The Catcher in the Rye

Women's Portray

• Women are divided into two categories: the mother/angel/housewife paradigm or the femme fatal (fallen women), falling thus in the parameters of the time, either they are innocent ladies in distress, or they are phony.
  • The paradigms of the angels in this novel are Phoebe (the sister) and Jane Gallagher (platonic love). Phoebe is pretty and smart. She represents innocence, authenticity and childhood. Jane is idealized in the mind of Holden. She is presented like a victim of his stepfather and Stradlater's sexual abuses. Other women that can be identified like "angels" are Mrs Spencer, the wife of the History Teacher (housewife) (Chapter 1), Mrs Morrow (perfect mother of Ernest Morrow; who has also a lot of sex appeal) (Chapter 8),the nuns and Mrs Antolini (perfect housewife and hostess). To Holden, the nuns represent those who are ideal, pure, and uncorrupted by the world.
  • On the other hand, other women come to represent "the demon", they are women who practice sex. They are Faith Cavendish a girl whose telephone was given to Holden in a party, a girl that “wasn’t exactly a whore… but that didn’t mind doing it once in a while.”(Chapter 9), Lilian Simmons. Former girfriend of D.B. “strictly a phoney” (Chapter 12), the three women at the Lavander hotel depicted as “pretty ugly” and “dopey” (Chapter 10) and the prostitute Sunny. Holden pays her but they don't make sex. Sunny is pretty young.

Identity

• the novel begins with Holden’s rejection of conventional autobiography, the convetional rules of bildungsroman, and any pretension of verisimilitude, although the narrative style is realistic. A bilgundsroman novel refers events about the moral and psychological growth of the main character from chilhood to adulthood. Holden does not want to grow nor became a phony, pervert or corrupt adult. He wants everything to remain the same, the children to stay children. He is fear of change. But Holden encounters changes, morally and psichologically, from him being the preventer of adulthood to him letting everything go around and around. He is telling the story assuming what he did and resigning himself to his future in another college.
• Ultimately Holden realizes that he cannot stop children from change. During this time wanderins off in New York and feeling extremely derpressed, he had to come to some sort of conclusion, when he takes his sister to the carousel, after she had told him she wanted to go West with him.
• At the time of writing the story he is starting to find out who he is, when sixteen he is lookin for his self-identity, he wanted to run away and live in a cabin, was critical with everyone and tell aloud every thought he has. But in the end he says: "Don't ever tell anybody anything, If you do, yoy start missing everybody". He is not as openly critical anymore, he has a conflct with adulthood but is trying to cooperate with coming of age. He is not fully mature but he significantly did change morally and psychologically.

Language/Style

• Holden as a narrator:
  • Colloquial English, language of a sixteen years old narrator (sees the world in terms of allies and enemies)
  • Use or profane language (cursing), blasphemy, and sexual references. (streel language)
  • The narrative style is realistic tough he rejects the conventions of autobiography.
  • The novel belongs to the existentialist current of the time.
  • Stream of consciousness, confesional style, distant from the audience. Not looking for the reader’s approval.
  • Inner discourse. First person narrator.
  • Autodiegetic narrator: a narrator who participates and is the protagonist of the story. Subjective vision. Unreliable narrator. “liar”. Lies to his parents and perhaps to the reader. In Chapter 3 he defines himself as “the most terrific liar”. He is a phony too because he lies to a lot of people.
  • Language is colloquial, humorous and intimate (Sarah Graham).
  Circular structure. The novels ends where it begins.
  Address the reader asying that he could say something but he doesn`t feel like. Desires to communicate but considers many of the readers unworthy of his narration or phonies.
  • “The vernacular realism of Holden Caulfied […] undermines hypocrisy, venality, and squalor through a plainspoken language of innocence” (Malcom Badbury). “A good deal of natural style, a cruel ear, a dislike of ideas (the enemy’s intelligence system), a toilsome simplicity and a ventriloquist’s knack of disguising his voice. […] "artless dialect, […], artful ventriloquial trick […] anyone who speaks it is a good guy, a friend of the author to be trusted.” (Mary McCarthy).

Rebellion and alienation

• Sense of alienation of sensitive individuals in an oppressive society "in a period of increasing individualism in which the trauma of war and the US's shifting social, cultural and political landscape left many feeling abandoned or betrayed by their country, Holden Caulfied's bid for our allegiance, his condition of loneliness" (Ian Kinkane).
• Voice of dissent for many. Holden represents the feeling of loneliness and dissapointment of a society that has just lived through the trauma of war, as many had to combat. Holden's rejection of inauthenticity and, his desire to connect intimately with other human beings epitomizes the feelings of a generation trapped between the materialist and consumerist dream and the sense of isolation.
• Loneliness, dissapointment, trauma, dissent.
• Rejection of inauthenticity, sense of isolation and loss of the individual entity in a consumerist and materialist world.
• Holden is a rebel, an outcast who does not belong in normative society. He despises the middle-class values that were so praised in the post-war period. He does not like what the majority of people like, such as movies, for instance. The idea of a traditional family with a conventional job is something that Holden finds unbearable.
• Holden is very critical of society, and the school to mold valuable members or society. He believes that education does not promote creativity and originality.

