Critical Analysis Of 'Typhoon' By Theodore Dreiser

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Interpretation Typhoon (by Theodore Dreiser) The text under analysis is taken from the story “Typhoon” written by a celebrated author Theodore Dreiser. Being an outstanding American practitioner of a literary movement called naturalism, he adhered very much to depicting plausible everyday reality in his novels and stories as opposed to romanticism. Among other themes, his works dwell upon the new social problems that had arisen in rapidly industrializing America such as poverty, explicit behaviour and what not. The choice of topics takes root from his family life as well. His father, a German immigrant, was an unemployed millworker, which resulted in his stern and preconceived attitude towards everything American and bad living conditions. And the excerpt from the abovementioned story gives a meaningful insight into these very actual issues. The setting for the…show more content…
Another token of fluttered emotions is a succession of elliptical sentences increasing the level of repulsion followed by several rhetorical questions addressed to nobody and mentally answered. The subsequent asyndeton again indicates emotional strain: “naked women”, “petting parties”, “jazz”, “girls with skirts to their knees” all point to a loathsome mixture by which the main heroes, mostly Mr. Zobel, are so flabbergasted. Resorting to the abovementioned stylistic devices Dreiser provides the reader with his own standpoint on the matter on behalf of the family, which surely represents a third person narrative. The author in this very excerpt is “a fly on the wall” who observes the heroes’ actions and emotions and is eager to see how they will handle all the obstacles. However, at the same time the reader feels how Dreiser sympathizes with the Zobels as if agreeing with them, which is starkly revealed in rhetorical
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