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Analysis of literary Articles

Fiction stories

Alemar Allecer BSMT 2A10/15/2012

A Wrinkle in TimeSummaryA Wrinkle in Time is the first in a series of four book that follow the adventures of MegMurry and Calvin O'Keefe. The book begins by relating Meg's personal struggles at school and her inability to fit in with the crowd. This is also a problem for her younger brotherCharles Wallace. Everyone thinks he is dumb, though both children are extraordinarily intelligent - indeed, Charles Wallace could easily be considered a genius. Beyond that, Charles Wallace also has the unique gift of being able to read the minds of others.Charles Wallace befriends a strange group of women living nearby - Mrs. Whatsit,Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. These three ladies soon take the children on a strange journey, promising to help them find and rescue their father who has been missing for two years. One afternoon, after meeting Calvin near the ladies' house, the three are swept off to another planet, Uriel, through the process of the tesser - the process of wrinkling space and time.On Uriel, the children are given a view of the Dark Thing, a massive blackness that threatens to overtake the universe and that is threatening Earth. It is only through the work of great figures such as Jesus and Buddha and Gandhi, as well as other great artists and scientists, that keeps the Dark Thing from overtaking earth. The ladies tell the children that this is what their father is fighting.After a visit with the Happy Medium, an oracle who tells them what path they must follow, the children are taken to the planet of Camazotz, a planet overtaken by the Dark Thing. On Camazotz, everyone acts exactly like everyone else and all creativity has been expunged from the planet. The children meet the Man with the Red Eyes who tries to "hypnotize" them into following IT. Charles Wallace eventually gives in with the hope of defeating the Dark Force, but he is taken in by the powerful evil.They are then taken to see Meg's father who has been imprisoned by IT. After Meg heroically rescues him from his glass chamber, Charles Wallace, still under IT's influence, takes them to see this IT. IT turns out to be a large, dismembered brain. It pulses and tries to hypnotize both Calvin and Meg, but Mr. Murry saves them both by tessering off the planet just as they are about the fall under its power.On another planet, Ixchel, Meg is healed by a giant, tentacled beast called Aunt Beast. Aunt Beast shows her the meaning of true love and soon gives her the strength to offer her self to save Charles Wallace. Alone and back on Camazotz, Meg confronts IT face to face, and, using the only power that IT does not have - love - is finally able to defeat it. IT only wields the power of hate, and almost overtakes her, but Meg's love for her brother is stronger than the hate of IT. As she and the rescued Charles Wallace

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embrace, they are tessered back to earth where they are reunited with their family.

ThemesMadeleine L'Engle's fantasy works are in part highly expressive of her Christian viewpoint in a manner somewhat similar to that of Christian fantasy writer C.S. Lewis. She was herself the official writer-in-residence at New York City's Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which is known for its prominent position in the liberal wing of the Episcopal Church.[7] L'Engle's liberal Christianity has been the target of criticism from more conservative Christians, especially with respect to certain elements of A Wrinkle in Time.

Another major Biblical reference is the hymn of praise sung by the centaur-like beings on the planet Uriel which translates to a very close paraphrase of lines from Isaiah and the Psalms "Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein"; similarly, the alien that Meg calls 'Aunt Beast' quotes a line (without attribution) from Paul'sEpistle to the Romans concerning being called and justified according to God's purpose, another line from the same is earlier cited by Meg's father.

The theme of picturing the fight of good against evil as a battle of light and darkness is a recurring one. It is manner reminiscent of the prologue to the Gospel of John which is also quoted once. When the "Mrs Ws" reveal their secret roles in the cosmic fight against "the darkness" they ask the children to name some figures on Earth (a partially dark planet) who fight the darkness. They name Jesus, and later in the discussion Buddha is named as well, along with various creative artists and philanthropists. The three women are described as ancient star-beings who act as guardian angels.[9]

Further, the theme of "conformity" and the "status quo" are present. It is a generic theme that is within every society (within every society there is a powerful dominant group that challenges the minority group. Very few of the powerless members of this group are resilient). In this case, IT is the powerful dominant group that manipulates the planet of Camazotz into conformity (i.e., they all have the same rhythm). Even Charles Wallace falls prey (due to flattery) and is hence persuaded to conform. It is thanks to Meg that she and her family are able to break from conformity.

Main Characters

Meg Murry

Square PegA Wrinkle in Time begins with Meg alone in her attic bedroom, feeling weird, wrong, and out of place in every way. Charles Wallace Murry.

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Boy Genius, UndercoverCharles Wallace looks like a five-year-old boy, but he talks like a professor and thinks like a psychic and a physicist rolled into one.

