What Is Ambiguous Language

28). The stories which create the fantasy typically consist of “common or related content”, known as a fantasy theme (Beebe & Masterson, 2009, p. 44). As members of a small group share stories or experiences with other group members, adherence to the fantasy theme creates “a string of connected stories that revolve around a common theme.” Bormann calls this set of stories a fantasy chain (Beebe & Masterson, 2009, p.42-44). As a fantasy theme develops, is repeated, and flourishes it changes the group members’ social reality. Bormann describes such a change as a rhetorical vision. It is important to note that a group may have more than one rhetorical vision and they can be reinforced through recurring media messages or other influences outside the context of the small group itself (Griffin, 2009, p. 27-29).

Disney’s “Brave” shows many characteristics of Transcendentalism, by including the ideals of real self found in nature, individualism and nonconformity, and signs--specifically supernatural signs--are found in nature. “Brave’”s strong connection to these philosophies make it a key candidate for comparing modern day pop culture to past literary movements.

In Walker Percy’s essay titled “The Loss of the Creature,” Percy repeatedly attempts to instill the philosophy of realism in the mind of the reader. However, the manner in which he chooses to approach this goal is fairly peculiar, and uncommon among essayists. The essay is one of examples, mostly describing the pitfalls of expectation, and leaving much room for interpretation. It is felicitous that just as Percy desires to ingrain the value of the principle of discovery in the reader’s approach, the reader himself must discover the actual meaning of the essay. By looking through the examples, the reader soon picks out a

In his article “The Loss of The Creature,” Walker Percy presents the case that human or “creature’s” experiences are most often trivial because of our preconceived notions. Percy believes we can only truly enjoy these experiences if we leave the “beaten track.” Only then can we see the true beauty of the experience.

Magical realism, is a form of literary genre that takes the reader on a journey somewhere between the mundane of ordinary everyday life, to the supernatural world of uncertainty where things are accepted without question or reason. A gap exists between two world’s- the ordinary and the extra ordinary which can be examined in two stories of this genre, “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol, and “Don Ysidro” by Bruce Holland Rogers. While both have similarities in tone consistent with this genre, such as being serious and realistic, the stories do have differences in the specific tone of the dialogue the authors use to describe characters and parts of the story. A comparison and contrast of the above two stories will reveal both the similarities and differences between stories as they relate to the genre of magical realism.

Imagine, every morning you wake up to the sound of the rooster singing. Not to the normal crow a rooster makes, but to a beautiful sonata that wakes your soul up from a deep slumber. It may not sound too realistic in our real word, but to a writer, this can bring special emphases to the story’s meaning. This literary practice is called magical realism. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines magical realism, or magic realism as they put it; 1) painting in a meticulously realistic style of imaginary or fantastic scenes or images; and 2) a literary genre or style associated especially with Latin America that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction. It is the second definition that author Laura Esquivel, incorporates magical realism into her book, Like Water for Chocolate. Many of the themes and emotions in the book are emphasized with the use of Magical realism.

In his book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage famed Japanese author Haruki Murakami straddles a myriad of genres of fiction, blending his traditional magical realism with elements of crime noir. Murakami’s unique style accents the more fantastical aspects of narrative--dreams that blend into reality and mysterious figures transpose from one reality into the next. Ultimately, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage leaves readers perplexed. When is the protagonist Tsukuru truly dreaming and when is he awake? Do his vivid visions reflect a reality? Another reality? And is that reality of equal substance as the one Tsukuru seems to inhabit the majority of the time? Murakami’s character cannot even be sure of what constitutes an objective reality. When they meet again many

The world is full of boundaries and limits, but what does this mean? Do we develop and implicate these boundaries ourselves, being subconscious acts of our mind or have they developed from a greater power in the universe. Joel Silver’s production of the 1999 film The Matrix effectively explores and showcases how realities can differ. As the characters overcome a perceived reality challenging a “computer generated dream world” (The Matrix, 1999), they develop an understanding of the imprisonment which artificial realities on an individual’s mind. Similarly ‘The Allegory of the Cave’ which is one of Plato’s greatest works, illustrates reality beyond the capabilities of our senses (touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste).

The "thing" eaten, then, could not be a "thing" if it were at the same time –and this is essential– a body. This body, nevertheless, was a sign with a purely positional value. What was eaten was the enemy's relation to those who consumed him;

Magical realism is a genre that portrays both reality and fantasy. As defined by Faris (2004) in Ordinary enchantments, magical realism is a genre of writing that includes an irreducible element of magic and details that suggest phenomenon (Faris, 2004, p. 7). He describes the irreducible element as: “…something we cannot explain according to the laws of the universe as they have been formulated in Western empirically based discourse…” (Faris, 2004, p. 7). In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, The handsomest drowned man in the world, the facets of magical realism are rife. He uses magical realism to enchant the reader. The story is of a small cliff-side and coastal community

Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, a city in Japan. He lived his life in a time and place, where traditions had absolute influence on people and were very highly valued. This inspired him when he was writing his stories. For influence, he had to read Western literature. In his works, Haruki Murakami shows that he supports the idea of more freedom against traditions, but still presents the risks of choosing not to follow them.

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.

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.

and insecurity. Murakami takes all of these hardships of human living and includes them in his

The eccentric. The marvelous. These are just a few words used to describe the genre of ‘magic realism’, which is also known as ‘magical realism’ (the usage of the term, as well as its history, has been debated from the beginning, but shall be bypassed as it is an entirely different topic from what is to be discussed in this commentary). Although Oxford Dictionaries defines it as “a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy”, others have also interpreted the genre in various other ways. However, the genre itself has a set of elements and characteristics that make them its own, which helps differentiate it from fantasy, as written pieces in magic realism are sometimes mistaken to