Please take out a notebook You need two

Please take out a notebook. You need two sections • Journals • Literary Terms/Notes on texts

In this Power Point, when I talk about • STYLE terms will be yellow • THEME will be red

LITERARY TERMS-- Style LITERARY TERMS YOU SHOULD KNOW • Point of View (handout) • Tone (handout) diction, language, imagery, details • Imagery • Plot– narrative structure • Stream of Consciousness • Allegory • Surrealism THEME (not style)

Lenses we’ve touched upon • • • Feminist Allegorical Psychological Marxist (ideological) Formal (using terminology)

Two areas of study: STYLE and THEME n STYLE refers to Formal aspects of the story; how the story is told. Deals with Point of View, Plot Structure, Tone, Imagery, etc. (Modernism experiments with style. ) n THEME refers to ideas or truths about life. (These are also specifically Modern. )

Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk.

Fight Club -Style § Point ov View---Is this a reliable narrator? § What is his tone? How do you know? What is his attitude toward you the reader? (Does he think you are smart; the enemy; the converted, etc. )

Themes • Freudian – blaming parents • Self Destruction • “Reality” (What is it about? How can we experience it more intensely? ) • Know thyself

Violence (again) • How is violence used by the narrator (for what purpose)? • How is it used by the author? • This story is NOT about fighting…what is it about? Violence as redemptive (see also…)

Modern Man/ identity • • • Emotional Physically strong Nurturing Responsible for income Restrained/makes sacrifices Responsible for raising the children

IMAGERY (Copy into notebook) A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work.

Imagery: EXAMPLE • The following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, " When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table. ” Uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself

Imagery is not just decoration. Ask what is signified by the image

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

Where Are You Going… • Joyce Carol Oates • Inspired by Bob Dylan Song • Written in the sixties. In 1966 which is relevant because…

STYLE—Imagery in the story • Music is a constant image in the story and has significance • This is true of America at the time– pop music defined this young generation and led them “astray”

Symbolism - when an object is meant to be representative of something or an idea greater than the object itself. • Cross - representative of Christ or Christianity • Bald Eagle - America or Patriotism • Owl - wisdom or knowledge • Yellow - implies cowardice or rot

Symbols/ symbolic imagery • • • Three– “mystical” number Flies The Highway Mirrored sunglasses Possibly cloven or goat-like feet Take out the ‘r’ – A n old Fiend

“It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” Bob Dylan • You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last. But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast. Yonder stands your orphan with his gun, Crying like a fire in the sun. Look out the saints are comin' through And it's all over now, Baby Blue. The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense. Take what you have gathered from coincidence. The empty-handed painter from your streets Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets. This sky, too, is folding under you And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

• All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home. All your reindeer armies, are all going home. The lover who just walked out your door Has taken all his blankets from the floor. The carpet, too, is moving under you And it's all over now, Baby Blue. Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you. Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you. The vagabond who's rapping at your door Is standing in the clothes that you once wore. Strike another match, go start anew And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Images from “WAYG, WHYB” drank Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating their thin shoulders rigid with excitement, and listened to the music that made everything so good: the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon vexation that was like a fly buzzing suddenly around their heads

And so on… n n her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the airless little room, breathed in and breathed out with each gentle rise and fall of her chest

PLOT STRUCTURE How many parts is the story made up of? (What grammar error did I just make? ) In what way can you delineate the parts of this story? (In other words, what separated one “part” from another? Setting? Time? Tone? Imagery? )

MODERNISM THEMES Modern theme– the individual separate from the family and community? (Alienation)

THEME: Loss of Innocence/ Risk • There is danger inherent in the desire to grow up. • Story can be read as an ALLEGORY: American Society at this time was losing it’s innocence—There is also the “Modern” element of questioning our forward movement or progress while leaving behind traditional values. • The last image…

Violence • We do not truly know ourselves until confronted with violence or death. • Dramatic device for literature because (see above).

