Features of Metafiction and Well Known Writers of the Genre Essay

    Metafiction is experienced throughout A Girl’s Story by drawing attention to the fact that the story is a work of fiction. David Arnason speaks towards the audience a lot through the story, the actual story doesn't even start until the third paragraph. One example of David speaking to his readers is; “so you’ve got long blonde hair and you’re this tall slender girl with amazingly blue eyes...i’m going to put a tiny black mole on your cheek. Its traditional. If you want your character to be really beautiful there has to be a minor defect.” (228). He uses metafiction to show that it is all a illusion by switching back and forth from his story to real life. David tells us to finish the story by saying “Now i’ve got to bring this to some kind of ending. You think that writers know how stories end before they write them, but that's not true. We’re wracked with confusion and guilt and guilt about how things are going to end.” (232). “I’m going to end it right here at the moment of the kiss. You can do what you want with the rest of it.” (233).

It is unrealistic that a teenage boy could survive upwards of 200 days in the middle of the Pacific Ocean alongside a 450-pound tiger. But literature does not reflect ordinary life, therefore it is important in the study of literature to separate the two, because literature is not about being practical or realistic, it is about being imaginative. The unreality of Life of Pi allows the Hero’s Journey archetype to be easily identifiable, for example, as literature provides the extremes of scenarios, stretching the capacity of the imagination to the very heights and depths of what the human mind can conceive. Literature provides us with an experience that reality cannot, because in reality, the imagination is limited to what is physically possible, but in literature, the imagination is able to be free. Through understanding the conventions of literature, the individual, in studying more complex works, is able to appreciate the use of the imagination to reach beyond what reality offers us and is able to refine his sensibilities as he recognizes the partition between life and literature.

He glanced out of the window, watching the sky turning from a deep blue shade to a clear, blue, breezy morning. ‘A good day.’ He made a mental note to himself. The sun baked through the curtains, sharpening his enormous shadow. He thought of that fussy factory owner and sighed.

Imagine yourself shipwrecked upon an uninhabited island. The experience of being stranded will cause you to pose many questions, with the possibility of only one of those questions to being answered. One answered question is: what is the purpose of literature? Northrop Frye, within “Motive for Metaphor”, uses the analogy of being within an uninhabited island to examines the purpose of literature by connecting it to the purposes of language and their use within the different worlds and levels of the mind Frye sees present.

Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” and Tess Gallagher’s “Rain Flooding your Campfire” are good examples of intertextual dialogue between two writers. These two stories show us how two writers can grow and develop short stories differently from the same experience. There are similarities between the stories, such as the use of a first person narrator, the plot, setting, and also there is an interchange between the narrator and the blind man in both stories. But within these similarities there are also differences; the narrators are two different people with two very different views on the situation, and although there is an interchange between the characters they are two different types with two different messages. Gallagher’s story is a

In the chapter “Good Form,” Tim O’Brien explains the difference between the “story truth” and the “happening truth,” (O’Brien 179) The “happening truth” is a historically accurate summary and told without feeling, while the “story truth” is told with details and is a dramatization. The “happening truth” tells while the “story truth” shows. This example of metafiction shows that sometimes the truth cannot be told by facts, it has to be demonstrated through a series of exaggerations to get the real

Metacognition refers to “ thinking about what you are thinking”; the audiences are the ones you want to persuade or to educate. In outcome one, the writer needs to form a metacognition of the use of language in different writing contexts, which requires the writer has a clear understanding of who the audience is so that various aspects of writing will be formed accordingly. Keeping whom the audiences is an important aspect of writing because it determines how the arguments would be delivered in each piece of writing. Hence, the writer should consider the audiences’ needs in the background information provided, the frequency of terminology used, the tone, the style, the word choice and the content. More importantly, having a specific audience

"Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality."

used the character’s conversation and the setting of the story to tell the reader what he is trying to

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a novella that begins with an absurd concept. A man wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect. While this concept for a story is certainly absurd, Kafka contrasts this plot with a rather dull, plain narrative. It may initially seem novel to explain a ridiculous situation in a simple manner, but this causes the novella to be quite boring.

Often in literature, a story tells of a brief portion of a person’s life, often only spanning a few months to a year’s time, however, sometimes, a story will follow a character from their youth into their adulthood, allowing the reading to see how the character develops over the course of their life. Such as story is called a Bildungsroman; it follows one main character from their youth into adulthood. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre follows the story of Jane Eyre as she goes from a young orphan being sent to school for the first time, into her time as a governess, dependent on her boss for survival, and eventually ending as an individual of equal standing as her husband. Jane Eyre is a clear example of a Bildungsroman as it illustrates the story of Jane's life, beginning with her as a young child being abused by her aunt and following as she goes through school and work as a governess until she ends the story as an independent, grown woman.

As the era of literature slowly declines, the expert critiques and praise for literature are lost. Previously, novels were bursting at the seams with metaphors, symbolism, and themes. In current times, “novels” are simply short stories that have been elaborated on with basic plot elements that attempt to make the story more interesting. Instead of having expert critical analysis written about them, they will, most likely, never see that, as recent novels have nothing to analyze. Even books are beginning to collect dust, hidden away and forgotten, attributing to the rise of companies such as Spark Notes. An author deserves to have his work praised, no matter how meager and the masses should have the right to embrace it or to reject it. As

At the outset, Biographical Criticism serves as a good starting point for examining Franz Kaka’s The Metamorphosis. Biographical Criticism believes the text’s connection with its writer is inseparable, so in this case Kafka’s connection with The Metamorphosis. Firstly, Kafka believed sincerely that language is the essence of human existence, so Kafka wrote in way that followed his philosophies; however, Kafka’s status as a Jew in Prague held him back (Breckman). Still, Kafka’s love of

In this analytic essay, I will be exploring the use of literary language in the novel Saturday by Ian McEwan and how with the use of narration and imagery can under shadow a simple piece of literature.

Modernism, in literature, can be seen as a shift in focus to the unassociated introspective reflection of characters in such texts as Go Tell It On The Mountain, by James Baldwin, Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West and The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. This is a revision from the previous focal point of exterior events and places in correlation with the character’s reflections. Emphasis is placed on review upon feelings and thoughts, and even conversations with oneself, as opposed to the more directly event-driven reflections in texts of the pre-modernist era.