Blog #2
A. Reflection: In the story "Boys and Girls," look very carefully at the descriptions of the areas where the father and mother work, and where the children sleep. How does the narrator feel about each of these areas, and how can you tell? Do these descriptions illustrate one or more binaries?
Either a quick or lengthened look at Alice Munro's story "Boys and Girls" reveals the obvious differences between each setting and area in the story and it's use as a symbolic representative to each individual character and how they feel towards that setting. The narrator being a little girl and adoring her father meanwhile dealing with many gender issues that are not adressed by her mother, she becomes quite fond of her father. "My mother was too tired and preoccupied to talk to me, she had no heart to tell about the national school dance; sweat trickled over her face and she was always counting under her breath, pointing at jars, dumping cups of sugar. It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and pecurilarly depressing: work done out of doors and at my fathers service' was ritualistically important." The daughter leaves no thought to the imagination about how she feels towards her mother's duties versus the importance of her fathers. Each place in the book also has it own opposing force, there's much duality between spaces. For instance, her room, unfinished with a hole in the middle -A normal child's sanctuary, but the narrator describes it as scary. Old paintings and torn linoleum give an awry feel to the inside world, a world she doesn't feel connected to much. The binaries continue with light and dark, mother and father, alive and dead - when referring to the foxes and horses.
It is clear all these small opposing factors which are not synchronizing harmoniously at all with the narrator describe a much broader clash of emotion and thought.
B. Looking Ahead: Next week, you're going to learn something about another literary element known as "intertextuality," or the use of previous texts in a work. To help you recognize some of the intertextuality in "The Boat," do a little "googling." Three important allusions are to the Thomas Hardy character Eustacia Vye, to Moby Dick, and to David Copperfield. Find out something about Eustacia Vye (pay particular attention to her character and how she dies), look up a plot summary of Moby Dick, and find out something about the character Ham Peggoty ( where does he live, and how does he die?) in David Copperfield. You may use Spark Notes or Wikipedia for this, all I want is for you to get a little background. Summarize the main points of what you find in your blog.
The idea of Intertextuality and literary allusion was very interesting and so forth to the internet sprang I, about to find the answers I was looking for.
The first character reference noted in Alistair Macleod's "The Boat” is Eustacia Vye from Hardy's "Return of the native". It would appear obvious, from my readings in Wikipedia, that Eustacia was a very tragic and flawed heroine. Moving at a younger age, she is set as an outcast quite early on, then she marries, for promise of going abroad (Paris). Her husband slowly becomes blind and she is meanwhile thought to be a witch to the society. Inadvertently she also kills her husbands mother. In the end she falls...OR JUMPS to her death on the rocky shoreline below, never completing her dreams of leaving for far off places. She becomes forever stuck.
The second intertextual allusion comes in the form of Moby Dick and the whaleship from Nantucket.
-Vengeful captain.
-Mythical beast, epic showown.
-Sea Faring lifestyle.
-Foreshadowed death of everyone except Ishmael the narrator.
-Determined beyond all reason of a doubt to kill the whale. Everyone on the ship agrees with Ahab's quest 'kamikaze mission'
except Ishmael. He views the whale as magnificent and wonderful. In turn, he is saved.
By the way the novel "Tragedy of the Whaleship the Essex" is an amazing read giving true accounts to the stories which gave rise to "Moby Dick".en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heart_of_the_Sea
In David Copperfield the most autobiographical of Dickens' novels, Ham Peggoty's character ends up dying trying to save his ex wife's new husband. Ham Pegotty also Lives in a converted boat on the beach!
Either a quick or lengthened look at Alice Munro's story "Boys and Girls" reveals the obvious differences between each setting and area in the story and it's use as a symbolic representative to each individual character and how they feel towards that setting. The narrator being a little girl and adoring her father meanwhile dealing with many gender issues that are not adressed by her mother, she becomes quite fond of her father. "My mother was too tired and preoccupied to talk to me, she had no heart to tell about the national school dance; sweat trickled over her face and she was always counting under her breath, pointing at jars, dumping cups of sugar. It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and pecurilarly depressing: work done out of doors and at my fathers service' was ritualistically important." The daughter leaves no thought to the imagination about how she feels towards her mother's duties versus the importance of her fathers. Each place in the book also has it own opposing force, there's much duality between spaces. For instance, her room, unfinished with a hole in the middle -A normal child's sanctuary, but the narrator describes it as scary. Old paintings and torn linoleum give an awry feel to the inside world, a world she doesn't feel connected to much. The binaries continue with light and dark, mother and father, alive and dead - when referring to the foxes and horses.
It is clear all these small opposing factors which are not synchronizing harmoniously at all with the narrator describe a much broader clash of emotion and thought.
B. Looking Ahead: Next week, you're going to learn something about another literary element known as "intertextuality," or the use of previous texts in a work. To help you recognize some of the intertextuality in "The Boat," do a little "googling." Three important allusions are to the Thomas Hardy character Eustacia Vye, to Moby Dick, and to David Copperfield. Find out something about Eustacia Vye (pay particular attention to her character and how she dies), look up a plot summary of Moby Dick, and find out something about the character Ham Peggoty ( where does he live, and how does he die?) in David Copperfield. You may use Spark Notes or Wikipedia for this, all I want is for you to get a little background. Summarize the main points of what you find in your blog.
The idea of Intertextuality and literary allusion was very interesting and so forth to the internet sprang I, about to find the answers I was looking for.
The first character reference noted in Alistair Macleod's "The Boat” is Eustacia Vye from Hardy's "Return of the native". It would appear obvious, from my readings in Wikipedia, that Eustacia was a very tragic and flawed heroine. Moving at a younger age, she is set as an outcast quite early on, then she marries, for promise of going abroad (Paris). Her husband slowly becomes blind and she is meanwhile thought to be a witch to the society. Inadvertently she also kills her husbands mother. In the end she falls...OR JUMPS to her death on the rocky shoreline below, never completing her dreams of leaving for far off places. She becomes forever stuck.
The second intertextual allusion comes in the form of Moby Dick and the whaleship from Nantucket.
-Vengeful captain.
-Mythical beast, epic showown.
-Sea Faring lifestyle.
-Foreshadowed death of everyone except Ishmael the narrator.
-Determined beyond all reason of a doubt to kill the whale. Everyone on the ship agrees with Ahab's quest 'kamikaze mission'
except Ishmael. He views the whale as magnificent and wonderful. In turn, he is saved.
By the way the novel "Tragedy of the Whaleship the Essex" is an amazing read giving true accounts to the stories which gave rise to "Moby Dick".en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heart_of_the_Sea
In David Copperfield the most autobiographical of Dickens' novels, Ham Peggoty's character ends up dying trying to save his ex wife's new husband. Ham Pegotty also Lives in a converted boat on the beach!