Calvin O'Keefe

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who's the Happiest of them All?On first sight, Calvin O'Keefe might not seem to have much in common with Meg and Charles Wallace.

Mrs. Whatsit

The Clothes Don't Make the WomanMrs. Whatsit is the most human-like of the three Mrs. Ws (at least until she turns into a freaking winged centaur), but there's always more to her than meets the eye.

Mrs. Which

Mrs. Which seems the least material but the most powerful of the three Mrs. Ws. She also seems to be the most distant from human reality: she's the one who forgets that humans need three dimensions.

Mrs. Who

Of the three Mrs. Ws, Mrs. Who seems the vaguest. Perhaps that's because even her words are not her own: nearly everything she says is a quotation from somewhere else. While Mrs.

IT

One brain to rule them all, one brain to find them, one brain to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them! IT is the evil genius of Camazotz bent on world domination, and he's all brain.

Mr. Murry

Mr. Murry enters the story three quarters of the way through the novel. Until that point, he exists in Meg's childhood memories as the father who called her affectionate nicknames, played math game.

Mrs. Murry

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If the Murry twins form Meg's idea what healthy normality looks like, her mother is an example of impossible perfection:Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving admiration, half in sullen resent.

Aunt Beast

Aunt Beast is one of the alien creatures that inhabits Ixchel, the planet the Murrys and Calvin land on after tessering off Camazotz.They were the same dull gray color as the flowers.

The Happy Medium

Oh, puns, we love you so. The phrase "happy medium" long precedes the Medium's appearance as a character in the book: in the first chapter, Mrs. Murry says to Meg,

The Prime Coordinator

The Prime Coordinator, a.k.a. the Man with the Red Eyes, introduces Meg, Calvin Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe to the power of IT.

Sandy Murry and Dennys Murry

Sandy and Dennys are twins, and might as well be clones for the amount of individual characterization they get. (They do get more differentiated in the sequels, and Many Waters is devoted .

FortinbrasAs the Murrys' pet dog, Fortinbras's main role is to run around and bark at things. But his bark has a bite: it's his uneasiness that clues the Murrys in that they're about to get a visit .

Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

Tesseract

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What the heck is a tesseract? We'll let Charles Wallace explain:"Well, the fifth dimension's a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions .

The Black Thing

The Black Thing is the like Sauron, Darth Vader, and Voldemort all rolled into one, and it's coming to a planet near you.

Camazotz and IT

IT, speaking through its various mouthpieces, portrays Camazotz as giving Disneyland a run for its money as the Happiest Place in the Universe

Religion

A Wrinkle in Time is no The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but religious language and imagery does keep popping up. Is it coincidence that Charles Wallace asks Calvin to read him the Book .

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The Tempest first pops up in the text among Mrs. Who's plethora of quotations:"We are such stuff as dreams are made on." She smiled broadly.

Setting

The scenes of A Wrinkle in Time occur in the home of the protagonist and on a variety of planets. In this type of fantasy novel, the willing suspension of disbelief is essential to a deeper understanding of the story. The reader must embrace the other worlds as symbolic of larger abstract ideas.

Point of view

Third Person (Limited Omniscient)

A Wrinkle in Time has a third-person narrator, but one that's hovering over Meg's head most of the time. When the kids tesser for the first time, we see it through Meg's eyes, and throughout the novel we rarely get commentary on what's happening beyond what Meg is aware of. One of the few instances of such commentary happens on Ixchel, the planet of the beasts:Here the third-person narrator steps out of Meg's perspective for a moment to give us additional information about why Meg is acting the way she is.

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While on the one hand this distances from Meg, it also creates sympathy for her at a time when she's being annoying...which works to bring the reader closer to Meg in the end. Most of the time, however, the narrator stays within Meg's limitations, which means that we, as readers, learn about what's going on and why at the same time she does.

GenreClassics, Science Fiction

A Wrinkle in Time is published as a children's or young adult book, and like much children's literature, it features young protagonists who go off on a quest in the absence of their parents. In A Wrinkle in Time this quest takes them to other planets, where they meet strange and fantastical beings. At the end, the object of their quest is achieved, though in not quite the way they expected, and they return to the normal, every-day world.

Tone

Sympathetic

Most of the text is either from Meg's point of view or dialogue between the characters, so the narrative voice isn't really a strong perspective. But in the detailed narration of Meg's experience, we get the sense that the author cares deeply about these characters, and wants us to care too, and so does her best to make us feel along with them (see "Narrative Point of View" for more on this).