The ending • Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his arms for her, his elbows pointing in toward each other and his wrists limp, to show that this was an embarrassed embrace and a little mocking, he didn't want to make her selfconscious.

• She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited. • .

• "My sweet little blue-eyed girl, " he said in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it

Surrealism. . Honors Modern FictionSURREALISM. ppt o The dreamlike MOOD and DIALOGUE at the house o The “wolf in sheep’s clothing” o The last image– SYMBOLIC of her entering the adult world (loss of innocence)

“Memento Mori” STYLE § Plot– Major gaps reflecting subjective view of time (also a theme here) § Point of View– experimental: § use of two P. O. V. ’s § Third Person Limited and Second Person

Memento Mori Themes

SELF (this is “subject”– below are questions to build THEME) § How do we define ourselves– “I think, therefore I am”? (Descartes) Are you what you believe you are? (a good person– what about how you cheated/lied/stole? ) § Are you the sum of your memories? (What about what you have forgotten or altered? ) § Are you the sum of your actions? § Are you what mommy thinks you are?

Life/ existence Can we define our own lives and give them meaning– rather than look for meaning from God, social institutions, mommy, etc. n Is there an objective moral guideline for that purpose? n

The Nature of Time § Though we measure it with minutes and seconds and such, it is subjective. Consider: § “Time flies when you are having fun” § Time is dragging by right now And yet a minute is always sixty seconds… EVIDENCE IN THE TEXT: – Gaps in plot – Use of “Maybe” – Earl’s comments about time

Alienation § From friends and family § Society– its rewards (jobs, status) and punishments (prison) § God– His love and his rules (Via the first two bullets)

stream of consciousness o a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes: o a loose interior monologue, characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow. o often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself) o or in connection to his or her actions.

After I Was Thrown in the Water and Before I Drowned • Dave Eggers

More Keys to understanding • P. O. V. From where is the dog speaking? • The Language– how does it change? • The images/ details: • The tone changes from ______ to _____

• When and why does the verb tense change? • When and why does the dog use big words? • The Dog names seem weird– what do you make of them?

Narrative • Stream of Consciousness* • Repetition of words (“grabbing”) • “Big” words for reflection (ravishing) • Tense– present tense/ past tense when he dies • Plot goes beyond Story

THEME: Language fails us Overtly stated: § about human conversation Suggested by: § Steven is his name? § Descriptions of the dog § Language fun—diction, squirrel talk Action versus Talk (Thought/Intellect) § About the squirrels § The Title

How We Are Hungry • The characters and narrators in How We Are Hungry, in which longer stories are interspersed with some of Eggers's Guardian pieces, find themselves on the edge—on the verge of breakdowns, breakups and other crises… • His narrative responds in kind, patrolling what lies on and beyond the far edges of speech and thought. In the work of lesser writers— including some of those for whom Eggers has become a talisman— such narration can shrink into an aesthetic of studied fauxinarticulacy. . . it is a mark of what Eggers can achieve at his best that his feeling for speech and its limitations rarely hits false notes.

Authors have themes to which they return A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) and the freewheeling Velocity made a virtue of sheer sprawl; this collection of stories points to another quality, present in those books but perhaps less well noted: Eggers's way with significant omissions and ellipses.

Authors have themes to which they return As Anne Henry has pointed out, 'the gaps and lacunae so often discussed in twentieth-century criticism are not always empty or silent, but filled with pieces of type, marks which have voices of their own', and Eggers's significant gaps and lapses similarly have their silent speeches

A Good Man is Hard to Find

A Good Man is Hard to Find § Flannery O’Conner § Southern Gothic/ the Grotesque (Faulkner) § Catholic § She connects her religious concerns with being southern, for, she says, "while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted"

In her words: Flannery O’Conner the creative action of the Christian's life is to prepare his death in Christ. n "I'm a born Catholic and death has always been brother to my imagination. I can't imagine a story that doesn't properly end in it or in its foreshadowings. " n

