Similarities Between Mulberry And Peach

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In the novel ‘Mulberry and Peach’, written by Hualing Nieh, Mulberry is faced with a dissociative identity disorder. This allows her to get in touch with her second personality, Peach. Throughout the novel, Nieh will emphasis Peach's thought and speech through italic text. Owing to calligraphy, Italic writing is generally slanted to the right, having been using as a method to emphasize words in text. The use of italic wording can also be seen when emphasizing a word or phrase from a speaker. Within Mulberry & Peach, Hualing Nieh uses italic wording to express Peach's speech, which is an interesting way to use italic text. Many of Peach’s ‘logs’ within the novel are extensive and are all in italic, creating a relatively easy method of differentiation …show more content…

Perhaps Nieh has used italics as a collateral, in terms of the character of Peach physically being ‘stressed’ throughout the novel, which is rather ironic, as being the speech said by a psychologically impaired woman whom is anything but relaxed. A styled and practiced grammar technique like such has given me the impression that Nieh wants the reader to listen to Peach, as if her text was a subconscious, given that perhaps Peach is the subconscious of Mulberry, putting the reader into her perspective into what it is like to be another being and another mind. This technique may be considered useful - as the reader is able to get a better understanding of the characters Hualing Nieh has developed and to portray Peach’s views and expressions from her perspective, considering her impediment i assume all readers will portray Peach as a manic and psychopath which in some cases may not be true. The use of italics allow for the reader to easily differentiate between what is said and what Peach is saying, perhaps correlating with the setting of the novel, having there be the upheaval in China and the Sino-Japanese war, in which the reader is shown the distress in China but Nieh could possibly be foreshadowing for what is to come after the novel, that the author wants us to think about subconsciously, which can be considered

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