Madness

• Allusions to depression are frequent in the whole novel, for example in chapters13, 14, 15 but practically through the whole novel. In the majority of the times is only an expression. Holden exaggerates a lot, specially when there is something he does not like. But other times can be interpreted as authentic depression. He doesn’t like anything or anyone, characteristic of depression. Also the inability to enjoy the ordinary pleasures of life is frequently a symptom of depression.
• Holden Caulfield's depression in The Catcher in the Rye stems from multiple causes, including the death of his brother Allie, his feelings of alienation, and his inability to connect with others. These factors contribute to his pervasive sense of loss and disillusionment with the world around him (Enotes)
• Holden struggles with both ordinary and more severe forms of unhappiness, since some of his discontent resembles the everyday angst most people experience at some point in their lives, whereas other forms of his unhappiness have to do with his unprocessed grief (Litcharts), his icapabilitiy to react properly to such emotions or deal with sad or dissapointing situations. Signs of post-traumatic stress after his brother Allie’s death; Holden talks to Alli when he is particularly depressed (…).
• What is perhaps most alarming about Holden’s depression is that it tends to lead him to suicidal thoughts. For instance, in Chapter 14, shortly after speaking out loud to Allie (apostrophe), he remarks, “It took me quite a while to get to sleep—I wasn’t even tired—but finally I did. What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory”.
• Other signs: Teenage angst, hopeless about the present and the future, looking for his place in society, threat of social isolation and the loss of the individual entity.
• Before the 1950,s no attention was paid to the ages between 12 and 18. It is in the 1950,s that teenagers start to be recognized as a specific age with specific issues and needs. Teenagers were outcast, rebels without a cause, the didn’t feel belonging to a normative society and rejected the conformity of the era.
• For Holden, society may not be worth joining, but being alone is a painful alternative and choosing isolation only results in more pain and self -destruction.

Sexuality

• Sex in his mind and the physical reality don’t match. He associates sex with something dirty.
• Men: Stradlater, Carl Luce, Mr Antolini, the men at the hotel.He rejects the masculine aggressive sexuality (Stradlater) but also what he considers “effeminate attitudes” (Mr Antolini, the men at the hotel).
  • Stradlater: agressive, a predator, narcisist and vain, dirty, superficial, not a true gentleman.
  • Holden himself: a gentleman who cares about women. Obsessed with sex but unexperienced. He stops if he girl says not, but he is not sure if “no” is a lie an the girl really wants sex with him.
  • Mr. Antolini: protective, a caring man, a teacher, and an intelectual, sensitive man who understands Hoplden. Not menacing. But after the night at his home Holden changes his mind and thinks that no adult can be trusted. Ambiguity.
  • Carl Luce
  • The men at the hotel: Looking out the hotel window, he sees a man in one of the other rooms dressing as a woman and a couple squirting water at each other. Holden dislikes the hotel, describing his room as “crumby” and the other patrons as “perverts and morons.”
• Women: Sunny, the fallen, Jane, mother in the train.
• He doesn’t reallly like sex or does not understand it. But is somehow obssesed with it as we can see in the dialogue with Carl Luce (“he knew quite a bit about sex, especially perverts and all”). Holden also copes with competing desires when it comes to women and sex. He is repulsed by Stradlater's cavalier treatment of the girls he dates, particularly when he imagines Jane Gallagher being taken advantage of. At the same time, Holden wishes to prove his own sexual prowess and goes as far as hiring a prostitute, though he ends up only wanting to talk to her. Holden reflects on his desires to do “crumby stuff” with girls and his history of breaking different “sex rules” that he makes for himself. “Sex is something I just don’t understand,” he concludes.

Symbols

• The ducks
• The Museum: “The best thing in that museum was that everthing always stayed… Nobody’d move… Nobody’s be different”. He loved that museum because no matter what changed in his life, everything there freezes and nothing changes. It is a safe spot for him to be and his goa lis to keep all children in that safe spot withot needing to move to adulthood.
• Holden’s cap
• Suitcases
• Carousel: is a symbol for the time moving and moving around from childhood to adulthood.

Themes

The Swimmer

Amnesia

• Ned doesn't remember when his friend Eric Sach had been operated, nor when the Welcher's was for sale, nor even remembers him being short of money or having problems of any kind. He feels confused when his friends the Hallorans tell him they are sorry for his misfortune, maybe ruined and abandoned by his family.First sign failure of memory is at the Levy's, where there is nobody, and then at the stud of his friends the Pasterns. Then the Hallorans manifest their sorrow, and the Sachs. Some authors (Patrick Meanor and James O'Hara) argue that this oblivion or forgetfulness is due to alcoholism and that Ned is comitting suicide but his mind is unclear. The changes of the seasons, the colours of the pools, the trees also contibute to the confusion of Ned's mind, who began the trip in a Summer day and ended in the Autumm, the fall, maybe his death. Succes, failure, alcoholism are capital themes in this story. The apparent amnesia of Merrill might obey to denial. He seems to negate his failure and his problems with money and alcohol.

