Post Modernism

V. by Thomas Pynchon

Plot

The novel alternates between episodes featuring Benny, Stencil and other members of the Whole Sick Crew (including Profane's sidekick Pig Bodine) in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks), and a generation-spanning plot which comprises Stencil's attempts to unravel the clues he believes will lead him to "V." (or to the various incarnations thereof). Each of these "Stencilised" chapters is set at a different moment of international historical crisis, however, the framing narrative involving Stencil, "V.", and the journals of Stencil's British spy/diplomat father threads the sequences together. The novel's two storylines increasingly converge in the last chapters (the intersecting lines forming a V-shape, as it were), as Stencil hires Benny to travel with him to Malta.

In which Stencil, a quick-change artist, does eight impersonations

This chapter, set among the British community in Egypt toward the end of the 19th century, consists of an introduction and a series of eight relatively short sections, each of them from the point of view of a different person. The eight sections come together to tell a story of murder and intrigue, intersecting the life of a young woman, Victoria Wren, the first incarnation of V. The title is a hint as to how this chapter is to be understood: Stencil imagines each of the eight viewpoints as he reconstructs — we do not know on how much knowledge and how much conjecture — this episode. This chapter is a reworking of Pynchon's short story "Under the Rose", which was first published in 1961 and is collected in Slow Learner (1984). In the Slow Learner introduction, Pynchon admits he took the details of the setting ("right down the names of the diplomatic corps") from Karl Baedeker's 1899 travel guide for Egypt. Stencil's reconstruction follows the same basic conflict as "Under the Rose", but it gives the non-European characters much more personality.

In which Stencil nearly goes West with an alligator

Only marginally part of the Stencil/V. material, this chapter follows Benny and others, as Benny has a job hunting alligators in the sewers under Manhattan. It figures in the Stencil/V. story in that there is a rat named "Veronica" who figures in a subplot about a mad priest — Father Linus Fairing, S.J. — some decades back, living in the sewers and preaching to the rats; we hear from him in the form of his diary. Stencil himself makes a brief appearance toward the end of the chapter.

She hangs on the western wall

In Florence in 1899, Victoria appears again, briefly, but so does the placename "Vheissu", which may or may not stand for Vesuvius, Venezuela, or even (one character jokes) Venus.

Kurt Mondaugen, who will appear again in Gravity's Rainbow, is the central character in a story set in South-West Africa (now Namibia) partly during a siege in 1922 at which one Vera Meroving is present, but most notably in 1904, during the Herero Wars, when South-West Africa was a German colony; in V., Pynchon clearly sees the German treatment of the Herero at that time as prefiguring the Holocaust of the Jews in the Nazi era.

At the same time, this part of the novel is a haunting indictment of Western colonialism and racism; later, in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon would emphasize this latter aspect, acknowledging the facile identification made between the Herero genocide and the Nazi Holocaust in his earlier novel as "superficial". In a letter to Thomas F. Hirsch, reprinted in David Seed's book The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon, London, MacMillan, 1988, pp. 240-3), Pynchon wrote, "…When I wrote V. I was thinking of the 1904 campaign as a sort of dress rehearsal for what later happened to the Jews in the 30s and 40s. Which is hardly profound; it must occur to anybody who gets into it even as superficially as I did. But since reading McLuhan especially, and stuff here and there on comparative religion, I feel now the thing goes much deeper. […] I feel that the number done on the Herero head by the Germans is the same number done on the American Indian head by our own colonists and what is now being done on the Buddhist head in Vietnam by the Christian minority in Saigon and their advisors: the imposition of a culture valuing analysis and differentiation on a culture that valued unity and integration."

Fausto Maijstral, Maltese civilian suffering under the German bombardment and working to clear the rubble during World War II writes a long letter to his daughter Paola, who figures in the Benny Profane story; the letter comes into Stencil's hands. The letter includes copious quotations from Fausto's diary. Besides the place name Valletta, V. figures in the story as an old — or possibly not-so-old — woman crushed by a beam of a fallen building while children play around her.