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The Time Traveler's Wife 

Summary

When Henry DeTamble meets Clare Abshire in a Chicago library they both understand that he is a time traveller, but she she knows much more than this about him as he has not yet been to the times and places where they have met before. He falls in love with her, as she has already with him, but his continuing unavoidable absences time travelling - and then returning with increasing knowledge of their future - makes things ever more difficult for Clare.

In Chicago, the special collections librarian Henry DeTamble has a genetic anomaly that allows him to travel in time; however, he is not able to control the moment or the destiny of his voyages. When the stranger Clare Abshire meets him in the library, she invites him to have dinner with her in his favorite restaurant Beau Thai where she confesses that she has been in love with him since she was six years old. Henry leans that he had visited her many times in the real state of her parents and he falls in love with her. Sooner they get married, but the life of Clare becomes troubled with the successive unexpected travels of her beloved husband. 

Theme

Niffenegger identifies the themes of the novel as "mutants, love, death, amputation, sex, and time".Reviewers have focused on love, loss, and time. As Charlie Lee-Potter writes in The Independent, the novel is "an elegy to love and loss".] The love between Henry and Clare is expressed in a variety of ways, including through an analysis and history of the couple's sex life.

Characters

Clare Abshire

Choice vs. DeterminismWhen Clare first meets Henry as a six-year-old, she's a good

Catholic schoolgirl, who believes in God and good manners (aside from stepping on her

brother's toes, maybe).

Henry DeTamble

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Henry – Reluctant Time Traveler or Unreliable Husband?In various passages in The

Times Traveler's Wife, Henry explains that the inevitable cause of his time travels is

stress.

Alba

Alba – The Old SoulHenry and Clare name their daughter Alba, after a "white fortress on

the hill." Her name mirrors her strength and assertiveness .

Annette DeTamble

Under her artist name "Annette Lyn Robinson," Henry's mother has made a name for

herself as a famous opera singer. Richard, Henry's father, tells Clare about Annette .

Richard DeTamble

Richard DeTamble is a violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After his wife,

Annette, dies in a car accident when Henry is five, Richard's life becomes meaningless.

Mrs. Kim

Mrs. Kim has been a mom to Henry since his mother died when he was five. Henry calls

her "Kimy, his buddy." After Henry's mother's death, she not only takes care of Henry,

but his father as well.

Lucile Abshire

Clare's mother, Lucille Abshire, is a very troubled, unpredictable woman. During her first

date with Henry in the present, Clare explains, "My mother is kind of off in the clouds."

Philip Abshire

Philip Abshire, Clare's father, is a lawyer, specializing in wills. "Master of his features," he

does a great job at playing the affable, smiling head of the family.

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Mark Abshire and Fiancée Sharon

Mark is studying to be a lawyer, like his father. Clare and Mark have never had a very

friendly sibling relationship. Six-year-old Clare relates,

Alicia Abshire

Alicia is Clare's younger sister. Henry describes her as, "matter-of-fact and kind, but a

little odd, absent"

Grandma Meagram

Grandma Meagram lives with Clare's family. She is blind. One day when seventeen-

year-old Clare takes her out for a walk, they run into Henry and Clare introduces the

two.

Great Aunt Dulcie

Great Aunt Dulcie participated in the Abshires' Christmas dinner when Clare brings

Henry to meet her family for the first time. Henry describes Dulcie as "pink-haired and

tiny."

The Abshire Family Staff

Etta works as the housekeeper for the Abshire family. She's German and runs the

household like a tight ship. Clare says, "She's really more almost our mom." Nell is the

cook.

Gomez and Charisse

Gomez and Charisse have been Clare's best friends since she moved to Chicago. She

describes Gomez as "beautiful, tall and broad…large, an entirely different sort of beauty

from Henry'.

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Ingrid

Ingrid is Henry's girlfriend before he meets Clare. Clare describes her as "blond and

beautiful in a very German way, tall and dramatic" She appears to be a bit in awe of the

woman.

Celia

Celia is a friend of Ingrid, Henry's ex-girlfriend. Clare meets her for the first time during a

concert at the Aragon, shortly after she witnesses an argument between Henry and

Ingrid.

Ben

Ben is one of Henry's close friends. He has been infected with HIV by his ex-boyfriend,

and still struggles with accepting his predicament. .

Helen

Helen is one Clare's oldest school friends. She's one of the girls who witnesses the Ouija

board reveal Henry as Clare's future husband.

Dr. David Kendrick and His Wife

When Henry visits Dr. Kendrick in his office for the first time, he tells him about his

condition and predicts that Kendrick will work with him in the future on finding a cure.