THEMES n Evil may appear for ambiguous reasons (who is to blame? ) n God may strike you down for the sins of your mind (as opposed to actions) n Catholic concept: Redemption– never too late. Confession of sins n The sins of the South

Modernism: Themes Old World values (Grandma) versus Modern world view (the family) n Cultural Relativity – definitions of Good and Evil n The concept of Evil…this is not modern n

Change: Old South values vs. Modernism n n n "Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground, " John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too. " "You said it, " June Star said. "In my time, " said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now? " she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved "He didn't have any britches on, " June Star said. "He probably didn't have any, " the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture, " she said. The children exchanged comic books.

E. A. T. -- How racism is passed on n This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man

The Tower– A good man n n "You can't win, " he said. "You can't win, " and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust, " he said. "Ain't that the truth? " "People are certainly not nice like they used to be, " said the grandmother. "Two fellers come in here last week, " Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that? " "Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.

A critique of family The children's mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath (they are separate from Grandma) n

Justice and Religion n "Yes'm, The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus thrown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course, " he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit, " he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment. "

Religion/ hypocrisy the grandmother brings up Jesus and constantly judges who is a “good man” --- she mainly views Christianity through its Dogma n Dogma– the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization, thought to be authoritative and not to be disputed or doubted. n Basically, she prefers the rules to the spiritual aspects n

Modernism: Style n Shifting Point of View There was a secret: -panel in this house, " she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found. . . " Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. . "No, " he said The horrible thought she had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.

STYLE: GENRE-- Southern Gothic n subgenre of the Gothic writing style, unique to American Literature. n Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot.

Southern Gothic n Unlike its predecessor, it uses these tools not for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South

Foreshadowing n Foreshadowing is a literary device in which an author drops subtle hints about plot developments to come later in the story. n An example of foreshadowing might be when a character displays a gun or knife early in the story. Merely the appearance of a deadly weapon, even though it is used for an innocuous purpose — such as being cleaned or whittling wood — suggests terrible consequences later on.

denotation a literal meaning of the word connotation an association (emotional or otherwise) which the word evokes • For example, both "woman" and "chick" have the denotation "adult female" in North American society, but "chick" has somewhat negative connotations, while "woman" is neutral.

For another example of connotations, consider the following: • negative – There are over 2, 000 vagrants in the city. • neutral – There are over 2, 000 people with no fixed address in the city. • positive – There are over 2, 000 homeless in the city.

THEME • The main idea or underlying meaning of a literary work. A theme may be stated or implied. Theme differs from the subject or topic of a literary work in that it involves a statement or opinion about the topic. Not every literary work has a theme. Themes may be major or minor. A major theme is an idea the author returns to time and again. It becomes one of the most important ideas in the story. Minor themes are ideas that may appear from time to time.

Theme vs. Subject • It is important to recognize the difference between theme of a literary work and the subject of a literary work. • The subject is the topic on which an author has chosen to write. • The theme, however, makes some statement about or expresses some opinion on that topic. • For example, the subject of a story might be war while theme might be the idea that war is useless.

Four ways in which an author can express themes are as follows: • NUMBER ONE Themes are expressed and emphasized by the way the author makes us feel. . By sharing feelings of the main character you also share the ideas that go through his mind

Number TWO • Themes are presented in thoughts and conversations. Authors put words in their character’s mouths only for good reasons. One of these is to develop a story’s themes. The things a person says are much on their mind. Look for thoughts that are repeated throughout the story.

Number THREE • Themes are suggested through the characters. The main character usually illustrates the most important theme of the story. A good way to get at this theme is to ask yourself the question, what does the main character learn in the course of the story?

NUMBER FOUR • The actions or events in the story are used to suggest theme. People naturally express ideas and feelings through their actions. One thing authors think about is what an action will "say". In other words, how will the action express an idea or theme?