In this chapter V. — if V. it is — is entranced with a young ballerina, Mélanie l'Heuremaudit. The story centers on a riotous ballet performance, almost certainly modeled in part on the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The performance centers on a virgin sacrifice by impalement. The young ballerina fails to wear her protective equipment, and actually dies by impalement in the course of the performance; everyone assumes her death throes simply to be an uncharacteristically emotional performance.

As the British Navy mass on Malta in the early stages of the Suez Crisis, Stencil arrives with Benny in tow, searching for Fausto Maijstral. (As always, Kilroy was here first, and Pynchon proposes a novel origin for the face: that Kilroy was originally part of a schematic for a band-pass filter.)

Chapter 18 The last chapter is a flashback to Valleta when Stencil sr. was still alive. He becomes entangled in an incident involving a Maltese couple.

At the end of the chapter he leaves in a ship and a water spout throws into the air then plunges into the depths of the Mediterranean.

The paths of Stencil and Profane through the novel form a sort of metaphorical V. The incident of the boat sinking on the last page could be seen as the dotting of the apex on the v, the final plunge into nothingness.

Analysis

Post modernism are classic inspired pieces with less involvement of science. 

V by Thomas Pynchon is set during the World War and it tells the story of two men. The first one is Stencil, who is looking for something he has lost; and Profane, who has nothing much to lose. It also has a third character, V., who is the unknown woman, or feminine entity, that appears throughout the book. 

It is written in a frame narrative, and every chapter pretty much is a story of its own, and it is just loosely connected to the rest of the chapters. 

Now, V. seems to be just a reference for the collective feminine entity. Because at one point, there was a girl named Victoria, in Egypt; and in another, there was a female rat, named Veronica, who is preached to by a crazy priest; there's also the reference to an unknown country, Vheissu, which may be referring to Vesuvius the mountain or Venezuela the country; and later on, the country of Malta and its capital Valetta also appears.

Since it is a post modernism literature, the author is more interested in playing the schemata than the plot. These two men, Stencil and Profane, actually form a schematic V, as the alternating narratives about them start with the two of them very far from each other, and they converge slowly but surely as the novel progresses. In the end, there is a chapter where both of them are in focus, where Stencil takes Profane to Malta to look for V. 

Modernism

Gone by Michael Grant

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Plot

Every person over the age of 15 just completely vanishes from the school in Perdido Beach, causing confusion and chaos among the pupils. It is quickly established that the adults have vanished from the entire town. Sam Temple steps up and tries to save a girl from a burning building. She does not survive, but it is revealed that the girl had the power to shoot streams of liquid fire from her hands, which caused the blaze. Later this becomes a key feature as why Sam Temple became 'head fire-chief' along with Astrid Ellison and Quinn Gather, Sam’s best friend. The group discovers an energy barrier that cuts off the kids from the outside world. Along the way, they find Edilio Escobar, who decides to join them. The group later comes across town bullies Orc (a.k.a. Charles Merriman, but not until Hunger) and his sidekick Howard, who have nicknamed the barrier the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone). They find Astrid's brother Little Pete in the nuclear power plant (Astrid and Pete's father's workplace) in which there was a major accident 15 years ago when a meteorite hit and caused an explosion, hence why Perdido Beach is nicknamed Fallout Alley. They also find a map of radiation patterns. The fallout radius from the nuclear power plant lines exactly up with the energy barrier. Later, Sam accidentally scares Little Pete and Pete uses strange powers to choke Sam. It is revealed Sam has his own powers (he can shoot green-white light from his hands when scared/angry). Astrid reveals she's known about Little Pete's powers for a while, and Sam tells the group he once accidentally used his light to burn off his step father's hand, thinking he was going to attack his mother with a knife.