Dr. Amit Montague

Amit Montague becomes Clare's doctor throughout her many miscarriages and her final

successful pregnancy with Alba.

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Henry's Colleagues at the Newberry Library

Matt works with Henry at the Newberry Library. Although Henry is chronically unreliable

and Matt has discovered Henry naked in the library stacks several times.

Symbolism, Imagery, & Allegory

Museums - The Store Houses of Time

Since Henry was a little boy, he has loved museums. When his parents promise to take him to the Field Museum of Natural History, he's so excited that he can't sleep the night before, thinking about "the wonders to be seen there.

Time as a Tape Recorder

In an effort to explain to six-year-old Clare how a time traveler's life works, Henry likens time to a tape recorder. First he describes normal life to Clare: "…you put in a tape and you play it from beginning to the end, right?… That's how life is" Then he contrasts his life to that first version.

Henry and Clare's Dreams

Both Henry and Clare experience very vivid dreams that provide glimpses into suppressed hopes and fears. Not surprisingly, they precede or follow important emotionally-charged events in their lives.

Setting

Chicago and South Haven, IL

The Meadow in South HavenThe meadow near the Abshire family home represents the cradle of Clare's relationship with Henry. It's where she meets him for the first time when she is 6 years old and Henry is 43. The meadow becomes their meeting place throughout Clare's childhood and teenage years. It's where Henry and Clare share their first real kiss and where they make love for the first time.

Meadowlark House in South Haven

Housing an impressive 24 rooms and a staff of a gardener, a cook, and a housekeeper, Meadowlark House is Clare's big family residence. 

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The Newberry Library in Chicago

The Newberry Library is where Clare and Henry's relationship begins in Henry's present. In many ways, the setting acts as microcosm of Henry's daily life. 

Henry and Clare's House in Chicago

After Clare complains that she has no space in their tiny apartment to work on her art, Henry uses his time traveling skills to rig the Lottery and Clare suddenly finds herself with $8 million to her name. 

Point of view

This simply means that he can travel in time. But Henry has no control over his time travel. It can occur at anytime, anywhere. It is actually time travel that leads him to his wife, Clare the artist. Did I mention that Clare was only six years old when she first met Henry? The story shows us the story from their first meeting and how they keep reconnecting with each other throughout time. Although, it is not done in that precise order.

Genre

Reviewers have found The Time Traveler's Wife difficult to classify generically: some categorize it as science fiction, others as a romance. Niffenegger herself is reluctant to label the novel, saying she "never thought of it as science fiction, even though it has a science-fiction premise".In Niffenegger's view, the story is primarily about Henry and Clare's relationship and the struggles they endure.

The Great GatsbySummary

Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.

Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening

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for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.

As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.

After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.

When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.

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Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.

Theme

On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsbyis a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.

Characters

. Nick Carraway

While the title The Great Gatsby might suggest that the central puzzle of this novel is “The Great Gatsby,” we disagree. Gatsby himself is, after all, almost shockingly simple once you.

Jay Gatsby

Origins: Jimmy GatzLong before Gatsby was “great,” he was a small town kid with big dreams.

Daisy Buchanan

Gatsby’s entire fortune, and his entire life, really, are built upon the hope that someday he might rekindle his old love with Daisy.

Tom Buchanan

Tom Buchanan is Daisy’s husband, an extremely wealthy man, a brute, and an athlete. He’s selfish and does what he needs to get what he wants.

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Jordan Baker

Nick might end up "halfway in love" with Jordan, but he consistently describes her as cynical, having seen too much and heard too much to be fooled by anybody.

George Wilson

Poor George. He really gets the short end of the stick in this one. And, seeing as he’s one of the few characters without staggering flaws.

Myrtle Wilson

We get the feeling that Myrtle Wilson is not an especially smart woman. Strung along by Tom, Myrtle is convinced that he loves her and would leave his wife for her if he could. The whole bit about.

Meyer Wolfsheim

We don’t know a lot about Meyer Wolfsheim – and we’re not supposed to. Beyond the fact that he’s a business associate and a friend of Gatsby’s.

Owl Eyes and Klipspringer

These two odd characters sum up two extremes of the kinds of ludicrous, hilarious, bizarre people that populate Gatsby’s parties, drinking his liquor and gossiping about him.

.

Symbolism, Imagery, & Allegory

Gatsby's "books"

An owl-eyed man at a Gatsby party sits in awe in the library, murmuring with amazement that all the books on Gatsby’s shelves are "real books." But does Gatsby even read them? The image works..

