‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’ suggest that our moral choices depend on the circumstances we find ourselves in. Do you agree? ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’ is discontinuous novel consisting of an array of speculative stories converging as one. An unnamed Everyman protagonist narrates the story and introduces a new world order; a dystopian world in its most cataclysmic situations. Set in a recognisable time, the story showcases the complications of life caused by family breakdowns, treacherous weather, unstable governments, pandemic virus attacks, technology run amuck and other uncertainties of the future.
The question arises in any novel whether the narration may be trusted or whether we should rely on our own judgement. In both The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby the narrators could be described as unreliable but does this mean they are unable to be trusted or is unreliability merely a human trait used by Salinger and Fitzgerald to strengthen our empathy for the character? Both Salinger’s, and Fitzgerald’s novels fall prey to unreliable narration due to their structure. In both novels there is a retrospective account of events. Holden Cauldfield, begins the novel with the statement “I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas.” Nick Carraway begins with “when I came back from the east last fall”.
These people are not real. The stories are fiction. But fiction has truth. How? O'Brien creates an intentional paradox for his readers when he writes the violent, but grabbing story of Rat Kiley and then at the end of the story, tells the reader that the characters and events of the story did not happen just as he described them, but that they happened in a totally different way to other people.
Cosi touches on the themes of politics, love and madness, but offers no definitive answers. Do you agree? Cosi is a splendid play written by Louis Nowra about the theatre, madness, sanity, illusion and life. Cosi especially touches on the themes of politics, love and madness but offers no definitive answers because the entire play is not revealing or seeking for any, therefore is no right or wrong answers, it is just a discussion on point of views from different persuasive to overall make a point and develop a better understanding on the themes within the play to the audiences. One of the obvious theme that is found in Cosi would be madness because since the play is set in a mental institution in the 1970s, in the institution you will be introduced to all different type of characters, the audience will receive a different kind of madness from each of them such as madness within drug addiction, madness from the experiences in life, madness from an obsessive personality and etc.
In the novel The Stranger, written by Albert Camus, the tone is very matter-of-factly and not normal. Some people may mistake Camus’s style of writing for boring when actually the tone is being defined by Meursault’s voice. The “boring” narration shows us the world in the way Meursault sees it. It shows us monotonous and unexciting events happening in his life. The tone also introduces us to the philosophy of existentialism.
Gatsby Illusion vs. Reality There are differences between illusion and reality, which in this novel The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald plays a very large part of this literature. Illusion is something that deceives by producing false or misleading impression of reality. Now, reality is the state where things as they are or appear to be rather than as one might wish them to be. One aspect of a character’s life in this novel that sets a great example of illusion seen as reality involves the character Jay Gatsby.
To say that the intricacies that lay in the nature of life, aging and romance are just that – the unreachable, incomprehensible condition of human existence – would be a discomfiting conclusion to the true essence of this story. In my opinion, the intricacies within the nature of life, aging and romance are untethered and unwound by the simple realities mirrored in this tale, brought across only by the persona projected by its author. The profundity of this persona lies within the utter distance between the character himself and the yearning he doesn’t know he feels. He is portrayed as what I, the reader, can only perceive as irreparably lonely. His wondering in the dark translates to a deeper sense of being lost, unknowing of what is missing, of what hole needs to be filled.
Stoppard uses his play to mock the conventions of cosy crime fiction as some believe theatrical whodunits are inevitably shallow and dull thus Stoppard only delineates the obvious. Stoppard focuses on the melodramatic style of The Mousetrap that involves the audience in clues and suspense with complications and revelations at the end of each act through his notion of absurdist theatre. He exaggerates the conventions of the crime fiction genre through combining elements of British comedy in his play where the audience is aware of such humour. By utilizing the audiences’ knowledge of detective fiction as an iconic British genre he henceforth creates a parody and pastiche in The Real Inspector
In Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ gender roles and gothic tropes are subverted to show that nothing is set in stone. Although these three texts do explore the blurring of distinctions, they are not based on this as they each individually explore more important and relevant ideas. Critics argue that the gothic is “fragmented”, “jagged” and “inconsistent” which can certainly be applied to Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ as constant time shifts and different narrators are used to render the reader confused and disorientated. This ambiguous novel reflects the idea that the gothic is not meant to be understood and that distinctions are blurred. One way that Bronte creates this “fragmented” structure is through the use of Lockwood as the frame narrator of Nelly’s story.
John Smith Mr. Jones Sociology 212 3 May 2012 Disenchanted The Politics of Experience is collection of theories and ideas about experience, behavior, and sanity. The book is sometimes abstract, mostly controversial, and always bold and thought provoking. Dr. Laing goes to great lengths to prove that not only is the scientific method incapable of measuring the human experience, but our views on normalcy and order within society are both violent and destructive; that normalcy is in fact, insanity. In this world, we are groomed into beings that are increasingly led to believe in the material, or external world. Forsaken are thoughts of imagination, fantasy, and freedom.