Meanwhile, a girl named Lana Arwen Lazar was riding through the desert with her grandfather when the "poof", or disappearance, occurs. The truck however drives off road and falls down a large steep rocky hill(a small cliff or gulch). Lana is badly injured while Patrick, her dog, is mostly unharmed. Soon a mountain lion attacks Patrick, who was protecting Lana and Patrick is left dying slowly. Lana puts her hand on his neck hoping he will be okay and Lana falls asleep. In the morning she finds Patrick perfectly fine with no injuries. She tries to heal herself, and it works after hours of resting her hands on her injured spots. Her power will later develop to work almost instantly. She soon gets to "Hermit Jim's" shack, but is then captured by a pack of coyotes, led by Pack Leader, a mutated coyote that can can produce some low level of intellect speech a gift from the gaiaphage(also known as the darkness). They take Lana to a strange creature in a mine shaft in the desert, who they call the Darkness. The Darkness orders her to teach the coyotes human ways. She does as they say for a while but eventually escapes back to the shack.

When Sam, Astrid, and Pete return to town, vehicles arrive in Perdido Beach that driven by the students of Coates Academy, a school for the wealthy and troubled, where Sam's mother worked as a nurse. Leading the act is Caine Soren, who gains the townies’ trust by promising better leadership and life. But after using the local church for planning with other elected kids, the building suffers minor damages by a strange force, nearly killing one of the local bullies, Cookie.

Apparently, Caine also has powers. Some of the other kids have powers, but all of them are different. Along with the psychopathic sadistic student Drake Merwin, Caine soon takes command by using the local bullies to work for him and making Sam the fire chief because of his previous actions, soon resulting in the beating and death of a townie named "bouncing" Bette, killed by Orc who was unaware of his own strength.

Soon Caine and his lackies steal Sam’s mother’s laptop and secret chest, and find out that Caine and Sam are fraternal twins and that Caine was given up for adoption soon after his birth.

Sam and the gang leave the town when Drake attempts to kill Astrid on Caine's orders. They escape to the far side of the FAYZ. They travel across the desert and encounter mutant rattlesnakes with wings. They meet Lana and become trapped in a shack and attacked by Pack Leader and the non talking coyotes

Meanwhile, Caine and his group return to Coates Academy to witness the disappearance of one of their classmates, discovering that those who vanish are confronted by a monster. Sam's gang and Lana are trapped in the shack when it's set on fire by the coyotes. They manage to escape thanks to Sam, who uses his power at his own will for the first time. However, they are then captured by Drake, who takes them to Coates and shows them what he does to the freaks who oppose Caine. He traps their hands in cement bricks to prevent them using their powers. He "plasters" the gang but Astrid persuades Little Pete to make the cement disappear by attempting to smash his Game Boy with her plastered hands. A brief fight takes place and Sam shoots off Drake's arm.

Sam and the gang, along with the victims of Caine and Drake's evil "plastering" return to town where they attempt to organize the townies to fight Caine. Drake arrives at Lana's and says he wants her to heal his arm. They drive off but the coyotes arrive. The coyotes mutilate Orc, nearly killing him. The coyotes take Lana and Drake to the Darkness which uses Lana's power to give Drake a new arm, shaped like a long red python which he can use as a deadly whip, and he is raging for revenge.

Caine attacks the town with the help of the coyotes and attempts to use the children in the day care as hostages. This is averted when one of the freaks, Taylor, teleports into the center of the room and throws hamburgers in the air. This distracts the coyotes long enough for Dekka (a mutant who can suspend gravity in certain areas) and several others to rescue the children.

Caine then attacks the town center and damages the church considerably. There is a battle between the townies and the Coates kids, who also have the help of the coyotes. Drake is prevented from joining the battle by a newly mutated Orc who has doubled in size and his injuries (all of his body apart from a small patch of his cheek) are covered in a hard substance that looks like wet gravel. He attacks Drake because Drake ordered him to attack a freak who later died of her injuries (Bette). He thinks the gravel is God's punishment for him. Sam and Caine fight in the town square and Sam successfully burns Caine's side. Sam then poofs because Caine waited for their birthday to attack. He is confronted by his mother who tells him to take her hand. Caine then poofs as well and joins Sam and their 'mother'. Caine knows that it is actually a monster due to an experiment he did earlier and refuses. Sam refuses as well, even though he does not know why Caine does, and their mother is revealed as a hideous and bloodthirsty creature. They pop back into reality and Caine retreats from the town.

