In a paragraph, discuss how these three essays meet the criteria for literary nonfiction. Use specific information from the content of the unit and quotations from the readings. Literary nonfiction is a form of storytelling as old as the telling of stories. It is a form that allows a writer both to narrate facts and to search for truth, blending the empirical eye of the reporter with the moral vision. The first essay written by Jaschik meets the criteria for literary nonfiction because it discusses the huge controversy of plagiarism and how it affects literature today.
Critical Review on “How David Beats Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell The author of the article “How David Beats Goliath” is Malcolm Gladwell. The purpose of the text is to educate the reader about the advantages of being unconventional. Another purpose was to compare Vivek Randaive’s life to the myth of David beating Goliath. This article is lengthy yet well written, keeping the reader engaged. The charm of this article comes from the author’s writing style.
Nathanael’s literary style and theme of his stories were passionate romanticism and mainly dark romanticism. The spectacular author had many amazing works and so many popular books. One of his greatest works was The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Twice-Told Tales (1837). Edgar Allan Poe once said, "The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth".
For example, Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, was not primarily conversational, and thus would not benefit as much from being orally told like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Ghost in the Mill or Samuel Clemens’s Cannibalism in the Cars. Where Irving takes the reader on a more personal creative literary journey – void of a separate storyteller though filled with imagery and vivid landscapes allowing the reader to make their own determinations – Stowe allows for a dialect advantageous of being acted aloud. Upon reading The Ghost in the Mill, you want to actually hear Sam Lawson tell the story, to know every aspect of the story and every word spoken by the characters in exactly the way he tells it, just like the children have learned to. Through stories like Stowe’s, written using dialect heavy in Southern slave culture, the need for a storyteller becomes more apparent, aiding in understanding the story’s tone. Likewise, in Clemens’s Cannibalism in the Cars, the written description only serves for so many creative possibilities; it is the storyteller that really brings the story to life.
Hemingway’s intentional vagueness and use of third person omniscient is reflective of his unique writing style. Although the story is comprised mainly of dialogue, you realize the couple’s conversation is sparse for the amount of time that passes. In the first paragraph it states “the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes” (132). Furthermore, the characters are not identified past “The American” (132) and “Jig” (132); they are mainly referred to as the man and the girl. This technique demonstrates how their nationality and age differ, causing complications to their relationship.
Since “The Things They Carried” is a collection of short stories, it automatically has multiple meanings. For some the meaning may simply be viewed as a novel of one’s life during the Vietnam War, but it is in fact much more than that. This novel explores such topics as: love, war, relationships, and the reality of the things that not only the characters but we too carry. These meanings are not direct but after reading can be discovered. The next thing that qualifies this book as a classic is the fact that it uses effective, unique style appropriate to the purpose and content.
So that when he does, he can understand the book better. That is one of the things that Their Eyes were Watching God lacked, making it a good story, but not a great book. One instance proven by Wright is when he says, “Turpin’s faults as a writer are those of an honest man trying desperately to say something; but Zora Neale Hurston lacks even that excuse. The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought”( ¶ #5). When he says there is “no thought” he means that there is nothing in the book that makes the reader think.
Unknown Darkness To write about things nobody likes to talk about or even mention in real life makes Nathaniel Hawthorne a great poet and a famous one at that. Hawthorne wrote so much about the American Colonies and how they lived their lives, he captured the smallest details of that time. Imagine being a writer in those times trying to find things to write about, in some of his poems you can see what a morbid mind he had, and it’s possibly due to his environment. Some of his Ancestors were direct descendants of Puritan judges. Which might have influenced his all famous “Scarlet Letter” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”, both these poems evoke each readers own personal judgments on human nature.
The author has Darl narrating most often because he is the most reliable character in the novel since he is the one character that seems to speak the most for the author, William Faulkner. Faulkner's narrative technique. Most novels are written in the past tense, and whether written in third person or first person, the author has considerable liberty to manipulate the events. In As I Lay Dying,
Harrison Bergeron In the short story, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, equality in the distant future is not possible. The theme of the story is suggested through the character´s actions and behaviors, and through the author´s style of writing. Because the government wanted to achieve equality between people, they gave handicappers to those who were more intelligent than those who were not born that way to make everyone think and act on the same low level of intelligence. “George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear” (Vonnegut 138). Every time George wanted to think, there would be a buzzing noise in his ear that made him less intelligent, and therefore equal to everybody else.