Postmodernism! What, What!

1339 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Text linguistics the importance

How do The Bluest Eye and The Color Purple relate to the postmodernist era they were written in? Postmodern writings, like any other time in literature, have certain characteristics that make them unique. Just as romanticism loves nature and death, postmodernism has things it values as well, such as parody and black humor. From World War II to present, postmodern literature has been dominate in the world. Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye are both postmodern texts and are defined thought the way they play with the diction, and parody, switch narrative elements and a divide in the social culture. The characters portrayed in Alice Walker's The Color Purple are mainly uneducated and use askewed language that is unique to the characters portrayed; in other words, Walker plays with the language. When the narrators stepson is asking for advice about how to make his wife listen to him, he is told "Well how you spect to make her mind? Wives is like children. You have to let 'em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating" (Walker 42). The words that are used when Mr.___ speaks are uneducated, and postmodernist writers liked to manipulate the words that are spoken by their characters to enhance the character's personalities. In this instance, because he is a black man, he is stupid and uneducated in societies eyes and that is how his words such as "spect" portray him. On another occasion, Shrug, who is the mistress of Celie's husband, is trying to apologize for how she acted when first meeting Celie. For example she uses very bad grammar such as "I treated you so mean. Like you was a servant[...]"(Walker 117). From this way of speaking Shrug is seen as an uneducated black women like most of the characters are. Her spech pattern in writing gives the reader a picture in their head that cannot

Show More
Related

  • The Creation of Women's Identities in the Color Purple by Alice Walker

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    If we read The Color Purple with 'gender on the agenda' as required we can identify how the form contributes to the impact of the narrative. The Color Purple is a story that unfolds through the writing and exchange of letters. Opening with the line 'You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.' A warning issued by the abusive 'father' (later and importantly discovered to be step-father) of the central character Celie who indeed pours out her secret to God and later to her sister Nettie about her life and her pain.

    Read More

  • I Feel Like I 'M Fixin' To Die Rag Analysis

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    Postmodern authors were not the first to use irony and humour in their writing, however for some authors this became their style of writing. Postmodern irony is mocked and not taken seriously, and the song “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” is an example of postmodern irony. Making fun of and being cold towards a serious subject are postmodernism characteristics. The song makes fun of the possible humankind total nuclear destruction by saying “Just hope and pray that they drop the bomb/ they drop it on the Viet Cong” (McDonald, verses 19-20). However, the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” has imagism in it in comparison to the postmodernist song. Imagism was a movement in early 20th century Anglo-American poetry that favoured precision of imagery with a clear and sharp language. The poem itself has a series of images starting with the line, “a red wheel/ barrow” (Williams, lines 3-4). The author adds details for the reader to visualize the image in their mind. Without the colour red added to the text the reader wouldn’t have an accurate image of the poem. With the author adding specific details to the poem the reader is able to make conclusions and add meaning to the story. Imagery and irony are two of the different characteristics of modernism and

    Read More

  • Living Past: Racial and Social Themes in The Bluest Eye

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    Morrison’s The Bluest Eye appears to be a commentary that discusses how past history is living present in a political, social, racial and personal sense. The novel was published in 1970, with a setting of Midwest America post The Great Depression, inferring that although many years had passed Morrison still feels that the same issues of society live on. The past oppression of racial discrimination and domestic issues appear to be present in the novel, affecting characters fates and initial choices. These issues surround the novel, taking part in the plot and ultimate downfall of the main characters.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye Sparknotes

    1428 Words  | 3 Pages

    This book discusses the viewpoints of many expert critics through extracts of their critical essays on the novel “The Bluest Eye”. Harold Bloom states Michael Woods narrative is the best he has seen of the book, “Each member of the family interprets and acts out of his or her ugliness, but none of them understands that the all-knowing master is not God but only history and habit; the projection of their own numbed collusion w...

    Read More

  • Cat's Cradle And Slaughterhouse Kurt Vonnegut Analysis

    1690 Words  | 4 Pages

    This new movement expressed the feelings of people after war, when it showed “... Mixing and blending of cultures, ... a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds … all consistent value systems collapse...” (Postmodernism). Struggles during post-war period, ideas about nuclear war and achieving stability and order had a tremendous effect on authors and their subject matter. Postmodern literature described author’s position in a society and other personal views. Kurt Vonnegut’s works displayed ideas about future and critiques of moral

    Read More

  • The Truth in Postmodern Culture

    1306 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over the past thirty years, generations understand the world around us is made up of worldly views and patterns of thoughts that inform the culture. Postmodernism informs more of the current culture than of the past, and plays a major role in media, politics, and religion. Postmodernism relies more on experience rather than specific principles, knowing that the outcome of one’s experience will be relative than universal. Postmodernism implies a shattering of innocent confidence in the capacity of the self to control its own destiny. These are some characteristics that researchers find important?

    Read More

  • Post-Modernism

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    In recent years, multiculturalism, tolerance and political correctness have been integrated into how American society thinks. America seems to be trying to learn more about the ingredients of her melting pot. These efforts can be best understood by examining post-modernism. Post-modernism is especially important to breaking down stereotypes such as those that exist surrounding the black family.