Style

• Cheevers goes from the more conventional realism to a more experimental narrative. From an apparent realist narrative into a realm of uncertainty and indeterminacy, making the readers participant in the protagonist's confusion.

Women's Portray

• Angel/demon dicotomy. The perfect wife and mother and party hostess (Lucinda, Helen Westerhazy, Enid Bunker, Mrs Graham) vs. the fall women. The first ones are polite and amiable and the second are rude, resentful (Shirley Adams) or vulgar, corset and bad-manner (Grace Biswanger)("They went broke overnight").

The end of the American Dream

• The Depression years
• Alcoholism

Themes

• Succes, failure, friendship, relationship, alcoholism.

Howl

Sexuality

• Sexuality is an important part of the poem and there are explicit references that were the cause of an obscenity trial in 1957.

Madness

• The first part of the poem is a chant to the madmen, the outcast, the underdogs, the criminals and dissidents that represent that part that society does not want to see. Part III is addressed or dedicated to Carl Solomon, a friend who he met in a mental institution. Madness is very present in the poem, referring to mental institutions but also militarization and the 1950s society with its paranoias. For Ginsberg madness can be positive as it allows poetic creation and real madness (in the negative sense) in the way the modern world and the U.S. establishment are behaving and controlling the citizens of the state.
• References to madness in Howl: (I) 1 I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving/hysterical naked, [...] (drug addiction); references to sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism; references to treatments (electiricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupationa therapy pingpong and amnesia (in mental institutions, electroshocks and others), catatonia, Rockland and Greystone; with mother finally [...] and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture; Carl. the madman bum and angel beat in Time.

Style

• Ginsberg followed the tradition of Walt Whitman's long lines
• Free verse, long lines, and use of breath units (a line corresponds to a breath)
• Repetition: anaphora, repetition of ideas, words and syntactic structures, alliteration and parallelism.
• The unusual juxtaposition of images, parataxis, and antithesis.
• Paranomasia (puns)
• Hyperboles (exaggerations), metaphores, similes, synecdoches.
• Invocations and incantations.
• Highly personal
• Mixes street language including rhapsodic utterances (chants,...)
• Uses breath units, that is, he uses breath to measure the length of the lines. Orality.
• Ginsberg understood poetry as an oral act which can fulfill a social function. The poem as an act of social and political protest.

Themes

• To convey the angst of a generation searching for a mystical experience and sick with the materialism and greed of a society where did not belong (Howl became the hymn of the Beat Generation)
• Images of suffering and transcendence
• Binary oppositions: the popular/the elevated; the urban/the open landscapes; madness/vision

Alienation

Rebellion and Alienation

• A poem is an act of social and political protest. The long, fast-moving lines of the poem convey the frenzy of the times. Ginsberg sees the poet as a prophet whose oral poetry can fulfill a social function.
• Ginsberg wanted to write a poem that would convey the angst of a generation (the Beat Generation) searching for a mystical experience and sick with the materialism and greed of a society where the did not belong. This way, "Howl" became the hymn of the Beat Generation.
• The Beat Generation:
  • Very much influenced by Jazz and improvisation.
  • Radical literature that came to subvert the conventinal message of the tranquil 1950s and to anticipate the hippie movement.
  • Rejected all the values fostered by the establishment in the post-war U.S.(traditionalism, sameness and conventional life).
  • Interested in difference, revolution and the marginal.
  • Rejected conventional lives and literary forms. They made poetry that broke the rules of decorum (style: street language).
  • Inheritors of the Romantic poets and the transcendentalist.
  For them, the role of literature is to expand consciousness to reach a higher truth. They are interested in oriental religions, and in the use of drugs to expand consciousness. They understand poetry as a physical and spiritual experience. Hence the importance of sexuality and exploration of the body, as part of primitive or natural mysticism. Their literature mixes religious perspectives (Budism mostly) with political implications.

Recitatif

Amnesia/Memory

• fallibility (memory is untrustable)
• People tend to selective memory erasing the uncomfortable elements of the past (slavery, violence, bullying, racism...) to build our own identity; memory is selective and subjective.
• Memory as a construction that applies to an individual level and also to a collective level.
• binaries: truth/falsity; white/black...
• Each of the meetings is associated with trauma from the past.
• Twyla's and Roberta's memories about St Bonny's orphanage and especially Maggie do not coincide and they come in fragmented pieces.