The Owl-Eyed Man

Speaking of those books, what’s up with that guy in the library? We almost listed the owl-eyed man as a character, but then we realized we know absolutely nothing about him. Even Nick reduces...

The Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg and the Valley of Ashes Below Them

The first time we see the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, the image is intertwined with Nick’s description of the valley of ashes. The ashes are, as ashes tend to be, "desolate" and "grotesque."

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The Green Light

The green light on Daisy’s house that Gatsby gazes wistfully at from his own house across the water represents the "unattainable dream." But the green light also represents the hazy future.

ColorsSometimes we sound like art snobs when we talk about The Great Gatsby ("Look at the use of green! Such marvelous blues," and so forth). Honestly, it seems like there’s a little too much color.

Setting

Long Island and New York City in the early 1920s

The story is set in New York City and on Long Island, in two areas known as "West Egg" and "East Egg." The story is set in the early 1920s, just after World War I, during Prohibition, a time period that outlawed the manufacture, sale, or consumption of alcoholic beverages. This is significant not only because Gatsby’s ill-gotten wealth is apparently due to bootlegging, but also because alcohol is conspicuously available, despite being illegal, throughout the book. Indeed, the characters are seen drinking expensive champagne – suggesting that the wealthy are not at all affected by these laws.

 Point of View

First Person (Peripheral Narrator): Nick Carraway 

The story is told in the first person, through the eyes of Nick Carraway. The primary and most visible story is about Jay Gatsby and his devotion to his dream. Other stories, also told through Carraway's eyes, include Tom's reconciliation with his wife Daisy, Nick's own relationship with Jordan, and Nick's evolving friendship with Gatsby. Nick is only able to tell these stories through his limited omniscience. At times, he is able to narrate scenes despite not being present - but he rarely takes advantage of this fact. Although the story is told in the first person, Nick Carraway is able to easily become part of the wallpaper. His major character trait - reserving judgment - allows him to be almost an "invisible" narrator, similar to a traditional third-person omniscient point of view. Ultimately, however, if we lost Nick's point-of-view, we would never understand the evolution of his character. He is the invisible man until the end of the book, when suddenly, he has opinions about everybody.

Genre

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Literary Fiction, Modernism

Almost anything on the Shmoop module list would probably fit under the category of "literary fiction": it's an umbrella term for a story or novel that focuses more on character development and style than on page-turning plots. And it's this kind of fiction that you usually read for school: books that provoke discussion over what it all means (Life, the Universe, and Everything).

Tone

Cynical, Ironic

Nick is one cynical little cookie. Even though Nick reserves explicit judgment on the characters, Fitzgerald still manages to implicitly criticize through his narrator's tone.

Invisible ManSummary

Invisible Man is autobiographically narrated in the first person by the protagonist, an unnamed African American man who considers himself socially invisible. Ellison conceived his narrator as a spokesman for black Americans of the time:

So my task was one of revealing the human universals hidden within

the plight of one who was both black and American...[9]

Ellison struggled to find a style appropriate to his vision. Wanting to avoid writing "nothing more than another novel of racial protest," he settled on a narrator "who had been forged in the underground of American experience and yet managed to emerge less angry than ironic." To this end, he modeled his narrator after the nameless narrator of Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground, which similarly applies irony and paradox toward far-reaching social criticism.[10]

The story is told from the narrator's present, looking back into his past. Thus, the narrator has hindsight in how his story is told, as he is already aware of the outcome.

In the Prologue, Ellison's narrator tells readers, "I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century." In this secret place, the narrator creates surroundings that are symbolically illuminated with 1,369 lights from the electric company Monopolated Light & Power. He

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says, "My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway." The protagonist explains that light is an intellectual necessity for him since "the truth is the light and light is the truth." From this underground perspective, the narrator attempts to make sense out of his life, experiences, and position in American society.

Themes

Identity

Identity in Invisible Man is a conflict between self-perception and the projection of others, as seen through one man's story: the nameless narrator. His true identity, he realizes.

Race

While most the narrator's difficulties throughout the novel are associated with his race, Invisible Man is a novel aimed at transcending race and all the other ways humanity has used to categorize..

Lies and Deceit

Invisible Man is about the process of overcoming deceptions and illusions to reach truth. (One of the most important truths in the book is that the narrator is invisible to those around him.)

Ideology

Invisible Man promotes a political philosophy of appealing to the emotional individual. It rejects all forms of ideology, arguing that ideology misses the trees for the forest, so to speak .