    Read More

  • Modernism at Its Finest in Literature

    770 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of the twentieth century, literature changed and focused on breaking away from the typical and predicate patterns of normal literature. Poets at this time took full advantage and stretched the idea of the mind’s conscience on how the world, mind, and language interact and contradict. Many authors, such as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Twain, used the pain and anguish in first hand experiences to create and depict a new type of literature, modernism. In this time era, literature and art became a larger part of society and impacted more American lives than ever before. During the American modernism period of literature, authors, artists, and poets strived to create pieces of literature and art that challenged American traditions and tried to reinvent it, used new ways of communication, such as the telephone and cinema, to demonstrate the new modern social norms, and express the pain and suffering of the First World War.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Blues and Jean Toomer's Cane

    2007 Words  | 5 Pages

    On the surface a discussion of the "blues" may seem a bit high-minded. How seriously can one take works entitled "Aggravatin Papa," "Need a Little Sugar in my Bowl," "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer, "when placed next to a work of such literary boldness as Cane; a work that William Braithwhite gushingly refers to as "a book of gold and bronze, of dusk and flame, of ecstasy and pain, and Jean Toomer is a bright morning star of a new day of the race in literature" (Baker 16). A closer examination of both forms reveal startling similarities in theme, structure and content and that most important attribute - spirit.

    Read More

  • The Search For Self-Acceptance in the Color Purple by Alice Walker

    1396 Words  | 3 Pages

    If any woman had to answer if she ever had trouble accepting herself, the response would be yes. According to Susan David, “All healthy human beings have an inner stream of thoughts and feelings that include criticism, doubt, and fear” (125-128). Depending on the person Alice Walker has as the recipients of Celie’s and Nettie’s letters, the text alters. The Color Purple is about a girl named Celie, who grows up in the south during the early 1920’s, surrounded by racism, sexism, and abuse from her father and husband. Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple in epistolary style and it traces Celie’s journey of finding her identity and path of finally accepting herself. On her journey she encounters a couple of women including one named Shug Avery, who helps turn Celie’s life around. Throughout The Color Purple, Alice Walker uses the epistolary structure to demonstrate self-acceptance in women.

    Read More

  • Alice Walker's Color Purple - Historical and Political Insight

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    Alice Walker’s writings were greatly influenced by the political and societal happenings around her during the 1960s and 1970s. She not only wrote about events that were taking place, she participated in them as well. Her devoted time and energy into society is very evident in her works. The Color Purple, one of Walker’s most prized novels, sends out a social message that concerns women’s struggle for freedom in a society where they are viewed as inferior to men. The events that happened during and previous to her writing of The Color Purple had a tremendous impact on the standpoint of the novel.

    Read More

  • The Color Purple Womanism Analysis

    2102 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Every time they ast me to do something, Miss Celie, I act like I’m you. I jump right up and do just what they say” (88). This line conveys how obedient Celie is towards others, which she learns from her own people. The black community degrades black women to make it difficult for them to become independent (Tanritanir and Aydemir 438). Alice Walker experiences this and understands the need to express the struggle of the black woman to the world. She, along with other black female writers, coins the term womanism to explain the idea of prevailing over this struggle. By having Celie overcome the oppression she faces, Alice Walker illustrates the theme of womanism in her novel The Color Purple.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis: The Color Purple

    1382 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Color Purple by Alice Walker, numerous symbols influence and drive the plot of the novel. One of the most important symbols that Walker incorporates into the plot is the letters written by Celie to either God or Nettie, signifying the power of voice. The epistolary format of the novel itself enables readers to understand Celie, whose letters are initially addressed to God. After being raped by her stepfather at the age of fourteen, he tells her to “never tell anybody but God” (Walker 1); thus, Celie’s original letters are presented more as confessions and prayers. This first letter itself “initiates the story of Celie's unrelenting victimization” (Bloom, and Williams 77-88), and the audience notices that the way in which Celie narrates the events occurring in her life over the course of the next several letters lacks sentiment and opinion....

    Read More

  • Psychology and Realism in Mimesis

    1315 Words  | 3 Pages

    Theo D’haen, a professor at the University of Leuven, synthesizes that a postmodernist writer is one who uses a “combination of any number of techniques that were seen as innovative and perhaps even transgressive, especially with regard to all forms of referentiality, be it reference to some “real” reality as in realism or to a “psychological” reality as in modernism”(Theo D’haen 272). Following this explanation, the self-reflectiveness, interdependency, parody and mimetic reality that readers are exposed to when reading a metafictional piece, branches into the different interpretations presented by D’haen: a ‘real’ reality and a ‘psychological’ reality. The act of judging any work of art in relation to its representation of reality is a parallel to the reader’s assimilation of a mimetic reality, acknowledged by a physiological th...

    Read More

  • Society and Femininity

    1549 Words  | 4 Pages

    Very few novels in American Literature can earn the title of timeless. These novels transcend the ages, because they possess a greater meaning. Their stories teach people about life, the glory of the human soul, and all it can endure to overcome. Three novels in particular get to the very heart of feminine struggle. Though they touch not on women’s struggle to vote, they reach the higher plain of women’s struggle to be seen as who they are and not what society wants them to be. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple and The Bluest Eye all deal with the topic of women trying to overcome society. Although these novels were written in the mid to later half of the twentieth century, they go back to a time when the Great Depression was touching all walks of human life. Each of the main characters in these novels does not fit society’s view of femininity during the time period. Although the main characters in the three stories do not fit society’s idea of femininity, they each, in their own way, overcome this and show a greater beauty of strength.

    Read More

More about Postmodernism! What, What!

Open Document