Ambiguity/Active role of the reader

• Fragmented structure
• By refusing to indicate what actually happened to Maggie and the girls, Morrison reinforces the active role of the reader and questions the idea of a single truth.
• Lack of resolution
• One is white and the other black but the author lets the reader to guess who is who, to draw their own conclusions.
• Experiment in the removal of all racial codes.
• The reader has to complete the puzzle and try to make sense of the details.
• "[...] in the act of reading, the process of understanding depends on one's own prejudices, cultural memories, and expectations" (Abena Busia).
• Morrison plays with cultural codes such as music, dress, language, food... confronting us with our assumptions about race and class, and dissmantling or deconstructing them.
• In "Recitatif" Morrison removes every racial code; we know one of the girls is white and the other black but the reader has to guess who is who to draw their own conclusions.By refusing to indicate what actually happened to Maggie and the girls, Morrison reinforces the active role of the reader and questions the idea of a single truth.

Empathy

• There is not apparent representation of empathy in Morrison story, but reader surely feels sorry and compassionate about Maggie, and maybe the girls when they are adults, but we can not be sure.

Style

• Lack of resolution. The refusal to provide closure or a definite meaning (distrust of metanarratives -Lyotard-).
• Poetic language, the blend of fantasy and realism, and its use of floklore and myth.
• Treatment of the complex identity of black people in a universal manner. ("any good work has to be political -Morrison-)
• Dialogic nature or the text
• Fragamentarity; episodes or vignettes (episodic nature).
• Several points of view

Identity

• The "Double jeopardy". The experience of being a woman and a member of a minority: Morrison (black), Rich (lesbian), Cisneros (border woman, chicana), Harjo (native american)

Other concepts

• Motherhood (Maggie, mother, themselves)
• Gender (physical descriptions, social practices...)
• Social class (characerization according to economic indicators; connections with racial categories?)
• History

Woman Hollering Creek

Identity

• The Chicana experience/The border: lives between two cultures, crossing borders (physical and metaphorical); a mestiza, a border woman.

Style

• Hybridity: deconstructs stereotypes about neighbourhood working against the official story, subverting stereotypes of Chicano life.
• Reflects the life in the border and writes about the physical, spiritual, sexual, and linguistic borders that define Chicana culture.
• Practices an experimental narrative that breaks the boundaries os ethinicity, class and gender.
• Fragmentarity
• Multiple narrative voices and points of view or perspectives
• Omniscient narrator
• Direct, indirect and free speech, internal monologue.
• Dramatic irony ("to suffer for love is good") and ambiguity (soap operas vs. real life).
• Fantasy vs. Reality
• Onomatopeic words and allusions to noises.
• Orality

Themes

• Language
• Otherness
• Two cultures, two languages, the past, the future, conservatism, gender and sexual abuse, fantasy, reality, gender stereotypes, american dream, soap operas
• History

Women's portray

• Act os recognition and vindication of chicano female identity.
• Switching between languages (and style)
• Identity, indivual and collective
• Chicano: treated as second class citizen in anglo culture
• Women; treated as second class citizen in chicano cuture

Puppy

Ambiguity

• Neither of the women is criticized openly by the narrator, since we see them from different perspectives. The reader has to reach his or her own conclusions if want to. There is not a definite answer or resolution for the dilemma.
• The technique used to tell the story through internal monologues or what Saunders calls 3rd person ventriloquist allows us to get into the mind of the characters. We can see the events from different perspectives and imagine or even know the motifs for their actions. And hence emphatize with them. Neither or the woman, Marie and Callie, are critized or judged openly. Both are victims, Marie of her traumatic past and Callie of her lack of resources, as well are their children. The reader is addressed, though not directly, to think about the moral dilemma exposed in the story and how he or she would act if he or she would be in the shoes of Marie or Callie. Apparent bad actions and cruel scenes are narrated but they are not judged by narrator. Instead we are told about their motifs and questioned about our compassion or prejudices. Reader is not provided with a definite answer or solutions but challenged to draw his o her own conclusions.

Style

• Concerned about the moral aspects of literature, but not moralistic.
• Very ambigous, leaving the readers without a specific answer
• Presents moral dilemmas and let the readers to draw their own conclusion
• Ethical fiction; fiction should make us more involved in the world.
• Ambiguity, satire of the system that has made humans so little compassionate, empathy, sincerity
• Compassionate and concerned about social differences, especially, about the lower classes and the problems that he sees as the failures of U.S. contemporary society.
• Involves the reader actively in the action, tough does not address the reader diectly (but Vonnegut does).
• Combines realistic modes of representation with a postmodernis awarness of the importance of the reader. Literature is conceived as a collaborative process with a mission: thina bout reality, to reflect and to learn from it.
• Multiple voices:
  • Ominiscient third-person narrator (external presence, reports events)
  • Extradiegetic narrator (narrates events in the past)
  • Internal monologues of the characters
  • The third person ventriloquist (indirect narration by which we have access to the inner thoughts of the two characters through the third person.

Themes

• Class values
• How we perceive class differences
• Interested in the preoccupation of the common people

Empathy

• For the author it is important to try to understand the reasons for the actions of the characters, the way the author portrays them make us able to understand the motifs behind their actions and to emphatize with them. Marie and Callie are victims. The reader have to wonder what would we do in such situations.