Memory and the Past

Most of Invisible Man takes place in the narrator's memory, which inherently brings up issues of how well memory works – in other words, the nameless narrator character is choosing specific.

Power

Power infuses nearly all of the relationships depicted in Invisible Man. More specifically, white male power threads its way throughout the novel. Even in situations where there are no white males.

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Admiration

Admiration is particularly salient towards the beginning of Invisible Man, when the narrator takes Dr. Bledsoe and Mr. Norton to be role models. By the end of the novel.

Ambition

In Invisible Man, admiration tends to fuel ambition. As the narrator admires Dr. Bledsoe, so his ambition is to one day serve as Bledsoe's assistant.

Love

Love is notable in Invisible Man because of its absence throughout most of the novel. The narrator rejects it because it would interfere with his ambitions.

Women and Femininity

In Invisible Man, the situation of white women is drawn parallel to that of black men – both are oppressed by white male society.

Characters

Narrator

Throughout the course of the novel, our nameless narrator is mistaken for a reverend, a pimp, a gambler, a fink, a unionist, a Southern Negro, a New York Negro, a rapist, a lover, a doctor, and a gangster.

Dr. Bledsoe

Dr. Bledsoe is the president of the narrator's college, and the narrator looks up to him until he turns out to be a big phony.

Mr. Norton

A wealthy white man who helped found the narrator's college, Mr. Norton is described by the narrator as a "symbol of the Great Traditions.

Brother Jack

Brother Jack, our main contact with the Brotherhood is a pretty mysterious character. A white male.

Brother Tod Clifton

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When we meet Brother Tod Clifton, he at first seems like a possible rival for the narrator – he's young, bright, good-looking, and has been working for the Brotherhood for three years.

Ras the Exhorter

Ras the Exhorter is a "mahn" (as he puts it) from the West Indies. He is a black nationalist and strongly opposed to Brotherhood activities.

Sybil

Sybil has basically one scene in the entire novel, but boy, is it intense. Drunken Sybil wants to be raped by a black man, and it somehow comes across as touchingly vulnerable.

Trueblood

A poor, uneducated black man who lives on the outskirts of the narrator's college campus, Trueblood fits the negative black stereotype to a tee – and is amply rewarded.

Rev. Barbee

Reverend Barbee is a religious man from Chicago who details the Founder and Dr. Bledsoe's quests to found the college.

Emerson

The son of a wealthy white man, Emerson is the only white guy in the novel who seems to genuinely care about racial progress and helping the narrator.

Mary Rambo

A kind and motherly woman who sees plenty of potential for the narrator to contribute to racial progress, her only flaw, as far as the narrator is concerned, is that she talks too much.

Rinehart

OK. So the real Rinehart never actually appears in the novel. Details, details. After the narrator dons some colored glasses and a hat, just about everyone in Harlem begins mistaking him .

Brother Hambro

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In Chapter 23, we finally meet the man responsible for the narrator's training. Brother Hambro turns out to be a tall lawyer who (no surprise here) thinks in incredibly macroscopic terms.

Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

Liberty Paints

The narrator's first job is in a highly patriotic paint company most famous for its Optic White paint color.

Vision and Sight

When there's a lot of talk about eyeballs in a book called Invisible Man, you know something's up with sight.

Sambo Doll

When the narrator further examines the paper doll that Clifton was selling, he realizes that Clifton controlled the doll with a thin black string that was invisible to the audience.

The Battle Royal Briefcase

We think it's symbolic that the narrator receives the briefcase as a naïve kid, and then hangs onto it for the rest of the novel.

Setting

The American South and Harlem, New York in the late 1930s

The narrator is born and raised in the American South, only to wind up in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, which is a major center of African-American culture. The narrator finds the contrast between the North and the South incredible – he is amazed to find white drivers obeying the directives of a black policeman, on the subway he stresses out about being in close proximity to a white woman, and in the diner he wonders if it's insulting to tip a white waiter. In the North, then, the narrator experiences a certain amount of unprecedented racial freedom.

Point of view

First Person (Central Narrator)

The invisible man is our narrator throughout the entire novel, sandwiching the bulk of his story with a prologue and epilogue from his manhole. Since

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we hear his story from his point of view, we can't be sure whether all the memories are entirely factual. Instead, we understand the story to be his perception; he is speaking out about his experiences and, as he says in the epilogue, hopefully shedding light on things we might not have realized, or perhaps helping us feel more connected with similar experiences. Even though the story is told with other readers in mind, this is very much our narrator's show – it's his personal development that we witness, and no one else's. This treatment of other characters actually mirrors the way he himself has been treated; aside from the narrator, everyone in Invisible Man is pretty one-dimensional. Instead of complex individuals, we have set types: a member of the black establishment, a wealthy white philanthropist, a black nationalist, a utopian visionary, and so on.