Somewhere out in the local desert, Caine follows Pack Leader to the mine and to the Darkness.

Analysis

Modernism uses new way of writing. It has three characteristic which are new, changing, and real. Their is also the application of science.

Gone is a dystopian science fiction book and it clearly features the three main characteristics of modernism. In Gone, every human except for the young vanishes, and the town and surrounding areas  are encased within an impenetrable bubble. Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents--unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers--that grow stronger by the day. The world inside Gone is a terrifying new place.

Eco-Criticism

Furry Vengeance

Plot

It all started with a prairie dog screaming after Riggs' (Rob Riggle) car passes by it and throws a cigar, disrespecting the environment. This causes an unnamed raccoon to allow a mink to release a boulder that pushes Riggs' car down a cliff. After that, the raccoon throws the cigar back to Riggs, who yells "you're a bad raccoon!". The raccoon then blows the car down the cliff.

Riggs quits from Mr. Lyman's company, so a real estate developer from Chicago, Dan Sanders (Brendan Fraser), is given the task to turn the forest into a residential development by his boss, Neal Lyman (Ken Jeong). This all transpires much to the objections of Dan's son, Tyler (Matt Prokop), who discovers that Rocky Springs is a forest reserve. He warns his father that "many tried to conquer it but failed". His wife, Tammy (Brooke Shields), is also unhappy in Rocky Springs, where she misses Chicago life. Unfortunately, the animals, led by the raccoon, who live in the forest do not intend to watch their forest being destroyed. They manage to turn the tables on Dan by disturbing his progress- interrupting his meetings, and humiliating him. So Dan signs orders to have forest rangers capture all the animals and cage them up.

Tammy is forced to plan an "eco-friendly" fair with a senile teacher (Alice Drummond) at the high school and Lyman's company decides to sponsor it. The Sanders family are ignorant to the fact that Lyman and his company are actually not eco-friendly and want to cut down the forest to build housesand a shopping mall "with a forest theme". Dan releases the animals. The raccoon and his friends wreak havoc on the eco-fair, causing the guests and entertainers to flee. Lyman accidentally tranquilizes Mr. Gupta, who attempts to break their deal. He flees into a "worm tunnel" with the animals in close pursuit. They begin to attack him, as a bear drives the golf cart (pulling the tunnel) away into a bush.

Three months later, the forest is reclaimed as a nature preserve. Dan is a ranger, fining anyone $1 million for violating this ruling.

Analysis

Ecocritics investigate such things as the underlying ecological values, what, precisely, is meant by the word nature, and whether the examination of "place" should be a distinctive category, much like class, gender or race. Ecocritics examine human perception of wilderness, and how it has changed throughout history and whether or not current environmental issues are accurately represented or even mentioned in popular culture and modern literature. 

Eco-criticism focuses on nature, the environment and how all of this affects us. It also shows way on how to preserve and conserve the nature and environment.

This movie gives a good lesson, which is to treat the environment better. It sends a message to younger kids that they can help improve the way society treats animals’ habitats. Basically the movie is trying to tell that by ruining the nature or the forest doesn't only affect the animals but also us. It is said that nature has it's own way to make as pay. The movie is encouraging people to help save the environment and to prevent the people who is trying to destroy it.

Narratology

10 Things We Did and Probably Shouldn't Have

Sarah Mlynowski 

Plot

2 girls + 3 guys + 1 house - parents = 10 things April and her friends did that they (definitely, maybe, probably) shouldn't have.

