Please take out a notebook.
You need two sections
•Journals
•Literary Terms/Notes on texts
In this Power Point, when I talk
about
• STYLE terms will be yellow
• THEME will be red
LITERARY TERMS-- Style
LITERARY TERMS YOU SHOULD KNOW
• Point of View (handout)
• Tone (handout) diction, language, imagery,
details
• Imagery
• Plot– narrative structure
• Stream of Consciousness
• Allegory
• Surrealism
THEME (not style)
Lenses we’ve touched upon
•
•
•
•
•
Feminist
Allegorical
Psychological
Marxist (ideological)
Formal (using terminology)
Two areas of study:
STYLE and THEME

STYLE refers to Formal aspects of the story;
how the story is told.
Deals with Point of View, Plot Structure, Tone,
Imagery, etc. (Modernism experiments with
style.)

THEME refers to ideas or truths about life.
(These are also specifically Modern.)
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk.
Fight Club -Style
 Point ov View---Is this a reliable narrator?
 What is his tone? How do you know?
What is his attitude toward you the reader?
(Does he think you are smart; the enemy;
the converted, etc.)
Themes
• Freudian – blaming parents
• Self Destruction
• “Reality” (What is it about?
How can we experience it more
intensely?)
• Know thyself
Violence (again)
• How is violence used by the
narrator (for what purpose)?
• How is it used by the author?
• This story is NOT about
fighting…what is it about?
Violence as redemptive (see
also…)
Modern Man/ identity
•
•
•
•
•
•
Emotional
Physically strong
Nurturing
Responsible for income
Restrained/makes sacrifices
Responsible for raising the
children
IMAGERY (Copy into notebook)
A word or group of words in a literary
work which appeal to one or more of the
senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and
smell.
The use of images serves to intensify the
impact of the work.
Imagery: EXAMPLE
• The following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
" When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.”
Uses images of pain and sickness to describe
the evening, which as an image itself
represents society and the psychology of
Prufrock, himself
Imagery is not just decoration. Ask what is
signified by the image
Where Are You Going, Where Have
You Been
Where Are You Going…
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Inspired by Bob Dylan Song
• Written in the sixties. In 1966 which is
relevant because…
STYLE—Imagery in the story
• Music is a constant image in the story and
has significance
• This is true of America at the time– pop
music defined this young generation and
led them “astray”
Symbolism - when an object is meant to
be representative of something or an idea
greater than the object itself.
• Cross - representative of Christ or
Christianity
• Bald Eagle - America or Patriotism
• Owl - wisdom or knowledge
• Yellow - implies cowardice or rot
Symbols/ symbolic imagery
•
•
•
•
•
•
Three– “mystical” number
Flies
The Highway
Mirrored sunglasses
Possibly cloven or goat-like feet
Take out the ‘r’ – A n old Fiend
“It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”
Bob Dylan
• You must leave now, take what you need, you
think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it
fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.
The highway is for gamblers, better use your
sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.
• All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
All your reindeer armies, are all going home.
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.
Leave your stepping stones behind, something
calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow
you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.
Images from “WAYG,WHYB”
drank Cokes in wax cups that were always
sweating
their thin shoulders rigid with excitement,
and listened to the music that made
everything so good: the music was always
in the background, like music at a church
service; it was something to depend upon
vexation that was like a fly buzzing
suddenly around their heads
And so on…

her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed
with the warmth about her as if this were a
kind of love, the caresses of love,

bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that
seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music
itself and lay languidly about the airless little
room, breathed in and breathed out with each
gentle rise and fall of her chest
PLOT STRUCTURE
How many parts is the story made up of?
(What grammar error did I just make?)
In what way can you delineate the parts of this
story? (In other words, what separated one
“part” from another? Setting? Time? Tone?
Imagery?)
MODERNISM THEMES
Modern theme– the individual
separate from the family and
community? (Alienation)
THEME: Loss of Innocence/
Risk
• There is danger inherent in the
desire to grow up.
• Story can be read as an
ALLEGORY:
American Society at this time was
losing it’s innocence—There is also
the “Modern” element of questioning
our forward movement or progress
while leaving behind traditional
values.
• The last image…
Violence
• We do not truly know
ourselves until confronted with
violence or death.
• Dramatic device for literature
because (see above).
The ending
• Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it
was cool. She brushed her hair back out of
her eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post
tentatively and opened his arms for her,
his elbows pointing in toward each other
and his wrists limp, to show that this was
an embarrassed embrace and a little
mocking, he didn't want to make her selfconscious.
• She put out her hand against the screen.
She watched herself push the door slowly
open as if she were back safe somewhere
in the other doorway, watching this body
and this head of long hair moving out into
the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.
• .
• "My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said in a
half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with
her brown eyes but was taken up just the
same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land
behind him and on all sides of him—so
much land that Connie had never seen
before and did not recognize except to
know that she was going to it
Surrealism ..\..\Honors Modern
Fiction\SURREALISM.ppt
 The dreamlike MOOD and DIALOGUE
at
the house
 The “wolf in sheep’s clothing”
 The last image– SYMBOLIC of her entering the
adult world (loss of innocence)
“Memento Mori”
STYLE
 Plot– Major gaps reflecting subjective view
of time (also a theme here)
 Point of View– experimental:
 use of two P.O.V.’s
 Third Person Limited and Second Person
Memento Mori
Themes
SELF
(this is “subject”– below are questions to build THEME)
 How do we define ourselves– “I think, therefore I
am”? (Descartes) Are you what you believe you
are? (a good person– what about how you
cheated/lied/stole?)
 Are you the sum of your memories? (What about
what you have forgotten or altered?)
 Are you the sum of your actions?
 Are you what mommy thinks you are?
Life/ existence