When the World as We Knew It Ended

Style

• The poem addresses the history of violence in the United States, linking the destruction of the World Trade Center with the colonization of the Native American.
• Incorporates indigenous myths,symbols,and values.
• Need for remembrance and transcendence.
• Feminist and social justice poetic tradition.
• Her work is often autobiographical, informed by the natural world, and above all preoccupied with survival and the limitations of language.
• Myths, old tales and autobiography.

Identity

Women's Portray

Themes

• Myth and unconscious
• Nature
• Native heritage, mythology and folklore.
• Politics, tradition, remembrance and the transformational aspects of poetry
• The difficulties indigenous people face in modern American society. Reclaims the experiences of native people as various, multi-phonic, and distinct.
• Attempt to confront colonizations: "Who are we before and after the encounter?" (outside the sludge and despair of destruction)
• Emphasizes the plight of the individual, and reflects Creek values, myths, and beliefs.
• Bellm: "Harjo's works draws from the river of Native tradition, but it also swims freely in the currents of Anglo-American verse-feminist poetry of personal/political resistance, deep-image poetry of the unconscious, "new narrative" explorations of story and rhythm in prose-poem form."
• Self-knowledge and survival
• Time and timelessness

The division between "We" and "They"

• By using the pronoun "We" Harjo emphasizes her belonging to the Native American community and takes distance from the colonizers who occupied their land. She establishes differences between how both cultures are connected to nature and what they expect to get from it, and about the consciousness of the possible consequences of the American foreign policies. But also diffrences between capitalism and indigenism, men and women.
  Nonetheless, Harjo is also a member of a broader community, the populace of the United States, which was subjected to an attack on September 11, 2001, which resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center and the demise of numerous individuals.
  Another distinction between “We” and “They” can be traced in the phallic symbol of the Twin Towers and the negative connotations associated with masculinity. When she alludes to arrogance, ambition and “hunger for war” she uses nouns in the masculine gender: emperor and king. On the other hand, in several stanzas scenes from domestic life are depicted, such as caring of children or cooking, tasks traditionally developed by women.
  We can also see a contrast between the Twin Towers, symbols of capitalism, and those people who didn’t work nor died there."We were dreaming" encompasses the entire American population, which has lost its innocence and sense of security.
  In general terms, “We” is associated to wise, peace, respect for nature and life while “They” is linked to unawareness, violence, destruction and greed.

Analysis of the poem

Postwar alienation: Realism and experimentation. 1950s onwards

• Tendency towards realism with a strong existentialist tone
• Events: experience of World War II, Holocaust, the nuclear age, the Cold War.
• Paradoxes in the U.S. society:
  conformity (seen both positive and negative; unified nation that supresses individuality); family life (choose between domesticity and working outside the house)
• Consolidation of tele4vision, anew discourse, oral tradition, popular culture.
• Literature is divided into modernism and postmodernis but realism is still ver present, there is an undeniable revival of realism; naturalism;
• Materialistic turn of postwar society, age of "dull conformity"; apparent good health of the U.S. economy; veryintense sense of loneliness and the idea that life in the suburbs and material success were not enough.
• Writers are concerned about portraying the reality of their times, not experimenting with narrative forms (Salinger, Mailer, Cheever...)./li>
• Eclosion of Jewish American novels with a turn towards existentitalism and nihilist values; sense of alienation from place and history (religion, holocaust, Yiddish heritage, divorce) (Bellow, Singer, Malamud).
• Continuators of the Southern Reinassance: explore the evil in human beings,; sense of diaplacement and alienation; rural. (Harper Lee, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor)
• After this literature, Postmodernism questions the tradition of realism, places emphasis on experimenting with language, with the absurd, black humor and the fantastic (Nabokov, Cheever, Barth, Payley).

Postmodernism

Peculiarities/Characteristics/Style

• Fragmentarity. Fragmentation or open forms that give the audience the power to assemble the work and determine its meaning
• The reader is often surprised, or simply frustrated, because the traditional expectation for verosimilitude is not fullfilled.
• Multiple narrative voices and points of view or perspectives
• Inderteminacy, uncertainty
• Interest in the excentric (in the margins of society).
• Adress the reader, directly or indirectly, to contribute to the meaning of the story. The text is a collaborative process between the author and the reader. Barth aknowledges the importance of the role of the reader, who must participate actively in the creation of the text. It is common to fund the author in the text addressing the reader, asking for his/her help to decipher something, or simply to confess that seh/he is in the hands of the characters.
• Playful irony.
• Parody. Parodic intertextuality: tendency to break the genre boundaries. History and literature are fictions, so, authors incorporate intertext both historical and literary in a parodic way. Authors revisit the past from skeptical positions (about literature, history, politics, the foundation and structure of knowledge).
• Pastiche: related to irony and parody. Imitation of a particular style. Incorporation of different genres and contradictory voices.
• Revolt against realist conventions
• Metafictional issues and linguistic games. Self-reflexivity and self-conscious dimension of history. Love for linguistic play. Refers to the problematic relationship between the real and the unreal, the constructedness of meaning, truth and history, the complexities of subjectivity and identity. The author is interested in the material with which reality is made of (language). Literature and histry are considered fictions. The only reality is language. Any possible meaning is dossolved into the many artifices used to creat it.
• Discontinuity: we perceive or experience the world as a discontinuous, instead of as a coherent sequence. The death of the subject a unitary.
• Irrealist, aniconic art, interested in the unpresentable, the unrepresentable
• Subversion of traditionally realistic plot paradigms and incredulity towards metanarratives.
• Anti-mimetic or Anti-realist. Representations are not compatible with the official record and do not follow the logic and physics of reality; history and fiction exchange places.
• John Barth, Donald Barthelme, E.L. Doctorow, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, Susan Daitch, Kathy Acker.
• Commited to the social and real world?

