What do these three people have in common? A child dropped off for his first day of kindergarten, a girl receiving her driver’s license and a boy preparing to move out for his first year of university. The answer: they have crossed the liminal stage and entered a new phase of life. Liminality, or the liminal stage, a term coined by University of Chicago anthropologist Victor Turner, is the transitional stage one crosses as they pass through into a new stage of life. Ambiguity fills this indeterminate period as one attempts to find their place, role and status at home or in life, all while on the outside looking in. From this outsider’s point of view, many artists have addressed serious matters such as religion, societal constructs and the individual’s …show more content…
In Part III, Death and Life-in-Death play a game of chance to determine the fate of the Mariner. Life-in-Death wins the game, and curses the Mariner to life-in-death, a paradox as life and death oppose one another. The Mariner is cursed to roam the seas, alone and neither living nor dead. This curse signifies the Mariner’s entry into the liminal stage between life and death. In this state of limbo, the Mariner experiences other paradoxes as well, such as the “charméd water [that] burnt alway”, which contributes to the strangeness of liminality, as the Mariner comes in contact with things that he has never seen before (Part IV). The paradoxical nature of liminal stages creates ambiguity and alienation. The curse alienates the Mariner from the rest of the world, and leaves his state of being ambiguous, neither alive nor dead. My turning eighteen alienates me from my childhood, and leaves my role within my family ambiguous. Although legally I am an adult, allowed to live independently and on my own, and to make my own choices, paradoxically, I am still dependent on my parents, and obligated to follow their orders. In this paradox, I am neither a child nor an
The author shows the reader the sea just as the sailor does as death, but more than death
Tennessee Williams has poignantly depicted nature doing her bidding for the synchronization of, “unity of mental life,” (Freud, Reich, Lawrence, 499). The author appears to be like a naughty little boy running wild in the theater of universal consciousness. The projection of his inner life through his play A Streetcar Named Desire is his Picasso to the art gallery of replicas. He uses sublimation as an avenue to satisfy basic motives in a manner acceptable to society. In his attempt to escape social purgatory he constructed the characters Stanley and Blanche to give him wings unselfishly and put his ...
Joyce Carol Oates' message of life and transitions is best understood when the reader brings his or her interpretation to meet with the author's intention at a middle ground. This type of literary analysis is known as Reader Response. In Reader-Response, the emphasis is placed on "the idea that various readers respond in various ways, and therefore [the] readers as well as authors 'create' meaning" (Barnet, et. al. 1997). In this story of life passages and crucial events, it is imperative that the reader has a solid response to Oates' efforts in order to fully comprehend the message. Literature is a combined meeting between the intentions of the author and the reaction of the reader.
These two novels spoke about real powerful momentous events that occur in the authors’ lives. The authors emerged from the shadows and transformed their mishaps into motivation of overcoming life’s hardships. These two stories exemplify ways of overcoming Life’s hardships and finding sense of oneself. These authors break their vows of silence to prove the beauty of a broken person. They both converse on racial discrimination, relationships with God, & coming into themselves.
...s appealing it is not without consequence. Clare, and those who choose to pass, are not free to embrace their whole identity and will always remain a threat to those they come in contact. Clare exemplified the archetypal character of the tragic mulatto, as she bought tragedy to her own life and all those she came in contact. Clare’s presence forced Irene to contend with feelings of internalized racism, and thus feelings of inferiority. Through diction, tone, and imagery Larsen makes it luminous to readers that "passing" may seem glamorous, however, the sacrifice one makes to do so is not without consequences for themselves and those they care about. Larsen does not allow her readers to perch on the belief that once a member of the dominate group ones life is not without pain and suffering. Every action, even those that seem to make life easier, have consequences.
Over the decades, art has been used as a weapon against the callousness of various social constructs - it has been used to challenge authority, to counter ideologies, to get a message across and to make a difference. In the same way, classical poetry and literature written by minds belonging to a different time, a different place and a different community have somehow found a way to transcend the boundaries set by time and space and have been carried through the ages to somehow seep into contemporary times and shape our society in ways we cannot fathom.