Genre

Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, African-American Literature

Invisible Man is literary fiction because of its in-depth exploration of one man's psyche and its innovative style.

Tone

Frank, Thoughtful

The narrator tells it like it is – or, at least, how he perceives it. And although his story could easily have degenerated into a sob story of racial injustice, anger, and hate, the narrator's frank and thoughtful tone allows for a more reflective edge to the story. It probably helps that he's telling his story from hibernation, allowing him to capture the truth to the moments in his life.

The Metamorphosis Summary

Gregor wakes up one morning to discover that he's become a "monstrous vermin" .As he struggles to come to terms with his new body, he realizes that

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he's late for his job as a traveling salesman. First his mother, then his father and sister, knock on his bedroom door in an effort to get him out of bed. His supervisor, the office manager, arrives to inquire about his absence. With his parents pleading with the office manager outside his bedroom door and his sister sobbing in another room, Gregor manages to crawl to his bedroom door, open it, and reveal to everyone his shocking new form. His mother collapses, and the office manager runs out of the apartment in horror. His father grabs a newspaper and the office manager's cane and chases Gregor around the living room. Gregor finally manages to crawl back to his bedroom door, but he gets stuck. His father firmly shoves him into the room and closes the door behind him.

Perplexed and horrified by Gregor's new body, both Gregor and the family settle into a routine in the following weeks and months. While Gregor gets to know the capabilities of his new body – and his new taste for rotten foods – Grete, his sister, becomes his primary caretaker, feeding him twice a day and cleaning his room.

One day, Grete discovers that Gregor enjoys crawling all around the room, including over the walls and the ceilings. Grete and the mother proceed to move the furniture out of Gregor's room to give him more space to roam. While up to this point Gregor has hidden himself whenever anyone walks into the room, he plants himself on top of a picture on the wall in an effort to express his wish that the furniture remains in his room. When the women return to the room, the mother sees Gregor and faints. Grete runs into the living room to get the mother some spirits, and Gregor follows. When Grete turns, she is startled by Gregor and runs back into Gregor's room. Flustered, Gregor scurries around the living room until he plops onto the table in the middle of the living room, exhausted.

After a brief while, the father returns home. Grete explains what has happened. The father, infuriated, chases Gregor around the living room and throws apples at him. One apple lodges into Gregor's back, paralyzing him. Suddenly, the mother runs from the room and begs the father to spare Gregor.

It takes a month for Gregor to heal from his wound. The door to Gregor's room is left open in the early evenings so that he can witness the family's nightly routine. While the father dozes in his bank messenger's uniform in a chair, the mother sews lingerie and Grete studies shorthand and French. The family hires a new cleaning woman, an old widow, who regularly chats with Gregor, much to Gregor's dismay. The family also takes in three boarders to make ends meet.

One night, the boarders invite Grete to play violin for them in the main room. Gregor is enthralled with Grete's playing, and creeps out into the middle of

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the room, in full view of all the spectators. At first amused, then horrified, the boarders declare that they intend to move out the next day without paying any rent. After the boarders retreat, the family confers. Grete insists that Gregor must be gotten rid of at all costs. Gregor, who is at this point still lying in the middle of the room, makes his way back into his room. Famished, exhausted, and depressed, Gregor dies early the next morning.

A few hours later, the cleaning woman discovers Gregor's corpse and announces his death to the family. After kicking out the boarders, the family decides to take a day off and take the trolley out into the country.

Themes

Man and the Natural World

If human beings are traditionally distinguished from animals by their capacity for thought, language, and social feeling, how do we categorize Gregor, who seems to exhibit all of these human capacity.

Life, Consciousness, and Existence

Much of The Metamorphosis is spent in Gregor's head as he struggles to come to terms with his new form. At times he seems to be able to think abstractly about his condition (as an insect) in ways ..

Morality and Ethics

Forgive the short dip into Philosophy 101 here, but we promise – it'll pay off in the end. A major German Enlightenment philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant came up with the ethical principles.

Transformation

By starting out with Gregor's metamorphosis into a bug, The Metamorphosis plays around with some interesting questions as to the significance of transformation. We're never told exactly how or why...

Identity

Gregor's transformation into a giant bug touches on larger issues of identity for himself and his family.

Isolation

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Early in The Metamorphosis, we learn that Gregor dearly wishes to quit his job and be free of his family obligations.