If given the opportunity, what sixteen-year-old wouldn't jump at the chance to move in with a friend and live parent-free? Although maybe "opportunity" isn't the right word, since April had to tell her dad a tiny little untruth to make it happen (see #1: "Lied to Our Parents"). But she and her housemate Vi are totally responsible and able to take care of themselves. How they ended up "Skipping School" (#3), "Throwing a Crazy Party" (#8), "Buying a Hot Tub" (#4), and, um, "Harboring a Fugitive" (#7) at all is kind of a mystery to them.
In this hilarious and bittersweet tale, Sarah Mlynowski mines the heart and mind of a girl on her own for the first time. To get through the year, April will have to juggle a love triangle, learn to do her own laundry, and accept that her carefully constructed world just might be falling apart . . . one thing-she-shouldn't-have-done at a time.

Analysis

Narratology is the study of the forms, structures, media, functions, and evolution of narrative, with a special emphasis on Story.

On one end of the narrative spectrum lies a mere representational sequence of events that may or may not have a beginning, middle, and end. At the opposite end lies Story, with an Arc, an indivisible and universal structural pattern called a Narreme, and meaning over and beyond the mere representational.

This book opens at the end of the story. It narrates the after events of the tenth thing that April should not have done. After that she began narrating how sh ended up in that position. The narration uses flashback and it started from the very beginning with the first thing she shouldn't have done. In between the chapters, a flashback will occur again whenever she mentions something that makes he remember somethings in the past. Then at the end it narrates how things turned out after all that happened. The story is narrated using the first person point of view.

New Historcism

Invisible by Paul Auster

Plot 

The first section, titled "Spring" and told in first person, chronicles the entanglement of Columbia University student Adam Walker with French political science professor Rudolf Born, who meet in New York City in the spring of 1967 and who form an alliance to publish a literary magazine. Their friendship splinters as a result of a tense love triangle with Born's girlfriend Margot and as a result of a late night mugging that ends in violence.

The second section, "Summer" describes the events in Adam's life later that summer in New York sharing an apartment with his older sister, Gwyn. This section of the story is told in second person. Adam's story of the summer of 1967 is also framed by his having sent his manuscript, written in 2007, to a new character, James, who we are told is a famous author. In the framing story, James tells us how he receives the manuscript from a dying Adam and they arrange to meet.

In the third section, "Fall" we learn that Adam, in 2007, has died before he and James could meet, and has completed only notes of the third and final section of his memoir of 1967. James fleshes out the notes Adam has left in a third person account. "Fall" tells the story of Adam's trip to Paris, where he encounters Born and Margot, as well as other friends of Born's, a woman named Hélène and her daughter Cécile. Adam inserts himself into the lives of these women and contrives a scheme to atone for guilt he carries stemming from his actions following the mugging in New York. At the close of this section James contacts Gwyn, and it is revealed that James has changed every name and setting in the book in order to protect the identity of the author, "Adam."

The final section takes place in 2007. James has been told by Gwyn that the major events of the second section of the book are entirely made-up, and James wonders whether any of the purported memoir is true. In searching for corroboration, James tracks down Cécile, now a distinguished literary scholar. She concludes the story by describing in her diary how she, in 2007, has a final strange contact with Rudolf Born, at his remote island home in the Caribbean.

(from Wikipedia.com)

Analysis

New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature, which documents the new discipline of the history of ideas. 

In the case of Invisible, literature made way for the people to know the history, the past of Adam Walker. The novel is written in three different point of view. His past was shown in different angles. The first section is Spring wherein he retold what happened to him that spring. The second during summer, the third section during fall and the last section that took place in year 2007.

American Pragmatism

Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports by James Patterson

Plot

Maximum Ride is an unforgettable 14-year-old girl with a way-out-of-control, hilariously sarcastic attitude. But who can blame her with everything she has on her shoulders, including a pair of 13-foot wings?

Max spent the first part of her life locked in a cage, undergoing cruel tests and horrid experiments as evil scientists fused bird DNA onto her human genes. The results produced a super-human hybrid that can soar high into the clouds. Then, with the help of a sympathetic scientist named Jeb, Max and the other bird kids escaped the evil organization. Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman and Angel all look to Max for leadership, protection, guidance and even a bit of affection; all of them miss not having real parents to love.

