Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed Essay

For instance, the author’s use of characters: Sanger Rainsford, General Zaroff, Whitney, and Ivan, help to give the story meaning. Sanger Zaroff, a world-renowned big-game hunter, intelligent and experienced, Rainsford uses his wits and physical abilities to outwit General Zaroff: “I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey’s. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon.” Hiding from Zaroff, he recalls his days fighting in the trenches of World War I, where he witnessed unimaginable violence: “Rainsford had dug himself in France when a second’s delay meant death. That had been a placid pastime compared to his digging now.” At the same time, the three-day chase reverses his life of privilege and ease, forcing him to sacrifice comfort and luxury to survive. General

The author broke down the book into four sections: the Transfer, the Initiate, the Son, and the Traitor. They all show specific points in Four’s life. The author portrays Four’s perspective to the readers by writing the book in the first person of Four. This made the book seem like a personal journal or diary, with words that show feeling and passion in different emotions. The author not only tells the story in first person, but she had quotes showing a conversation between characters. She then lets readers inside the mind of Four with what he might be thinking about something he or someone else said. The language was perfected to liven up the story.

The author’s main idea and purposes are revealed by a series of anecdotes and allusions. The author gets very personal about the subject, as if she was going through the realization herself. You can see her opinion by the way she refers to certain things. For example, the author brings up an old memory from her childhood in paragraph nine. When she is describing the boxcar children, the words she uses are almost as if they were too

Another postmodern ideal found in the novel is random changes in time. The novel continually skips in a cycle from Oskar’s story, to his grandpa’s story, back to Oskar’s story, to his grandma’s story. The changes in time are never noted it is the reader’s job to figure out whose story is being told. Upon the first reading it is hard to differentiate between whose story is being told because of the frequent changes in time. Also Oskar is on a journey to find truth. He is on a search to find to what a key he found in his dad’s room belongs too. Also he is curious to find out how his dad died. At the end of the novel, or the end of his journey he never truly finds what he was looking for, the “truth”. Many postmodernists believe that there is not one truth and that truth is the combination of everyone’s experiences, everyone creates it. This theme is reiterated through the writing style Foer chooses. He chose to include the different perspectives and stories of many of the characters through the random time changes, this suggests that there isn’t only one truth.

Smoke and flames were spewing out of gaping holes bored by American Airlines’ Boeing 767 that crashed between the 93 and 99 floors on the North face of the 110- story building. Each of the North Tower floors were roughly an acre. The top 20 floors engulfed in flames, he was staring at a 20- acre fire raging 90 stories above. He thought in his head that, This is the most unbelievable sight I’ve ever seen. Meldrum parked the fire truck on the West Street in front of the

One way he does this is by switching from the generally limited third person narrative of the rest of the story to a more open omnipresent style for the intercalary sections. These free-for-all omniscient chapters allow Paton to be a little more direct in making a point about things or giving his thoughts on an issue – these chapters are great for giving him an avenue that provides context for what he is trying to say in the rest of the novel. Another technique he uses in the first two intercalary chapters that differs from the rest of the book is that of stream of consciousness writing, in which he writes out numerous short statements from random South Africans that when merged together manage to form a semi-coherent thought on an issue. This can tell the reader the general opinion of the population on a certain cause or event; for example, in Chapter 12 (an intercalary chapter), Paton gives a block of writing with the opinions of different South Africans on what to do about the black

The novel is written in 3rd person omniscient. This outside voice affects the plot by allowing readers to look into the mind of multiple characters, not just one. It allows readers to have an insight that the characters do

Figurative language is one of the literary aspects. For example: ‘’I never understood why you would ever feel the need to shoot the fish in the barrel. I mean, they're in a barrel, you've already caught them. The hard work's done, they can't escape. So if you want them dead, just drain the water out. Why bring guns into it?” Another literary example used in the book is the use of syntax. The following quote demonstrates the author’s use of the correct syntax in his writing. “I don't understand a thing about this world: about people, and why they do the things they do. The more I find out, the more I uncover, the more I know, the less I understand.” Lastly, the author explains his point of view very well so that the reader can truly understand the author’s point of view. For example: ‘’Batman doesn't have any superpowers. He's not superhuman. He's not super. So therefore he can't be a

On September 16, 1920, an explosion tore through the streets of Lower Manhattan’s “Corner”. The Wall Street Bombing of 1920 was the deadliest terror attack on American soil until the Oklahoma bombing 75 years later. The blast killed 38 people and injured hundreds of

At 9:03 a.m. a massive bomb resting inside a rented Ryder truck destroyed half of the nine story federal building in downtown Oklahoma City. Within moments, the surrounding area looked like a

little after 10 A.M. that morning the two mines exploded causing the ground to shake violently as far as eight miles away. The explosion shattered buildings and pavements, hurled people and horses violently to the ground, and knocked streetcars off of their rails. Willing volunteers rushed to the mines to help rescue as many miners as possible. Black coal filled the mines and the atmosphere outside. The explosion derstroyed a ventilation fan which was installed to circulate the clean air. The volunteers at to make its way through the fallen timbers, wrecked cars, mining equipment, coal dust and other rubble. As the rescue parties made there way deeper in the mine they used canvas curtains to restore ventilation. Many volunteers found the conditions

The author is very descriptive and gives readers a lot of information. Sentences like “The wait was electric, for Chicago was a prideful place” (13) are very formal and hold the character of that time. The author’s style is descriptive, and thoroughly narrates events. Sentences like “mounds of quicklime; a large kiln; a dissection table stained with what seemed to be blood” are very descriptive and add to the eerie feeling that readers get (364). The words the author chose helped readers know how they are supposed to feel about certain subjects. An example is the sentence “He possessed them all and reveled in his possession” (350). This sentence makes readers such as myself feel uncomfortable and adds to the depiction of Holmes. His wording helped readers understand his characters. This books serves as a reminder for other books like Great Gatsby but heavily contrasts Great Gatsby in the fact that it depicts much more gruesome events and is a darker read that Gatsby. The author also uses a lot of paragraph breaks to try to highlight something that is important for readers to not. The book was easy to read but packed with information. The author also implies a lot of things instead of outrightly stating

The first literary devices that I noticed when I began to read the novel was that the book is written in the point of view of the main character Holden Caulfield. This is in the First Person point of view. Having written the novel in first person it gives the readers a chance to be able to have a more emotional connection with the main character. The novel being told from the perspective of a 16 year old lets people around the same age be able to understand

The bright red fire truck sped through the streets filled with uniform, pale grey colored houses. The wheels skidded to a stop in front of a house that looked just like the others, as Beatty violently pulled the brake backwards. The men went tumbling backwards, as if the truck had just hit a brick wall in front of them.

The structure of the novel is intensely isolated, which could allude to the control the bourgeoisie has over the proletariat, and the little choices they have over their own lives. There are typically just one or two paragraphs to a page, for example, the first and second