John McPhee's In Search of Marvin Gardens

The settings of the two sections, are obviously different, but they are also stronglyrelated, when McPhee discusses a location or event occurring on the Monopolyboard, ... ... middle of paper ... ...ce jumps intothe Monopoly game without ever explaining where the narrator is or howhe got there, but the opening scenes in Atlantic City are long descriptivescenes telling all about the "sidewalks of St. Charles Place" and the street,which "sparkles with shattered glass". When McPhee steps back to tell exactlywhere he is playing Monopoly and alittle about the situation, he counterbalancesthis by taking a closer lookat the scene in his other setting. A changein one section therefore requiresa change in the other section to keepit flowing smoothly. McPhee uses parallel elements to create a peak in action before transitioning to another section. He masters the writing elements in his comparison of Monopoly to real life.

However, there is one more character. The other character is the setting. Where the story takes place in this type of literature is crucial. The importance of the setting can be seen in Harte's novel when the narrator says, “AS Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat … he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere (Harte 201).”... ... middle of paper ... ...ants Jim Smiley to pursue money. Authors use different techniques to develop ideas that they want the readers to learn.

"The Search for Marvin Gardens" tells of Monopoly’s relation to Atlantic City, NJ. In this narrative criticism I will examine several main characteristics of the piece. In doing so, I will try to answer the question, "How has Atlantic City changed due to a greedy, capitalistic attitude?" I believe that this question makes a good connection to thepiece’s description of the changes in the features of the city. "The Search forMarvin Gardens" is a section of the book Pieces of the Frame byJohn McPhee.

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party by Alfred Young revolves around two bibliographies written about one of the last living participants of the Boston Tea Party, and the authors own interpretations of the events surrounding the Tea Party and the American Revolution as a whole. In this particular novel, Young explores what it means to rediscover history, and how history is continually redefined. Particular attention in the novel is given to public history, and how highlighting people otherwise lost to time can completely change how an event is perceived. Readers are given the opportunity to see the history behind the American Revolution through the lenses of an average man of that time. In this essay I will review the novel and the message that Young is conveying through it.

Tongue in cheek, Kafka used his life as blueprints for his works. In doing so, he has played “one of the strangest and most daring games a writer ever had played”(Pascal 137). By telling of his life as a fable and commenting about his own style, he raised himself to the level of literature. Bibliography: Brod, Max, Franz Kafka, 2d ed. (1960); Citati, Pietro, Kafka (1990); Flores, Angel, ed., The Kafka Debate (1977); Glatzer, N. N., The Loves of Franz Kafka (1985); Gray, Ronald, ed., Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays (1962); Hayman, Ronald, Kafka (1982); Heller, Erich, Franz Kafka (1975); Karl, Frederick R., Franz Kafka: Representative Man (1992); Lawson, R. H., Franz Kafka (1987); Pawel, E., The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka (1984); Politzer, Heiny, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox (1962); Sokel, Walter H., Franz Kafka (1966); Udoff, Alan, ed., Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance (1987

The stories about Gatsby also went around New York, which made Nick ask Gatsby about his past ("The Great Gatsby," Fitzgerald). Nick also asked about Gatsby’s past hoping Nick would finally hear the truth. According to The Great Gatsby, “This was the night, Carraway says, that Gatsby told him the story (its factual details have been told earlier in the novel) of his early life. The purpose of the telling here is not to reveal facts but to try to understand the character of Gatsby’s passion. The final understanding is reserved for one of those precisely right uttera... ... middle of paper ... ...ction of Literary Biographies.

This demonstrates how one’s firm belief can turn into a reality, as it did for Ragle Gumm for the two and a half years he lived in the fabricated city of Old Town. Symbolism is an integral component of Time Out of Joint because it further illustrates Dick’s assertion that reality is not always what it seems to be. He appropriately illustrates this idea in his science fiction novel during the scene when the soft-drink stand turns into a simple slip of paper. This scene represents the disparity between how the world exists to Ragle Gumm, and how the world actually exists in Dick’s novel. Dick uses this scene to symbolize America in the fifties, which is the time period in which this novel was published.

New Historicists analyze the way discourses communicate in the text and consider the socio-historical context and societies in which they were written. New Historicists seek to compile a counter-history that contains details a historian may have failed to notice that may question conventional accounts of the past. Lastly, for a New Historicist a poem exists with the reader, author, and society working together to uncover meaning. In his essay, Professor Greenblatt, under the auspices of New Historicism, constructs his main argument that The Tempest undeniably reflects the advent of European Imperialism in the Americas. Moreover, Professor Greenblatt contends that the European’s felt their use of language provided them with the illusory right to dominate the natives, or a culture without language.

Elements of Fiction The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is consider to be a fine example of American Literature. The book raised a lot of controversy, it was publish after the Civil War, and it talked about the reality of America and its society. Some of the Themes of the story are, Moral and Social Maturation, Society’s Hypocrisy, and freedom through social exclusion. At the opening of the novel, Tom is engaged in and is generally the organizer of childhood pranks and make-believe games. As the novel progresses, these initially consequence-free childish games begin to take on more and more gravity.

Salman Rushdie is a meta-fiction writer, composing Midnight’s Children in a way that systematically draws attention to the fact that it’s a fictitious concoction questioning the relationship between fiction and reality. In Midnight’s Children, Rushdie uses historical events as reference points in the lives of his characters. Saleem Sinai’s life, and the lives of his familial predecessors, is defined by historical events. Beyond using historical events to denote the lives of his characters, Rushdie uses magical realism as a post-colonial device. He uses pastiche to keep the reader’s interest trained on the stories, referencing The Arabian Nights, among other works.