20th Century Novel (All Posts Above)

Sag Harbor

This is going to be one of my more informal blog posts as I prepare to graduate and reflect on my time at Uni. I want to connect a lesson I've learned to Benji's ideology of "the other boy," based off the prompt we received earlier this quarter. I think that Benji tries to separate himself so much from the younger version of himself because he's reminded of the time that him and his brother were neglected. I also think that some part of him might feel like a failure because he was trying so hard at the time to protect him and his brother from going shooting in the first place. But then his brother found a way around it and that'a how the whole mess started. All resulting in Benji getting hurt. This is an interesting aspect to explore but I really want to focus on why he tries so hard and yet fails to separate himself. I think the reason why Benji can't truly separate himself from the younger version of him is because he quite literally still has a part of...

Invisible Man: puppet on a string

Throughout Invisible Man, Ellison hides many metaphors that relate to the narrators life. From the reoccurring theme of running to the coin bank at Marry's, but one particularly interesting one was the doll that pops up before the climax of the book. He stumbles upon Clifton (who he doesn't notice till later) advertising and selling racist puppet dolls. Like everyone else, the narrator finds himself sucked into the doll fascinated with how it moves, he doesn't even realize Clifton is the one selling the dolls nor does he get upset that they're racist dolls. The police eventually come and everyone runs away and the narrator grabs a doll off the ground later putting it into his brief case (another reoccurring metaphor). Upon picking it up he finally realizes how the doll was able to move, it had tiny black strings which Clifton were using to move it in such a way. This scene essentially creates a puppet on a string metaphor. In many ways, the Narrator is the puppet on t...

Fun Home

Allison Bechdel's Fun Home , published in 2006, tells the story of Allison's own life. The term "fun home" comes from the funeral home that her family runs. The novel takes us through her complex family dynamics through both the written word, and illustrations. I think this is what makes this book so interesting because not only are we able to analyze the words on the page, but how she portrays through imagery as well. In the beginning of the book, we see Allison as a young girl while her father tries tell her how to dress and how to act to be a lady. However, after seeing a woman dressed like a man while out with her father, Allison's whole worldview changes. She first later comes out to her parents as lesbian, and the story picks up from there with the death of her father. It is also discovered by Allison that her dad engaged in homosexual affairs with underage boys during his lifetime. Between her father's death and her new knowledge, Allison makes it her m...

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