A Fever Dream In the short story, “Crossroads Blues,” William Gay uses a very unique opening scene to grab the reader’s attention. Gay keeps the reader on edge throughout the beginning of the story with this confusing question: Is Karas dreaming, or is this all real? “Dreaming” seems to play a vital and interesting role in this story. In Crossroads Blues, William gay seems to continually bring up “dreaming.” “In a fever dream that was almost but not quite nightmare Karas asked the Storm Princess those questions…” (148). These lines lead the reader to believe Karas is dreaming of talking to his wife that fled him, but is it reality?
In the novel Fight Club, Marla Singer’s character role is shown through a relationship triangle between the narrator, Tyler Durden, and Marla Singer. Through this relationship triangle, the three friends all inevitably discover what it means to hit “rock bottom.” In a way, the character of Marla Singer acts as a role of desire and destruction to the narrator and Tyler Durden. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator does not like Marla because she reminds him too much of himself by her emotional needs and tendencies. In chapter 2, we learn that the narrator uses support groups in which patients of sever diseases and conditions attend for support. He attends these support meetings so that he can release emotional energy and feel better about himself.
Comparably each fictional character struggles to maintain their sanity, often reacting in rash and condescending behaviour. One factor making Willy and Johnny both tragic figures are their issues with reality vs. fantasy, in the opening act Miller describes the surroundings as “a solid vault of apartment houses around a small fragile-seeming home… A dream rising out of reality” suggesting the characters state of mind. Willy’s fantasy is that he is living the American dream or at lease close to it, however the reality is that he is having a breakdown and not as famously known as he portrays. Miller expresses this right from the start, allowing the character of Willy Loman to contradict himself and react irrationally towards the people closest to him. According to Aristotle’s hypothesis of a tragic hero the character must be of some form of nobility, suffer from some form of error in judgment, go through a period of reversed fortune, and finally recognize that the error was actually caused by his own actions.
While some of the play’s action occurs outside of the apartment, The home is a galvanizing force for the family. The play A Raisin in the Sun is essentially about dreams being carried out into reality during the mid 1900’s. The main characters in the play struggle to deal with the oppressive circumstances that rule all of their lives. The title of the play, references a conjecture that Langston Hughes famously posed in the poem “A Dream Deferred.” He wrote about dreams that were forgotten or put off, and what can happen to them if they are not ambitiously followed. He wonders whether those dreams shrivel up “like a raisin in the sun.” in the play, every member of the Younger family has a separate self asserted individual dream, Beneatha wants to become a doctor, for example, and Walter wants to have money so that he can afford things for his family by opening up a liquor store.
Through Nelly’s story we learn of his struggles, and at times feel sympathy for him. But the complex character, Heathcliff, never fails to disappoint and surprise reader with his cruel actions. From the beginning of the novel, Heathcliff is made out to be a villain. Emily Bronte describes his “black eyes,” to show the stealth of the character. Later in the novel, we learn of Heathcliff’s childhood and his struggles with Hindly as well as love for Catherine.
The Reluctant fundamentalist shows us that nostalgia is a poison In Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, apparently is shown the other aspect, despite the beneficial side as a salve, but the far lethal side of nostalgia. The astonishing issue---the September 11, undoubtedly turns the USA’s theme from “openness” to “nostalgia”, and as a dire turning-point to be in the story, triggers subsequent changes. The same as America, Erica, who is assumed to be a symbolic character reflects the USA, also gets lost into the endless reminiscence of the bygone affections with Chris, finally destroy her. Nevertheless, these remind Changez of his relatives, who are addicted to nostalgia as well. Strikingly, Hamid sets these enormously realistic and secular scenes to the readers in order to substantiate the havoc of odious recalling back, which is with blindness and narrow-vision, septic grudge and mutiny, like a chronic but fatal poison.
Both trusting and naive, Scully's unreliable comprehension of his life and to the actions of those he encounters presents the reader with questions as to whose version of the narrative is the truth. Jennifer, his absent wife, is silent for the main part in the novel. Obviously, Winton uses this for the effect of creating mystery, to keep the reader wondering where she is, but it also allows the reader to examine Scully, his masculinity, his perception of Jennifer and their relationship as he presents images of her from his memories and as part of his frantic search. This understanding of her appears flawed as both the reader and Scully eventually discover. It can be argued that Jennifer's silence presents the reader with a situation that can only bring them to marginalise the role of the female gender in the text and to view her in a negative way.
This narrow view of Gatsby’s carries over to his first encounter with Daisy. Because of his time apart from her, his expectations had grown to an unobtainable amount. Fitzgerald created a dream-oriented character in how he obsessed over every detail of their meeting. This reality could not meet Gatsby’s expectations leading to a small but evident change in Gatsby. “He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it through to the end…Now in the reaction he was running down like an overwound clock” (Fitzgerald 92).
Biff brings out Willy's vulnerability by forcing him to recall harsh memories of his affair. Biff also challenges Willy, and forces Willy to live outside of his psuedo reality. In one line Willy says, "She’s nothing to me, Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly lonely"(1924), remembering Biff's discovery of his affair. This memory as well as the crash of reality force itself on Willy everytime he argues with Biff.
However, as the novel continues, McEwan cleverly begins to blur the boundary that previously existed in the way the two differed in terms of their ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal behaviour.’ This is because of how the reader begins to interpret Joe’s behaviour as ‘abnormal’ as he becomes mentally stressed by the harassment and painstaking experience that Jed has put him through. An example of this is the way in which Joe too becomes obsessed with Jed as he desperately searches for answers as to what is driving him on to interfere so significantly with his life. An example of this is just after the balloon incident, before Joe is even aware of the effect Jed will have on his life. It comes when Joe observes Jed in rather excessive detail and going into such depths, he even describes his “red shoe laces” and how “his knuckles brushing against his leather belt were big and tight knobbed under the