20th Century Novel (All Posts Above)

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...

The Stranger: The Sun

The Stranger takes us through the simple yet confusing life of the main character Meursault. The book begins with the death of his mother in which he reacts quite oddly- barely at all. In fact during the funeral his internal thoughts resemble that of a childs, he’s bored and annoyed at the crying people. He also complains about the heat beating down on him, which is easily overlooked compared to the way he is reacting to the whole situation. However, if we pay close attention, Meursault complaining about the heat comes up at important times. Throughout the whole book, I think we can all agree how frustrated we were with the way Meursault has absolutely no care and doesn’t seem to react or have emotional attachment to anything. He endures the death of his mom, kills a man, goes through a long and confusing trial, and is sentenced to death for it. All of these events are quite significant and are bound to invoke a reaction in the average person. However, Meursault doesn’t seem to...

Ragtime: Ending

The ending of the novel was quite unlike the way the rest of the book flowed. There were multiple complex stories and characters coming together to form one narrative. Along the way we got to see mother and her character development, along with fathers lack of it. We saw Houdini navigate his inner struggles and even finding his worth in some way as he continues to preform. We saw Coalhouse Walker and Sarah and their impact on the family and the world. We followed Mother's Younger Brother who's narrative seems to always be driven by other people, much like his name suggests. The book was relatively slow paced for the most part until the ending. The book took a deep inside look into all the characters and showed us how each reacts differently to the same situation. Such as how each family member reacted in a different way to Walker entering the home and coming into their lives. And even how he impacted them after. The very end of the book seemed very rushed and vague. Almost li...

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