But ever since Jeb betrayed them, handing them back to the evil scientists, Max and the flock know they can’t trust anyone. This fact is reinforced by the supposedly friendly FBI agent who took them to her farm to live there; she turned out to be working with the bad guys, too. So now they are on the run again and trying to save the world, even though they still don’t know what that means. But, according to the mysterious voice that keeps offering vague advice in Max’s head, it is their destiny and their duty. 

In an attempt to pull off this incredible feat, Fang starts a blog. He believes that if he can inform as many of the world’s kids as possible, they could be a future source of help. Even though the number of visitors to his blog grows every day, Max doubts its worth and instead wants to focus on finding a safe place for them to hide. She and Fang leave the rest of the flock in a hidden cave while they search the surrounding area for possibilities. When they return, they discover that the four younger members are gone. The evil scientists have taken them!

Fang and Max track them down but end up being captured again as well; they didn't expect to encounter the new and improved Erasers. This year’s model of Erasers is comprised of mostly robot with an outer layer of skin --- and these soldiers are tougher than ever.

While in captivity the flock learns some scary stuff, yet they don’t know if they should believe any of it. One example is the By-Half Plan, where the bad guys are intending to cut the world’s population by 50%. And another is that Max’s old nemesis, the wolf hybrid named Ari, now seems to be on the flock’s side. Remarkably, Ari helps them escape, yet Fang refuses to trust him or even be in the same vicinity. So Fang decides to leave Max, and Iggy and the Gasman accompany him. Can any of them survive without the others? And how can a divided flock save the world?

Analysis

Saving the World and Other extreme sport is the third installation of James Patterson's novel Maximum Ride. This is a science fiction novel that deals with super-human hybrid that can soar high into the clouds. An experiment was made wherein scientists fused bird DNA onto her human genes. 

In pragmatism, it is centered in linking the practice and the theory, the only way to prove a theory is through the result of the practice. In the novel, the experiments on our main characters (Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, Angel and Max) is the practice wherein they are trying to prove a theory (which is making a super-human hybrid) But things didn't go well for them, Max and the others had enough so they have decided to fight against the evil scientist.

Structuralsim

One Hundred Years of Solitude 

Gabriela Garcia Marquez

Plot


One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is the story of seven generations of the Buendía Family in the town of Macondo. The founding patriarch of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and Úrsula, his wife (and first cousin), leave Riohacha, Colombia, to find a better life and a new home. One night of their emigration journey, whilst camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of "Macondo", a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to found Macondo at the river side; after days of wandering the jungle, José Arcadio Buendía's founding of Macondo is utopic.[1]
Founding patriarch José Arcadio Buendía believes Macondo to be surrounded by water, and from that island, he invents the world according to his perceptions.[1] Soon after its foundation, Macondo becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events that involve the generations of the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic (mostly) self-inflicted misfortunes. Ultimately, a hurricane destroys Macondo, the city of mirrors; just the cyclical turmoil inherent to Macondo. At the end of the story, a Buendía man deciphers an encrypted cipher that generations of Buendía family men had failed to decipher. The secret message informed the recipient of every fortune and misfortune lived by the Buendía Family generations.[6]
(from Wikipedia.com)

Analysis

Structuralism interpet a text or part of a text by taking its language apart. It has symbolism and is objective by nature. 

Here are the symbolism found in the story: The meaning of the thousands of little gold fishes is that it represent Aureliano’s artistic nature and the artistic nature of all the Aurelianos. The railroad represents the arrival of the modern world in Macondo. The railroad also represents the period when Macondo is connected most closely with the outside world. At first, the English encyclopedia is a symbol for the way the American plantation owners are taking over Macondo. The golden chamber pot is a marker of her lofty status. The gold of the chamber pot is associated with royalty, the function of the chamber pot is associated with defecation.