The Beat generation

• Capitalism
• Skepticism
• Pastiche
• Metafiction

First generation: from the late 1950s to 1980s

• Capitalism
• Skepticism
• Pastiche
• Metafiction

Second generation: from the 1980s onwards

• Diverse and complex. Writers from different ethnicities and women authors.
• Different perspectives
• Ironic and ideological edge.
• Excentric discourses far from the Western tradition
• Minorities in a foreign culture forced to use a foreign language.
• Vindication of identity, culture, language, history...emancipation or detach from foreign language, history and culture.
• Focus on question such as history, domination, language, patriarchal control, memory, time or otherness
• Political and ideological edge: ethinicity as exoticism/cooptation by the market and the Academy (Jameson)
• Experiences of otherness
• Minorities are not always linked to postmodernism. Many of them associate postmodernism whith a white anglo male-dominated group in power, an elite, and with a language that is inaccurate and loaded with ideological implications.
• Mary K. Holland explains that most ethnics and gender-concerned books are not formally innovative.
• Some author experiment with form to deploy a political message regarding issues related to women and ethnicity. Sandra Cisneros questions some ideas of ethnicity as social practice and symbolic action in the Chicano culture, proposing instead a vision of ethnicity as hybrid or post-ethnic. Toni Morrison openly deconstructs the social and historical construction of race.

Race/Ethinicity/Postethnicity or Hybridity

• Race: political, social and historical contruction based on differences like skin color.
• Ethinicity: emphasizes in social, cultural and symbolic practices. Sense of belonging of an individual to a group. Psychological construction based on shared experiences.
• Postethnicity or hybridity (Ethnic hybridity): writers who try to escape stereotyping and address status of in-betweeness. The border writers, who try to escape from the traditional homogenizing view of their culture as one based on folklorization and exoticization and avoiding looking up to the Western culgural tradition as he mirror. Emphasis on connections instead of differences.

Multiculturalism/Transculturalism

• The melting pot: assimilation and sameness.
• Multiculturalism: different cultures that keep their differences promoting the coexistence of diversity.
• Transculturalism: The movement of ideas, influences, practices, and beliefs between cultures and the fusions that result when the ideas, influences, practices, and beliefs of different cultures come together in a specific place, text, or contact zone (the border, for example).

Realism/post-postmodernism

• Authors still included in the postmodernist canon whose fiction also fits the parameters of realist standards: Jonathan Frazen, George Saunders, Richar Powers.
• Anxious, ironic and speculative, different from conventional realism.
• Focus on the real, produces "reality effects" making them visible via metafiction, using poststructural strategies.
• Literature characterized by the use of poststructuralist ideas about language to engage with the real in order to generate empathy towards ethical and political questions (Mary K. Holland).
• Devoted to explaining the past as a means to understand the present.
• Emotions, feelings, and memory. Confronts our past. Need for a critical, not nostalgic remembering.
• Consciousness of the different forces that affect the subject (genetics, the historical and social past, media, internet...television is metafictional)
• What's new:
  • To create a fusion of modernism, postomdernism and good old realism.
  • A matter of voice or content, than a matter of formal innovation.
  • Portray aspects of human psychology.

Literature after 09/11/2001

September 11 was the first time since the fire set in Washington by the British in 1814 that the U.S. was attacked in its own territory by a foreign force. After the terrorist attacks, the U.S. population lost their innocence, they realized they were vulnerable.

Compare and contrast

The role of amnesia in John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and Toni Morrison “Recitatif” relate to the society and history of the United States.

• History: when the stories are set (years). Political, economical and social depiction of the years covered in the stories: "The Swimmer" is set in the 1960's, years of economical prosperity in the U.S. "Recitatif" covers from the 50's to the 80's. "The Swimmer" depicts the life in the traditional wealthy white suburbs, friendship and relationships. "Recitatif" focus on two little children almost abandoned by their mothers in an orphanage and how they grow and change as time goes by, from the peak of racial discrimination in the 50's, through the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power and the beginning of the Hippy movement to the 80's and Ronald Reagan presidency, a time of consolidation of conservative values, and economic liberalism.
• How society is depicted, class and gender. In "The Swimmer" the microcosmos depicted is the so-called the WASP system (wite, upper middle-class and protestant). The women stay at home and the men leave to work. But not everything is as perfect as it seems. Cheevers show the unhappiness and dissatisfaction associated with these empty lives.
• The role of amnesia in both.