Can we define our own lives and
give them meaning– rather than
look for meaning from God,
social institutions, mommy, etc.
Is there an objective moral
guideline for that purpose?
The Nature of Time
 Though we measure it with minutes and seconds
and such, it is subjective. Consider:
 “Time flies when you are having fun”
 Time is dragging by right now
And yet a minute is always sixty seconds…
EVIDENCE IN THE TEXT:
– Gaps in plot
– Use of “Maybe”
– Earl’s comments about time
Alienation
 From friends and family
 Society– its rewards (jobs, status) and
punishments (prison)
 God– His love and his rules (Via the first two
bullets)
stream of consciousness
 a narrative mode that seeks to portray an
individual's point of view by giving the
written equivalent of the character's thought
processes:
 a loose interior monologue, characterized by
associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can
make the prose difficult to follow.
 often depicted as overheard in the mind (or
addressed to oneself)
 or in connection to his or her actions.
After I Was Thrown in the Water
and Before I Drowned
• Dave Eggers
More Keys to understanding
• P.O.V. From where is the dog speaking?
• The Language– how does it change?
• The images/ details:
• The tone changes from ___________ to
__________
• When and why does the verb tense
change?
• When and why does the dog use big
words?
• The Dog names seem weird– what do you
make of them?
Narrative
• Stream of Consciousness*
• Repetition of words (“grabbing”)
• “Big” words for reflection (ravishing)
• Tense– present tense/ past tense when he
dies
• Plot goes beyond Story
THEME: Language fails us
Overtly stated:
 about human conversation
Suggested by:
 Steven is his name?
 Descriptions of the dog
 Language fun—diction, squirrel talk
Action versus Talk (Thought/Intellect)
 About the squirrels
 The Title
How We Are Hungry
• The characters and narrators in How We Are Hungry, in which
longer stories are interspersed with some of Eggers's Guardian
pieces, find themselves on the edge—on the verge of breakdowns,
breakups and other crises…
• His narrative responds in kind, patrolling
what lies on and beyond the far edges of
speech and thought. In the work of lesser writers—
including some of those for whom Eggers has become a talisman—
such narration can shrink into an aesthetic of studied fauxinarticulacy ... it is a mark of what Eggers can achieve at
his best that his feeling for speech and its limitations
rarely hits false notes.
Authors have themes to which they
return
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius (2000) and the freewheeling
Velocity made a virtue of sheer sprawl;
this collection of stories points to another
quality, present in those books but
perhaps less well noted: Eggers's way with
significant omissions and ellipses .
Authors have themes to which they
return
As Anne Henry has pointed out, 'the gaps
and lacunae so often discussed in
twentieth-century criticism are not always
empty or silent, but filled with pieces of
type, marks which have voices of their
own', and Eggers's significant gaps and
lapses similarly have their silent speeches
A Good Man is Hard to Find
A Good Man is Hard to Find
 Flannery O’Conner
 Southern Gothic/ the
Grotesque (Faulkner)
 Catholic
 She connects her religious
concerns with being
southern, for, she says,
"while the South is hardly
Christ-centered, it is most
certainly Christ-haunted"
In her words: Flannery
O’Conner


the creative action of the
Christian's life is to prepare his
death in Christ.
"I'm a born Catholic and death
has always been brother to my
imagination. I can't imagine a
story that doesn't properly end in
it or in its foreshadowings."
THEMES
Evil may appear for ambiguous reasons
(who is to blame?)
 God may strike you down for the sins of
your mind (as opposed to actions)
 Catholic concept: Redemption– never too
late. Confession of sins
 The sins of the South

