Text interpretation

Page 1

Brownies

Otherness & Racial oppression; Pack mentality; Father figure; Narrative construction

Voice (Black/Mean) vs. Voiceless (White/Nice) - White = baby pigeons; Racial discrimination in order to entertain; Caucasian

Arnetta (meanest); Octavia (prettiest) - Complementary

Ultimate authority - example to be followed - text ends with a disapproval of his behavior; Surviving oppression.

Pairs; Starts in the middle of things; Anticipates conflict; Uses childish expressions; Opposition children-tourists-adults)

The Third and Final Continent aka. What America Should Be Like = Citizen of the world

Climax - Mrs Croft's age reveal

The Immigrant Experience - Separation from parents; Language difficulties; Unfamiliar with culture, holding onto own culture; Forced to go

The American Dream - From the bottom to the top; Embracing American culture but still maintaining own; Recipe for happiness = to be amazed; It is passed on to whoever comes to America; It doesn't matter who you are, proper manners and good sense are the most important, regardless of background.

What you pawn I will redeem

Circular (5$)

Challenges stereotypes; Focus on reclaiming stolen heritage; Idea of homelessness;

American Indians:

Do not handle their liquor well; Stubbornly optimistic, cheerful; Magic and storytelling, liars;

White people:

Unknowingly kill the AI; Control the world (Broker sets the time limit and thus the time of the story); Money represents the white folk;

Cancer kills Agnes, it affects her ability to nourish. Could be caused by white folk.

Page 2

At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners

In-between; Mathematics are plain, emotionless and do not judge;

Plot of a novel, but length of a short-story; Mimics sonnet in mood;

J.Donne - No man is an island; Jude is both and island and is also part of the continent;

Light is bad; Dark is good; Standard dichotomy reconsidered;

Jude's wife is both his mother and his father;

Fat Man My Love

No plot-line; Climactic point - Oscar

Humpty-Dumpty comparison: chew-chew; eat-eating; Muzicality through alliteration and repetition; Definition & Opposition = a prince, a toad, a prince born mistakenly as a toad;

Religious fear; He made a religion in which he was God;

Strangulation - more intimate; Stabbing - wonderfully visual;

Heteroglossia - Multiple voices; 1st ps. reflector - filters the entire story; Another layer for the narrator that speaks in the brackets

Poetic justice; Play on the reader's perception in order to build pressure; Anger and Acknowledgement of Hitchcock's work.

Gender standards of beauty: Ice blonde;

Stockholm syndrome: Fat man my love;

Questioning Fat Man's masculinity (If he touched her)

Wagner in the Desert

Antisemitism; Envy of others - paramount in achieving happiness.

Pain - the realest thing in the world. Nietzsche thinks that pain is essential for human beings to reach transcendence. Wagner pays for pain;

Desert - Jesus fought temptation

Trimalchio - new money vs. old money

Voltaire: Criticizing but indulging in debauchery

Ultimate goal being "the perfect moment"

The impossible quest for something to happen.

Love: Sadly realistic - perfectly sensible teammate

Text as Trojan Horse - a text that holds its criticism within?

Criticizing others' perfect moment - Jealousy and disbelief in someone else's chance at happiness.

Page 3

The Train

Iraq - static; Train - moving;

'Tightness' - Claustrophobia; Goldfish trapped in a bowl; Openness is too open;

The bird - metaphor for everything; Eyes - Kavanagh; The bird - the little girl;

PTSD - She's still there; Not ready yet, but she will be; Reaction to the shoes; She acknowledges the symptoms;

Paralysis - the inability to act; Survivor's remorse; Attempt to go back and change the ending; Somatization of fear;

Challenges the rethoric of the 'heroic' warrior

Military life = normal life, elsewhere + bombs.

Click

Text about writing metafictional texts; It screams: This is how I'm written;

Transgression of onthological boundaries: Mark and I;

Starts from words > Stories > Characters; Details are given in increments;

Just the right amount of Mark and Valerie in each text;

Limited space; Time is explored in the exposition; Text does not end; Hypertextuality does not end;

Multiple choices of the narrative: a, b, c, d;

Everyday life is not boring, it is enough in order to be the subject of a story;

Text in brackets are provisional, like author's notes on the manuscript;

Semplica girls

American Dream - If you don't make it, it's your fault; If you're rich, it's common for people to assume that you've inherited it;

The average guy doesn't see the wrongs in the society;

His happiness feels genuine to him because he can provide for his family. He wants his daughter to grow strong.

The story is disturbing not only because of its imagery, but also because of how plausible it seems.

The chain of aspiration; Semplica girls > Family > Richer family;

Self dellusion; Fetishism;

Notes to self = double adressee; To himself and to the future generations;

He wants to feel like a hero; What he basically does with the SGs

Cliche of the suburban life; Superficiality;

Page 4

Nirvana

Illusion of revival; The drone does not 'sympathize', but he believes it is so;

Developing coping mechanisms;

Authenticity - reviving is not enough; No database for common people;

Losing hope; The body attacking itself;

The drone alleviates tension but also emphasizes the mix of emotions;

A text about creation and death; Indirectly about suicide;

A text about humanization of technology and how they perceive it; The wife, although unimpressed changes her perspective upon seeing KC.

A very american story; The president;