Discuss the representation of moral ambiguity and empathy in Toni Morrison's "Recitatif" and George Saunder's "Puppy"

(one or two lines with the main differences and similitudes)
In "Puppy" Neither of the woman, Marie and Callie, are critized or judged openly. Both are victims, Marie of her traumatic past and Callie of her lack of resources, as well are their children. The reader is addressed, though not directly, to think about the moral dilemma exposed in the story and how he or she would act if he or she would be in the shoes of Marie or Callie. Apparent bad actions and cruel scenes are narrated but they are not judged by narrator. Instead we are told about their motifs and questioned about our compassion or prejudices. Reader is not provided with a definite answer or solutions but challenged to draw his or her own conclusions. Focus on difference between classes.
In "Recitatif" Morrison removes every racial code; we know one of the girls is white and the other black but the reader has to guess who is who to draw their own conclusions. Adressing the reader and lack of resolution are present in both works. By refusing to indicate what actually happened to Maggie and the girls, Morrison reinforces the active role of the reader and questions the idea of a single truth. There is not apparent representation of empathy in Morrison story, the little girls told her names while the "g" girls kicked her. But the reader surely feels sorry and compassionate about Maggie, and maybe Twyla and Roberta when they are adults, but we can not be sure. (Conclusion, sum up)

The portrayal of women in John Cheever’s The Swimmer and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

In these two stories women are divided into the Angel/demon dicotomy falling thus in the parameters of the time.
In “The Catcher in the Rye” we find the two categories: the mother/angel/housewife paradigm or the femme fatal (fallen women), either they are innocent ladies in distress, or they are phony. .
The paradigms of the angels in this novel are Phoebe (the sister) and Jane Gallagher (platonic love). Phoebe is pretty and smart. She represents innocence, authenticity and childhood. Jane is idealized in the mind of Holden. She is presented like a victim of his stepfather and Stradlater's sexual abuses. Other women that can be identified like "angels" are Mrs Spencer, the wife of the History Teacher (housewife) (Chapter 1), Mrs Morrow (perfect mother of Ernest Morrow; who has also a lot of sex appeal) (Chapter 8),the nuns and Mrs Antolini (perfect housewife and hostess). To Holden, the nuns represent those who are ideal, pure, and uncorrupted by the world. .
On the other hand, other women come to represent "the demon", they are women who practice sex. They are Faith Cavendish a girl whose telephone was given to Holden in a party, and a girl that “wasn’t exactly a whore… but that didn’t mind doing it once in a while.”(Chapter 9), Lilian Simmons. Former girfriend of D.B. “strictly a phoney” (Chapter 12), the three women at the Lavander hotel depicted as “pretty ugly” and “dopey” (Chapter 10) and the prostitute Sunny. Holden pays her but they don't make sex. Sunny is pretty young. .
In “The Swimmer” we find the perfect wives and mothers and party hostesses (Lucinda, Helen Westerhazy, Enid Bunker, Mrs Graham) vs. the fallen women. The first ones are polite and amiable and the second are rude, resentful (Shirley Adams) or vulgar, corset and bad-manner (Grace Biswanger, who tells her guest about Ned and his family: "They went broke overnight").

• Sexuality in the novel. Discuss Holden’s relationships with women and men and the references to sex. What is his attitude towards sexual relationships? Are there references to homosexuality in the novel?

