behind an elaborate lie. Often depicted as distant and angry he turns out to be possibly the most influential person to Bechdel. He has many flaws but Bechdel explains she is thankful for some of those since they helped form who she is today, and ultimately is the reason she is alive. The only way to elucidate her father to the audience was to use those same fictional literary works to describe her father’s true character that he lived in because when conversations weren’t present there were still connections between them two through books.
In his narrative poem, Frost starts a tense conversation between the man and the wife whose first child had died recently. Not only is there dissonance between the couple,but also a major communication conflict between the husband and the wife. As the poem opens, the wife is standing at the top of a staircase looking at her child’s grave through the window. Her husband is at the bottom of the stairs (“He saw her from the bottom of the stairs” l.1), and he does not understand what she is looking at or why she has suddenly become so distressed. The wife resents her husband’s obliviousness and attempts to leave the house. The husband begs her to stay and talk to him about what she feels. Husband does not understand why the wife is angry with him for manifesting his grief in a different way. Inconsolable, the wife lashes out at him, convinced of his indifference toward their dead child. The husband accepts her anger, but the separation between them remains. The wife leaves the house as husband angrily threatens to drag her back by force.
Many believed that Modernist works were not “art” because they did not always look like real life. But what is “real life”? A new outlook on reality was taken by Modernists. What is true for one person at one time is not true for another person at a different time. Experimentation with perspective and truth was not confined to the canvas; it influenced literary circles as well.