“the Large Ant” and Formalism

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Cowan Donovan Mrs. Poirier English 122 26 September 2014 “The large ant” and Formalism Formalism is a very harmonic style of literary criticism. To be a formalist is to believe that all parts to a story work together and follow a set line of criteria. Only what is on the page is taken into account. Although formalism is a well-known style, it is not appropriate for Howard Fast’s short story “The Large Ant”. Using Formalism to interpret cannot be effective because the readers need to understand the background information. Without the background, the story becomes comparable to a pound cake with no toppings, bland and uninviting. Formalism ignores the cultural context, the author intentions, and how the story affects the reader personally. Formalism by definition ignores specifics such as what the author’s intentions were in the story. Fast’s intentions turn out to be an attempt to describe human nature. He depicts it as a violence prone, rash, kill-first-ask-later thought process. In the story Mr. Morgan killed one large ant in his room “because he is a human being” (Fast 154). A more in depth look also reveals that he meant for the reader to question themselves and if they are similar to Morgan. Are they rash and murderous? Essentially the significance in the knowledge of the author’s intentions is the emotional response that a reader will have. Consequently, formalism looks only at the lines and not what is between them, effectively impeding the quality. By using formalism to analyse this story the audience is inevitably separated from the cultural context. The context in “The Large Ant” is the Cold War between Capitalism and Communism. Although there were no shots fired the threat of thermo nuclear war was a daily subject and fear for the people of earth. They lived in a constant state of alert “because the weapon has become the symbol of the world we

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