Reading Response #5 As Cynthia Ozick says in her essay “She: Portrait of the Essay as a Warm Body”, “an essayist must be an artist”. In this essay she explains the importance of writers when it comes to essays. Each essay has a different content, but they each embody their writer. Their words are taken from the warm body that they come from and are translated onto the page. At the conclusion of her essay, Ozick personifies the essay as “she”, giving us a better idea of what an essay would look like or would do if it were a “she”.
Although the primary purpose of this piece is to inform the reader, it was also created to inspire the reader’s own opinions around the themes. Additionally the fictional piece ‘I Wonder if God Can See Me’ also explores the theme; written in the style of ‘A Handmaid’s Tale’[2] the piece effectively uses the plot of ‘The Colour Purple’[1] to rewrite an excerpt of the story from the view of protagonist Celie, similarly attracting a well-educated although primarily female audience. In addition to reading of the two core stimulus texts[1][2] , the use of the films[4][5] of these novels also helped stimulate visual understanding of the theme, an important factor in the writing of the non-fiction piece. In conjunction with this, the film ‘Memento’[6] and the short story upon which it is based, ‘Memento Mori’[7] helped shape my ideas behind the non-fiction piece, fuelling an insight into the loss of identity. This, and further background material including ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’[8] and ‘Room’[9] all helped to give the pieces weight in the understanding of the connecting theme, thus making them well
A successful story should be something that makes you think and wonder how you can relate to it in your life. In ‘Looking for Alibrandi, I think, many people who read it can relate too some of the feelings felt by Josie. Some of the common relations to the book people have are, John Barton’s suicide and how Josie grieved or to the hilarious situation of ‘the Hot Pants magazine quiz’ at the beginning of the book and how Josie attempted to get out of being caught, as everyone would try to do in her situation. ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ I think was successful of achieving the expectations that a reader expects in a novel. One of the expectations of a successful novel is ‘Entertainment’ this is needed to keep a reader amused and not bored with the book.
“The critic asks “is this believable?” The novelist, “how can I get them to believe this”? In short she argues that a good novelist always has some sort of conflict to tell and it must be suspenseful. “Something other than breakfast”. She uses witty humour to loosen the audience up. Atwood discusses the several genres of fiction that are available in this time and explains how this is not only a time of gender crossover but of genre crossover.
Aunt Fay writes to her niece Alice in the hope of teaching her about Austen and her writing and what better way to do that than by direct reference to Austen’s most successful text, Pride and Prejudice? Weldon in turn helps the actual reader understand Pride and Prejudice by commenting on the characters’ behaviour and the plot by giving her personal opinion, as well as identifying typical language features and explaining why Austen is valued today. She expresses empathy for Mrs Bennet which encourages the reader to reconsider their own opinion Her use of first person language tells the reader that they are reading a biased opinion, but also helps the reader trust Weldon as she is speaking
Now we all know I LOVE to cause an online riot and my eyes literally light up at the word debate! I’m currently interested in the different opinions about the “Chick Lit” genre or more formerly known as Women’s Literature. We’ve probably all stumbled across the odd romance and maybe even a Mill’s and Boon novel, but with many women of all ages now taking an interest in female literature, can we call this genre real literature? Chick Lit is basically written for women by women and what really separates the genre from typical women’s fiction is that there is the humorous element throughout the storyline. Many novels in this genre tackle personal issues such as dating, relationships, weight issues, life issues and many more.
Sexuality is a largely debated topic in recent society; this engages the audience as they are intrigued to see the implications and general representation of sexuality in the novel. Identity, a theme which is probably the most important in the novel engages the audience as they wish to follow the continual progression of the story of Gemma while the main protagonist Becca is able to discover herself. Audiences are engaged by this theme as in recent times it is considered a pivotal thing to know yourself and is often searched for by many people. The audience may take comfort in the reading of another’s journey to find their true identity. Yolen has used themes effectively to engage the, these themes include love, sexuality and
How was your understanding of the cultural and contextual consideration of the work developed through the interactive oral? The interactive oral on Medea helped me broaden my perspective of the cultural context in 431 BC. The exchange of information provided fresh new ideas and a wealth of topics to reflect upon, through which I deepened my understanding of the play as I could empathise with the audience and try to mirror their reactions to give me feeling of how the audience would have reacted with Euripides’ strongly feminist views. Misogynies weren’t uncommon at that time, it was quite socially acceptable to give away or abandon your baby if it was female. This blatant sexism at the start of a woman’s life leads to nothing but a life under a man’s thumb, from her father to later on, her husband.
The wit, feeling, life and breath of the piece is here. This is where the writer makes his/her mark that makes their writing different from another’s, and adds a personal tone that is unmistakably his/hers alone. This is voice! | Word choice is the use of colorful and specific words that not only deliver the function of the piece, but move the reader emotionally. Characteristics of word choice in descriptive writing tend to bring clarity and entertain fresh ideas.
As to be expected, this thesis opened up a multitude of hugely controversial sub-topics, and in dealing with such controversial and heavy subject matter, Woolf utilized a writing style and used to her advantage the ‘liberties and licences of a novelist’ that allowed her more literary freedom. She did this by exploiting the narrative voice of her invented character of ‘Mary Beaton, Mary Seaton, or Mary Carmichael’ to lead us through the elegantly meandering journey that was her stream of consciousness. In writing in this semi-fictional narrative style, Woolf was able to merge deeply political, and philosophical views expressed in a partially illusory voice, which afforded her the freedom to subtly uncover ‘some nugget of truth’ and put across her powerful message. In a time where women writers’, and indeed women, were not afforded the liberties of equality and freedom of speech. A time where female writers’ had to be guarded, and confined, in expressing their opinions, the narrative voice, ‘Call me Mary Beaton, Mary Seaton…’ aided the conveying of Woolf’s argument, as it engaged with women on a more personal level, through making her character a universally identifiable ‘every-woman’, rather than an individual displaying her anger towards the system of patriarchy.