The Boat Week 3
Jan. 28th, 2012 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nikkiaPart I
1. In his short story, “The Boat,” Alistair MacLeod uses intertextuality in a variety of ways in order to help the reader find the deeper meaning of his words. Always choosing to reference the “great” classic works of literature, he weaves his story tightly around the books his two “main” characters have spent so much time using to escape reality, but that ironically reflect their own lives in a variety of ways.The narrator of the story first makes reference of Thomas Hardy’s tragic character Eustacia Vye; he likens his mother to her physically (“tall and dark and powerfully energetic”and at first glance you could assume that is the only reason. However, if you look more closely at the two stories you will see more similarities between the two women. Both women want their husbands to be different then they are; their spouses long for a life of a learning and neither woman is happy with that desire. Both women also come to a tragic end; Eustacia throwing herself from a small dam, and Jenny alone in a house without a husband because he died doing what she wanted him to do. I believe that the narrator made reference to this literary character because of exactly what he says: she reminds him of his mother. The narrator is a lover of literature and probably sees connections all around him, seeing Eustacia as similar to his mother is a natural conclusion for him because the two women do have several things in common.Another major reference made is that of the story “Moby Dick,” by Herman Melville; the narrator’s uncle is described as being “like a latter-day Tashtego”. The obvious connection between “Moby Dick,” and “The Boat,” is that both are about boats, the sea, and fishermen. There is also a connection between the obsession Captain Ahab feels for revenge, the obsession that most of the narrator’s family appears to have with literature. It is so easy to connect to books that have a similar setting to that of your own; the narrator must have found many parallels between his own sea-faring life and that of the characters in Moby Dick. It is possible he described his uncle (and his father) as being like Tashtego because he considers them to be noble and brave in a similar way.
2.Metafiction is writing in which the writer is not trying to “lie” or “trick” the reader into believing that what they are reading is true. There are constant reminders within the writing that you are reading “fiction about fiction” (Wikipedia). An author might decide to use metafiction because they want the reader to be able to suspend their disbelief and just sink into the story. If you are constantly thinking “well that would never happen” you are immediately ripped away from the story; but if, for example, you know what you are reading about is in a book that a character in the story is reading, you are able to just continue on, knowing it does not need to fit into your world. Of course there are other ways an author can suspend a reader’s disbelief, but this is an interesting one. An example of metafiction that I love is the book (and movie), “The Princess Bride”; in the book a grandfather is reading his sick grandson a novel of the same title, and that is the story you are reading.
1. In his short story, “The Boat,” Alistair MacLeod uses intertextuality in a variety of ways in order to help the reader find the deeper meaning of his words. Always choosing to reference the “great” classic works of literature, he weaves his story tightly around the books his two “main” characters have spent so much time using to escape reality, but that ironically reflect their own lives in a variety of ways.The narrator of the story first makes reference of Thomas Hardy’s tragic character Eustacia Vye; he likens his mother to her physically (“tall and dark and powerfully energetic”and at first glance you could assume that is the only reason. However, if you look more closely at the two stories you will see more similarities between the two women. Both women want their husbands to be different then they are; their spouses long for a life of a learning and neither woman is happy with that desire. Both women also come to a tragic end; Eustacia throwing herself from a small dam, and Jenny alone in a house without a husband because he died doing what she wanted him to do. I believe that the narrator made reference to this literary character because of exactly what he says: she reminds him of his mother. The narrator is a lover of literature and probably sees connections all around him, seeing Eustacia as similar to his mother is a natural conclusion for him because the two women do have several things in common.Another major reference made is that of the story “Moby Dick,” by Herman Melville; the narrator’s uncle is described as being “like a latter-day Tashtego”. The obvious connection between “Moby Dick,” and “The Boat,” is that both are about boats, the sea, and fishermen. There is also a connection between the obsession Captain Ahab feels for revenge, the obsession that most of the narrator’s family appears to have with literature. It is so easy to connect to books that have a similar setting to that of your own; the narrator must have found many parallels between his own sea-faring life and that of the characters in Moby Dick. It is possible he described his uncle (and his father) as being like Tashtego because he considers them to be noble and brave in a similar way.
2.Metafiction is writing in which the writer is not trying to “lie” or “trick” the reader into believing that what they are reading is true. There are constant reminders within the writing that you are reading “fiction about fiction” (Wikipedia). An author might decide to use metafiction because they want the reader to be able to suspend their disbelief and just sink into the story. If you are constantly thinking “well that would never happen” you are immediately ripped away from the story; but if, for example, you know what you are reading about is in a book that a character in the story is reading, you are able to just continue on, knowing it does not need to fit into your world. Of course there are other ways an author can suspend a reader’s disbelief, but this is an interesting one. An example of metafiction that I love is the book (and movie), “The Princess Bride”; in the book a grandfather is reading his sick grandson a novel of the same title, and that is the story you are reading.
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Date: 2012-01-29 07:09 am (UTC)Blog 3, Part 2
Date: 2012-01-29 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-30 03:43 am (UTC)