SELF-ASSESMENT QUESTIONS

• Death of a Salesman
• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Swimmer
• Howl
• Slaughterhouse Five
• Diving into the Wreck. A feminist reading:
1.
“Diving into the Wreck” may be read from a feminist perspective analyzing the great number of symbols used in it.
The book of myths can be read as the conventions traditionally assumed by society; myths but not truths about the identity and the life of margnalized people and spefically women if we are reading from a feminsit perspective. Conventions generally accepted (the old myths, History, heros, canon, establishment…) The various social, cultural and histotrical narratives thah have shaped the speaker and their society. Myths shape our values and influence how we think, increasingly separated from everyday reality. In fact, myths have been responsible for the wreck s/he aims to explore. S/he must gain knowledge without the mediation of grand narratives. The story of the wreck (Humanity, minorities, ) is recorded in the book of myths not as it actually is but as it is expected to be. Most critcs have ibterpreted the poem as a fminist allegory that criticizes traditionalmyths of gender. Notice the book implying that there has been only one reading and interpretaton of myths.
The wreck is the result or the effects that the patriarchal society has on the individuals who don’t identify themselves with the imposed roles. The autentic identity of the author/speaker. The truth behind the story. Symbol of the sef, a journey of self-discovery, symbol of thr past and prevaiing naarrative. A damaging cultural narrative that has harmed a group of historically marginalized or oppressed people.
The mask, the body armor, the knife-blade to defend herself: The authentic identity of the speaker is, hidden to survive. He/She has to adapt to whati is expected of him/her. These pieces of disguise protect them form critics, prejudices or hate. The equipment does not fit the the sepaker. Disguising (assuming concentional roles) is not an easy task.
The sea, the deep element: the unknown, the truth about society, also can refers to marginalized groups and specifically women. The sea depth is larger than the surface. The vast majority of reality,true identities, authenticity. Surface represents unathenticity, appearances.
The quest: A journey of self-discovery. Discover what has been forgotten, not taken into account far below the ocean’s. Looking for something beyond myths, for the truth about men and women, about I and you, the He and the She, or more generally (in the references to wars and persecutions of various kinds) about the powerless and the powerful.
Surface. The Surface may represent the white, hetero patriarcal society, dominated by the idea of powerths. Power and force can be interpreted like traditonal masculine traits. In the Surface women an other marginalized groups have to compete, assuming conventions and hidding the truth about themselves. In contrast, “the sea is not a question of power” (maybe a question of identity? Or may it mean that power has been denied to them?)
The Ladder: mmm
We:
It pumps my blood with power….it immerses me: Accpetatin, succeses vs. The sea is not aquestion of power. Real identities are not accepted, thy are not owerful but powerles. They are alone.
2.
“Diving into the Wreck” first appeared as the title poem in Adrienne Rich’s 1973 collection of the same name, which went on to share the win of the 1974 National Book Award for Poetry with Allen Ginsberg’s collection, Poetry for the Fall of America. Rich was a committed activist who worked in support of feminism, and she remains well regarded for her poems that examine issues related to the struggle for women’s liberation. “Diving into the Wreck” doesn’t explicitly deal with women’s experiences, but even so, the poem may productively be read as a feminist allegory for the recuperation of a lost or concealed truth about the self, women, or other groups of historically underrepresented people. The poem centers on an anonymous speaker who dives deep into the ocean until they arrive at the remains of an old shipwreck, which they proceed to examine. The speaker wants to search this wreck for truths that cannot otherwise be accounted for by “the book of myths” (line 1). As they proclaim, they came for “the [wreck] itself and not the myth” (line 63), and they wish to see first-hand what has been forgotten far below the ocean’s surface. With such first-hand knowledge, they can decide for themself what from the wreck might be worth recuperating.
3.
Diving into the Wreck is a collection of poems about exploraton and travels where Rich reflects on women’s identity, educatin,, the role of women in the literary tradition, etc.
The hero quest
Femenine roles traditionally passive, in classical mythology
Reimagining myth from a feminist perspective. Rewriting/refiguring of Western myths from a feminist point of view
Use of the pronoun “I” nor he nor she (at the beginning)- At the end He/She/it, mermaid, merman…
Deconstructing the myth and the patriarcal values it sustains
The diving represents the adventure, a jurney into the unconsciouss, into the secret, dark places of society
A journey of self-discovery in an hostile environment
Discover hidden truths, the identity of marginalized people, other races, otherorigins, other gender (masculine vrsus feminine)
Books of myths: conventions generally accepted (the old myths, History, heros, canon, establishment…) The various social, cultural and histotrical narratives thah have shaped the speaker and thier society. Myths shape our values and influence how we think, increasingly separated from everyday reality. In fact, myths have been responsible for the wreck s/he aims to explore. S/he must gain knowledge without the mediation of grand narratives. The story of the wreck (Humanity, minorities, ) is recorded in the book of myths not as it actually is but as it is expected to be. Most critcs have ibterpreted the poem as a fminist allegory that criticizes traditionalmyths of gender. Notice the book implying that there has been only one reading and interpretaton of myths.
4.
The failure of society? Those discourses – myths – (grand narratives) that have leender identitiesgd to society’s destruction and of its individuals… These could be read, for example, gender discourses which enhance the divide between individuals and encapsulate them (both women and men) within certain roles. Overall, patriarchy is conceived as a destructive force.
¨ The diver, by leaving behind the ‘old myth’ and facing the results of the wreck, seems to find his/her true identity, one which is androgynous. According to Karen Stein, Rich
…puts forth the idea [of androgyny] to suggest intermingled “masculine” and “feminine” qualities in each individual. The combination of traits seemed to redress the imbalance of sexual stereotyping, the exaggerations of “maleness” and “femininity” that breed division and fragmentation (75).
¨ Thus, the androgynous imagery enhances the idea of restoration and completion, of achieving a wholeness which heals the fragmentation provoked by a society/individuals who have internalised discourses of division based on gender, for example (and that, as a result, are also fragmented entities). Notice that the speaker is a mermaid and a merman, that “I am she: I am he”, leading to a sense of community and even restoration: “We are, I am,you are.”

• Recitatif
• Woman Hollering Creek
• Puppy
• When the World as We Knew It Ended

TEXT COMMENTARIES

• Death of a Salesman
• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Swimmer
• Howl
• Slaughterhouse Five
• Diving into the Wreck
• Recitatif
• Woman Hollering Creek
• Puppy
• When the World as We Knew It Ended