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In the discussion last class, we discussed a bit about the oddity of Vardaman’s character and his role within the story. Plotting the characters, we decided that Vardaman didn’t necessarily fit along any one specific plane. While reading though I started to get a sense of what his role within the story was. A young […]

After the chaotic fording scene, and bookended by both of the novel’s religious characters, is Addie Bundren’s singular monologue. The Bundren matriarch has been silent up until her death, so prior to this chapter her character is solely comprised of impressions related by her children, husband, and neighbors. Addie’s monologue divulges her rather sadistic attitude […]

Vardaman is the youngest of the Bundren crew, and he takes his mothers death the hardest. He does not know where to place the blame. The book never mentions his age, but it is estimated that he is probably around twelve years old based on the way he talks. He is young and does not […]

During the conclusion to Nella Larsen’s “Passing,” there is a huge focus given to the fact that Irene chooses to ‘protect’ Clare’s continuing “disguise” in regards to her husband. Of course, this ends with the penultimate scene where Mr. Bellew confronts the dinner party that his wife is attending, and Irene pushes Clare to her […]

Nella Larsen’s Passing gets its title from the practice of passing, which is defined by an article from Time as “identifying with and presenting oneself as one race while denying ancestry of another.” In the novel, Clare Kendry has “passed” by disguising her African American heritage, which is successful due to her light skin color. […]

Contrary to previous posts, I’m going to take a step away from the Newsreel and Camera Eye sections and focus more on what Don Passos is trying to convey through his fiction, specifically as it appears through the lens of gender. In the second Janey section, from pages 119 to 131, the reader is given […]

I, like most of us on the blog it seems, have been particularly interested in the Camera Eye and Newsreel sections of the novel. I want to look closely at these sections in particular between pages 203 and 209. Throughout the novel, these sections have conveyed a unique tone and composition distinct from the rest […]

As the other two posts about The 42nd Parallel have so far focused on either the Newsreel or The Camera Eye sections of the text, I thought I would explore how Dos Passos best makes use of his standard prose chapters to uncover the supposed horrific truths behind what he considers to be the dangerous, often […]

In the Prologue of the novel, The 42nd Parallel, we get two pages of paragraph-long sentences, mixed with random punctuation, and no clear sense of a narrator/speaker. I would like to pay particular attention to the last paragraph in the prologue which reads: “U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. […] U.S.A is … a public-library full of […]

An important part of any novel is the character development of any number of the main protagonists. In My Antonia, we see a number of characters develop over the course of the novel but I found a passage in which I would like to analyze in order to truly understand the character of Jim Burden. […]