Like any other novel or short story, a lot can be learned about the actual story by understanding the historical content embedded in the piece. Louise Erdrich draws from her her imagination, life experiences, and social climate to piece together American Horse into a fictitious short story that somehow manages to give the reader a very real sense of the socioeconomic divide between the two groups portrayed in the story.
Throughout this collection, the poems not only involve Classical and Christian related ideas they also include several twentieth century advancements. The myths that Hughes creates have the central character as the crow. In the book Myth in the Poetry of Ted Hughes, Hirschberg gives a brief statement of how crows are viewed in different mythologies, "In folk mythology the crow is an animal figure predominantly associated with the twin motifs of death and guilt, a stark figure who embodies boldness, intelligence, adaptability to change and a twisted vitality" (126). This description is widely evident throughout Ted Hughes' collection. Crow goes through many phases and meditations.
In the novels Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich and The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday, the reader gains views of Native American culture, both past and present, through two disparate means of delivery. Both authors provide immensely rich portrayals through varying literary devices in efforts to bring about a better understanding of problems contemporary Native Americans face, especially regarding their own self-identity. The story of Love Medicine revolves around a central character, June Kashpaw, and the many threads of relationships surrounding her, both near the time of her death, and in what has gone on before. The novel is an exploration of a family web that June was a key component of. Her character is a pivot point that all other characters revolve around: a love triangle, illegitimate children, life and death, and other issues involving religion, marriage, fidelity and sex.
Chapter – II Demythification Widely different sources, from fairy tales and myths, jokes and witticisms, from folklore, that is from what we know of the manners and customs, sayings and songs of different peoples, and from poetic and colloquial usage of language (Freud) Post modern fiction uses the narrative technique of mixing the myth and History. The post modern novelists create their works by reshaping the past to make the readers to understand the present. Post modern novelists have established themselves from the issues related to modern techniques so they tend to revision the past. Indian women novelists were highly educated and they were highly experienced to deal with the problems of women in the Indian society. Githa Hariharan uses
This poem is concerned primarily with the relationship of stories and legends to familial bonds among women; in this case, the bond between a mother and her child. The poem begins by, in effect, telling the story of storytelling: “…they [storytellers] begin the world again, / making the mountain ridges blue / and the rivers clear and the hero fearless…” (Boland, 50). It is clear that Boland is assigning large amounts of power to storytellers within the context of the speaker-listener relationship; in the eyes of the listener, they have the God-like power to “begin the world again”, and to remake and purify elements of the storyworld as they see fit. The third stanza of the poem both examines this power further and creates a common link between all tellers of stories—“and the outcome always undecided / so the next teller can say begin an... ... middle of paper ... ...continue, no matter how difficult. At the heart of In a Time of Violence is the need and responsibility to re-imagine and retell old stories that no longer work; to bring women closer together by doing away with the repressive female images—the beautiful heroine, the unseen seamstress— that saturate the current and past stories of our culture.
Miss Du Maurier forces the reader to look behind the obvious and mundane to observe the hidden depth and layers of the characters she breathed life to. Beneath Du Maurier’s words, her symbolism feeds into the reader’s imagination with the simple narration of plot, that alludes to a deeper perception of each of the characters. This added depth transforms Rebecca from the average Gothic romance to a literary classic. One of the first and most prominent forms of symbolism that is applied to the novel is the long drive to Manderley. This drive makes use of the setting as an introduction to the late Rebecca.
In many female slave narratives, motherhood tends to be a central theme. Ultimately, narratives elicit sympathy and empathy from their audience and are written to win approval of different actions. I feel that the major differences between a novel and a narrative are characteristic detail and development and the level of interactions between characters. Furthermore, a novel is a fictional piece of writing which is created by the author, who uses imagination and past life experiences of their life to make the story. In contrast, a narrative is a one dimensional autobiography which is created by the narrator who shares their own personal life story with the reader.
Zora Neale Hurston uses narrative structure to convey the theme and meaning of the Their Eyes Were Watching God novel. Throughout the novel, she utilizes an interesting narrative structure, splitting the presentation of the story between high literary narration and idiomatic discourse. The long passages of discourse celebrate the culturally rich voices of Janie’s world. These characters speak as do few others in American literature, and their distinctive grammar, vocabulary, and tone mark their individuality. Zora Hurston’s use of language parallels Janie’s quest to find her “voice.” Henry Louis Gates Jr. makes a remark about the novel, that it is primarily concerned “with the project of finding a voice, with language as an instrument of injury and salvation, of selfhood and empowerment” (Harper).
“The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, arguably the most famous captivity tale of the American Indian-English genre, is considered a common illustration of the thematic style and purpose of the English captivity narrative. As “the captivity genre leant itself to nationalist agendas” (Snader 66), Rowlandson’s narrative seems to echo other captivity narratives in its bias in favor of English colonial power. Rowlandson’s tale is easy propaganda; her depiction of Native American brutality and violence in the mid-1600s is eloquent and moving, and her writing is infused with rich imagery and apt testimony that defines her religious interpretation of the thirteen-week captivity. Yet can a more comprehensive understanding of Rowlandson’s relationship to Indians exist in a closer reading of her narrative? As “captivity materials .
It is well known that Native American cultures have been rich in oral traditions. Storytelling is but one aspect of that. Yet amongst the Native American poets covered in class there seem to be differing views of storytelling. Sherman Alexie looks at storytelling in "How To Write the Great American Novel" as that which has been stereotyped and mainstreamed into the dominant culture, while Joy Harjo seems to view storytelling in "Deer Dancer" as vital to the survival of culture. This essay will examine the storytelling aspects of both works.