Modernism: Themes



Old World values (Grandma) versus Modern
world view (the family)
Cultural Relativity – definitions of Good and
Evil
The concept of Evil…this is not modern
Change: Old South values vs.
Modernism






"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John
Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin
veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their
native states and their parents and everything else. People
did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she
said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a
shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked
and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the
back window. He waved
"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother
explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things
like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said.
The children exchanged comic books.
E.A.T. -- How racism is passed on

This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone
and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't
think it was any good. She said she wouldn't
marry a man that just brought her a
watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother
said she would have done well to marry Mr.
Teagarden because he was a gentle man and
had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first
came out and that he had died only a few
years ago, a very wealthy man
The Tower– A good man




"You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he
wiped his sweating red face off with a gray
handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to
trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"People are certainly not nice like they used to be,"
said the grandmother.
"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy
said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but
it was a good one and these boys looked all right to
me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let
them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why
did I do that?"
"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said
at once.
A critique of family
The children's mother had begun to make
heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath
(they are separate from Grandma)

Justice and Religion

"Yes'm, The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus
thrown everything off balance. It was the same case
with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any
crime and they could prove I had committed one
because they had the papers on me. Of course," he
said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I
sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a
signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy
of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can
hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they
match and in the end you'll have something to prove
you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit,"
he said, "because I can't make what all I done
wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
Religion/ hypocrisy



the grandmother brings up Jesus and constantly
judges who is a “good man” --- she mainly views
Christianity through its Dogma
Dogma– the established belief or doctrine held
by a religion, ideology or any kind of
organization, thought to be authoritative and not
to be disputed or doubted.
Basically, she prefers the rules to the spiritual
aspects
Modernism: Style

Shifting Point of View
There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the
truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family
silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never
found . . ."
Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe.
"No," he said.
The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that
the house she had remembered so vividly was not in
Georgia but in Tennessee.
STYLE: GENRE-- Southern
Gothic

subgenre of the Gothic
writing style, unique to
American Literature.

Like its parent
genre, it relies on
supernatural, ironic,
or unusual events to
guide the plot.
Southern Gothic

Unlike its predecessor,
it uses these tools not
for the sake of
suspense, but to
explore social issues
and reveal the cultural
character of the
American South
Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which an
author drops subtle hints about plot
developments to come later in the story.

An example of foreshadowing might be when a character
displays a gun or knife early in the story. Merely the appearance
of a deadly weapon, even though it is used for an innocuous
purpose — such as being cleaned or whittling wood — suggests
terrible consequences later on.
denotation
a literal meaning of the word
connotation
an association (emotional or otherwise) which
the word evokes
• For example, both "woman" and "chick"
have the denotation "adult female" in
North American society, but "chick" has
somewhat negative connotations, while
"woman" is neutral.
For another example of
connotations, consider the
following:
• negative
– There are over 2,000 vagrants in the city.
• neutral
– There are over 2,000 people with no fixed
address in the city.
• positive
– There are over 2,000 homeless in the city.
THEME
• The main idea or underlying meaning of a
literary work. A theme may be stated or implied.
Theme differs from the subject or topic of a
literary work in that it involves a statement or
opinion about the topic. Not every literary work
has a theme. Themes may be major or minor. A
major theme is an idea the author returns to time
and again. It becomes one of the most important
ideas in the story. Minor themes are ideas that
may appear from time to time.
Theme vs. Subject
• It is important to recognize the difference
between the theme of a literary work and the
subject of a literary work.
• The subject is the topic on which an author has
chosen to write.
• The theme, however, makes some statement
about or expresses some opinion on that topic.
• For example, the subject of a story might be war
while the theme might be the idea that war is
useless.
Four ways in which an author can
express themes are as follows:
• NUMBER ONE
Themes are expressed and emphasized by
the way the author makes us feel.. By
sharing feelings of the main character
you also share the ideas that go through
his mind
Number TWO
• Themes are presented in thoughts and
conversations. Authors put words in their
character’s mouths only for good reasons.
One of these is to develop a story’s
themes. The things a person says are
much on their mind. Look for thoughts
that are repeated throughout the story.
Number THREE
• Themes are suggested through the
characters. The main character usually
illustrates the most important theme of the
story. A good way to get at this theme is to
ask yourself the question, what does the
main character learn in the course of the
story?
NUMBER FOUR
• The actions or events in the story are
used to suggest theme. People naturally
express ideas and feelings through their
actions. One thing authors think about is
what an action will "say". In other words,
how will the action express an idea or
theme?