In Pat Mora’s “Sonrisas,” A woman tells the audience that she lives in between two worlds: her vapid office workplace and a kitchen/break-room with family members or colleagues of her same heritage. Mora includes many sensory details to enrich our understanding of the speaker’s experience in both “rooms.” The speaker is content living in the “hallway” between the two rooms because she can put on a metaphorical mask, as mentioned in Jungian psychology, which fits what is acceptable to the different social society that is in each room of her life. Adrienne Rich on the other hand, is not content with peeking her head into the doorframes of the roles she must play in order to be accepted. In her poem, “Diving into The Wreck,” she pursues, in my opinion, a form of individuation by diving into the wreck of her inner consciousness to find who she is among the wreckage of the world and its effects on her. Both Pat Mora and Adrienne Rich explore the dangers of being defined by others and the rewards of exploring different worlds.
Being different can sometimes be somewhat scary because one may be considered an outcast. Being an outcast can be quite difficult especially when people can be cruel. In the short story “The Salamander,” the narrator is considered an outcast because she is different and does not follow society’s norms. The author from this short story, Mercè Rodoreda, can be compared to the narrator because she too did not follow the norms. Rodoreda’s short story includes some aspects that can be compared to her life, yet many other aspects in her story are inexplicable. “The Salamander” by Mercè Rodoreda can be described as a fantastic story because of the fantastic elements it contains, such as hesitation and liminality. The short story fits well into Todorov’s definition of the fantastic because it creates hesitation for the readers when the narrator experiences rebirth and it includes several examples of liminality. Liminality can be seen when the defined lines between human and animal, and life and death are blurred.
Firstly, one’s identity is largely influenced by the dynamics of one’s relationship with their father throughout their childhood. These dynamics are often established through the various experiences that one shares with a father while growing up. In The Glass Castle and The Kite Runner, Jeannette and Amir have very different relationships with their fathers as children. However the experiences they share with these men undou...
These cultural strictures come in a number of forms. First, the artist attacks intellectual conformity, choosing art over all other means of self-expression even though it is not widespread in his or her society. Though it is not explicitly stated - and is perhaps even subconscious - the artist chooses art over either academe or high society. The artist questions society's customs, making this choice explicit in their daily actions. The artist rejects ostentatious displays of wealth and the cultural emphasis on money, replacing it with a frugal simplicity more conducive to authentic experience. Finally, the artist calls into question the cultural construct most important to any understanding of human interaction - the binary conception of gender.
“Stay here and listen to the nightmares of the sea” - Iron Maiden (Rime of the Ancient Mariner) In “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge illustrates the story through the belief in God, and Christian faith. Throughout Mariner’s journey, many signified meanings interpret an important role such as, religious and natural symbolisms.
Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Wrong Actions The idea of people making wrong actions and having to pay for them afterwards is not new. The Christian religion centers itself around the confession of sins done by men or women. Luckily, they have the power to repent and do penance to receive God’s forgiveness. God sends people this power and people around the world mimic this cycle of crime, punishment, repentance, and reconciliation in court systems and other penal codes.
Images inspired by Diamant’s work flooded my conscious. Perhaps I was experiencing flashes of my rememory, my collective unconscious coming to life on the paper in front of me. However, it was not just The Red Tent providing me with stimulation, but other works such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, Mary Oliver’s “The Fish,” Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” and The Book of Genesis. Each work embodied themes of childbirth and motherhood to self-love and social standing, in which I could find connections that affected me creatively. Aesthetically, I intended my visual art to be full and consistent in texture and fecund in my use of sensuous lines. My hope is to celebrate women and the strength that comes from battling adversity, challenge, victimization and in actualizing the power of childbirth. In all of these works, a connection is made: these are stories of women that need to be remembered and cel...
What happens when one has an epiphany about something, years after it has happened? The essays “Some Notes on Attunement” by Zadie Smith and “Highway of Lost Girls” by Vanessa Veselka are personal essays that at first glance seem disconnected from each other as they touch on completely different subjects. However, it is evident that both have a common theme: realization. Zadie Smith comes to appreciate an artist named Joni Mitchell a decade after she first refers to her singing as “just noise” (Smith, 2012, p. 189). Vanessa Veselka hunts for more answers as she discovers the possible identity of the truck driver who threatened her life as an adolescent. Yet, it is important to note that the theme of realization covers a multitude of ideas expressed in these essays. Smith and Veselka in telling their individual stories, also utilize stylistic choices of their writing to enhance these ideas.
As James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man unfolds, the central theme of isolation and rejection becomes evident. From birth to adolescence, the protagonist of the story, Stephen Dedalus, responds to his experiences throughout life with actions of rejection and isolation. He rebels against his environment and isolates himself in schoolwork, family, religion and his art, successively. James Joyce uses Stephen Dedalus' responses of isolation and rejection to illustrate the journey that the artist must take to achieve adulthood.