Family

Kafka's Metamorphosis toys with the traditional family structure where the father is at the head. Instead, the story begins with Gregor, the son, as the sole provider and the father as a weak,..

Society and Class

Kafka's stories are known for their exploration of the nightmare of bureaucracy and the dehumanizing effects of modern life – all of those things we think of when we use the term "kafka-esque...

Characters

Gregor Samsa

Let's take a look at two ordinary young men. Both of them are hardly chick magnets. Neither of them is particularly witty, smart, or rich – in fact, they're kind of wimpy. However, both of them.

Grete Samsa

The first time Grete, Gregor's sister, appears in the story, we don't see her. Like the other family members, she's just a voice behind a wall, trying to get Gregor to open up his bedroom door.

Mr. Samsa

Mr. Samsa, Gregor's father, looms as a domineering figure in the novel. With Gregor incapacitated, Mr. Samsa can no longer malinger as a helpless invalid…

Mrs. Samsa

Mrs. Samsa is the sympathetic yin to Mr. Samsa's domineering yang. She's constantly proclaiming her maternal love for her poor, poor son Gregor .

The Cleaning Woman

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The cleaning woman seems to be a relatively minor character in the novel. In Part 3 she comes sweeping in, taking a job that no one else wants.

The Middle Boarder

The middle boarder appears to be the leader of the three boarders who room at the Samsas' home.

The Other Two Boarders

The other two boarders don't do much except nod and follow the middle boarder's lead. They're the Oates to his Hall, the Garfunkel to his Simon, the other two Supremes to his Diana Ross.

The Office Manager

The office manager makes a brief appearance in the beginning of the story. He's really only in the story so that we can hear some of the rumors about Gregor's misbehavior and his possible misuse .

The Maid

Before the cleaning woman arrives, the Samsas have a maid, a frightened young woman who spends most of the time locked in the kitchen.

Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

The Vermin

You could say the entire story is an allegory. After all, the setting seems so ordinary that it's tempting to see Gregor's transformation as a symbolic one, rather than an actual one. Maybe he's on...

Religious Imagery

While religion doesn't play a huge part in the story, there are some religious elements sprinkled here and there. Some critics argue that Kafka chose the German word for vermin –

The Picture Frame

For a discussion of the photograph of the lady in furs, check out the theme "Morality and Ethics." But let's talk about the frame around the photograph. That's right – the frame. When we see...

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Setting

The Samsas' Apartment

The story doesn't give us a specific geographical location or historical date. With the exception of the very last paragraph, where the Samsas take a trip out to the country, all of the action takes place in the Samsas' apartment. The apartment overlooks a busy city street, and a hospital is across the way within viewing distance from Gregor's window. (The story doesn't mention whether anyone can look in. Pity the poor convalescent who looks out his or her hospital window to see Gregor twitching across the way.) It is ironic that the Samsas can be so centrally located without attracting more attention to the fact that there is an extraordinarily large bug living in their apartment.

The apartment itself is modest. Sandwiched between his parents' room and Grete's, Gregor's room opens out onto the living room. By confining all the action to the apartment, the story highlights Gregor's isolation from human society.

Point of view

Third Person/Limited Omniscient

The story is mainly told through the perspective of Gregor Samsa, as if the narrator were planted with Gregor's human consciousness inside Gregor's insect body. We discover aspects of Gregor's body as he himself discovers them. If he itches, we don't know why until he looks to see what's making him itch. If he's hungry, we don't know what he likes to eat until he discovers his preference for rotten foods. The narrator does break out of Gregor's perspective on occasion and weaves into the minds of other characters, most notably in the last few paragraphs of the story after Gregor dies.

Genre

Magical Realism, Modernism

Written in 1912 and published in 1915, Kafka's Metamorphosis falls squarely in the genre of Modernist fiction. The fate of Gregor, lonely traveling salesman, expresses the common Modernist concern with the alienating effects of modern society. Like other Modernist works, the story uses the stream-of-consciousness technique to reflect the psychological complexity of its main character. Kafka's novella is also notable as a modern work of magical realism with its juxtaposition of fantastic occurrences – the guy's a bug – in a realistic setting.

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 Tone

Dispassionate

A really famous writer, James Joyce, once said that a novelist shouldn't make his opinions known in fiction: he should remain disinterested, as if he were standing outside his creation "paring his fingernails" (source). Reading The Metamorphosis, you get the sense that Kafka has some pretty well-manicured nails. The story itself is sensational, absurd, grotesque – but the actual tone of the story is about as dispassionate as an article in The International Journal of Electrical Engineering.

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