His family wants him to follow his father’s footsteps and become an engineer, but he wants to pursue architecture. His mother wants him to follow Bengali culture, such as marrying someone from the same background. Regardless of his parents’ desires, he focuses more on his friends and American culture than his own family’s values. When his father passes away, he begins to cherish his family values. Gogol is very caring and committed to his passions.
Though realism is expected in a non-fictitious book, the lack of filters Villaseñor does for this book enhances its given experience to a reader. Villaseñor was not afraid of putting his thoughts in the book, and this lack of faith resulted in an inspirational piece of
Pudd'nhead Wilson features a lot of realism in that the book does seem like it corresponds with the time period and different cultures. This novel illustrates realism in that it shows the differences in language between cultures, it shows the societal views of the time, and it shows the education of the time. First, realism is illustrated in the differences in language and slang between the characters in the novel. Roxy at one point says, "No, dolling mammy ain't gwine to treat you so. De angels is gwine to 'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy.
Looking with the benefit of hindsight, things changed much neither during Gogol’s time not after him. Descriptions of Captain Gorobets’ individual guests are even more marvelous and edifying: On his sorrel stallion arrived Cossack Mikita, who kept
PRT: Illusion vs. Reality (from The Underpainter) An illusion, in itself, is just a false reality. It is a reality to portray our lives with ideal outcomes. Such illusions are fantasizing about money, fame, power, etc. Individuals largely create their own illusions, to drown out some emotional unfulfillment in life.
The nineteenth century was a breeding ground for many literary movements, including realism, romanticism and naturalism. Realism consists of literature that is consistent, predictable, and sticks to the “simple truth” of how regular people live and talk. Romanticism is literature that contains things of intellect, strangeness and remoteness and tries to make the familiar unfamiliar. Finally, naturalism is literature that has regular people in extraordinary circumstances; the hero is at the mercy of larger social and natural forces, which are cruelly indifferent; traces of social Darwinism can be found in the literature and there is generally a brutal struggle for survival. Realism can be seen in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Maus and Fun Home both use the medium of comics to tell very personal and delicate stories. Art Spiegelman uses Maus to tell the moving and emotional story of his father’s survival of the Holocaust; Alison Bechdel uses Fun Home to tell the story of her father’s death and the exploration of her identity. Although both texts are different in many ways, the both use the comic medium to portray an outsider experience. While Spiegelman uses the medium to construct an animal hierarchy and Bechdel uses the medium to combine multiple moments in her life into one story, both authors use pictorial detail to shed light on the outsider experience they are each trying to portray.
He feels as if he can only fully embrace one culture, so he pushes his Bengali culture as far back as he can and welcomes the American dream. Nikhil represents his American acceptance, whereas Gogol represents his past, which he cannot shake no matter how hard he tries. In the end, he finally embraces and mixes both American and Bengali culture. Despite the cultural and assimilation struggles Gogol faced, he eventually found a way to discover his identity as a Bengali living in
In the short story “The Overcoat”, and in the book The Namesake several comparisons are made. The main characters in both the book The Namesake and in “The Overcoat” are facing two different challenges, but both have to find out how to overcome them or struggle to the very end of their life. Akaky Akakievich in “The Overcoat”, is contemplating the struggle of having to get a new coat made, and losing his new coat after the tailor has just made it. He was so grateful to have his new coat and then after he has become comfortable with it he loses it when he gets jumped on the street, after walking home from a colleague’s party. Gogol in The Namesake, is faced with the death of his father and trying to please a lady (so she will become his
Liza, for example, treasures the qualities of romantic love while the Underground Man is incapable of love. The Underground Man’s consistent theme of contradiction is exemplified throughout the story where he experiences a multitude of emotions ranging from narcissistic and egocentric to embarrassment and humiliation. Although the Underground Man envisions himself challenging those who have wronged him, he does not have the “moral courage” to stand up for himself. By remaining in the underground, the Underground Man is able to escape from reality where is able to manufacture his own world. An argument can be made that Dostoevsky used the personal aspects of the Underground Man to show the pattern of similarities between him and contemporary society.
Petersburg is a labyrinthine city whose streets mirror the maze-like jumble of thoughts ever-present in Raskolnikov’s mind and work to remove his sense of free will. Whenever Raskolnikov leaves a small space, such as his apartment, or someone else’s apartment building, he loses the ability to navigate from one place to another in an ordinary fashion of his own free will. His feet take him places he does not consciously intend to go. For example, Dostoevsky writes, as Raskolnikov walks home through the Haymarket as opposed to by a more direct route, “it had happened to him dozens of times that he would return home without remembering what streets he had taken.” The streets, like the new utilitarian ideas, are inorganic and have a tendency to discombobulate the pedestrian protagonist.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, is a play set in the small, run-down town of Güllen. When Claire Zachanassian, a rich, former resident of Güllen comes to visit, she offers its citizens some much needed funds in exchange for the head of one of their most loved neighbours, Ill. She calls it justice for the perjury Ill committed so many decades ago, however, thanks to the desperation of the town, it leads to the corruption required for such an act to be carried out. This, in the end, was the moral of the story that Dürrenmatt was expressing. He employs several techniques of German Expressionism in his play in order to emphasize the corruptibility of both humanity and justice.
In literature, the setting poses itself as a vital element in literature. When characters interact with the world encompassing them and respond to its atmosphere, we unearth various underlining traits and secrets that ensconce betwixt the pages. Ann Petry's 1946 novel The Street accentuates the relation between Lutie Johnson and the urban setting by employing figurative language, such as imagery and personification conjointly with selection of detail. Petry promptly exploits imagery and figurative language to navigate us to a bustling town where an astringent wind is "rattl[ing] the tops of garbage cans, suck[ing] window shades out through the tops of opened windows and [sending] them flapping back against the windows.
This is the moment where his two identities, Gogol and Nikhil, begin to pull apart from each other and more major differences between the two show more intensely. Later on, Gogol develops a serious relationship with an all-American woman named Maxine who leads him ever further from his family. “He tells her he has a deadline at work, but it’s not true-- that’s the day that he and Maxine are leaving for New Hampshire, for two weeks” (144). Since Gogol is spending all this time with Maxine and her family, he barely has any time for his own family and he’d rather be with Maxine. Gogol starts lying to his parents and making up excuses to avoid them which causes him to drift from his family even more than he already has.
“All is true”. Discuss the relationship between reality and fiction in Le père Goriot. First of all, Le Père Goriot is a novel included in a series of novels called by Balzac “La Comédie Humaine”. In its Avant-Propos, Balzac claims that he wants to represent in this series of novels, the society and the variety of human types. This statement is related to the concept of realism, indeed by affirming that he wants to represent the society and the human types, his novels should have some real foundations taken from the reality.
