Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow tells a unique story about the Ragtime era. There is no main character, no antagonist, and a very confusing plot. Instead, it jumps about seemingly aimlessly at the beginning, emulating some kind of omnipotent camera zooming in on random people. Doctorow doesn't use names for fictional characters but does for real historical figures in the book (with the exception of Coalhouse Walker). Things get interesting when historical figures interact with fictional characters, because Doctorow writes Ragtime in the gaps of history, making it impossible to know whether these events really happened. Although all the characters are seemingly disconnected, they end up all having some connection to each other by the end of the book. The Family of Mother, Father, and the Little Boy meet Houdini in a rare coincidence, who meets Harry K. Thaw, death row convict and estranged husband of Evelyn Nesbit, who has an affair with Mother's Younger Brother. Coalhouse Walker'...
The story of Daedalus and Icarus goes that Daedalus, the genius inventor, crafted wings of feathers and wax so he and Icarus could escape Crete. However, Icarus grew cocky, flying so close to the sun that his wings melted and he fell to his death. In Fun Home, Bechdel makes a comparison of her and her father to Daedalus and Icarus, which I think is the perfect analogy. Throughout the novel she and her father embody both of these roles interchangeably, which I'll explore here. At the beginning of the book, Bechdel illustrates her and her father playing a game of airplane, which she related to the Icarian games of the circus. She cryptically notes that, "In our particular reenactment of this mythic relationship, it was not me but my father who was to plummet from the sky" (Bechdel 4). As they are playing airplane, her father is Daedalus and she is Icarus, but this statement implies the opposite. Her father would be the one to plummet from the sky, which c...
What were Mersault's motives for this killing? "The sun" wasn't enough for the jury, and its not enough for me. Here is a passage that I think helps us understand: "A minute later I turned back toward the beach and started walking. There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled little wave that broke on the sand. I was walking slowly toward the rocks and I could feel my forehead swelling under the sun. All that heat was pressing down on me and making it hard for me to go on. And every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the thick drunkenness it was spilling over me. With every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a piece of broken glass, my jaws tightened. I walked for a long time " (57). This is right after Raymond and him encounter the two Arab me...
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