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Benji's Place in Sag Harbor

  While Benji is the protagonist and narrator of Sag Harbor , I don’t think the book was really about him. What the author is telling is not the story of Benji, but the story of the town of Sag Harbor. Benji’s coming of age story is an illustration of the unique culture of this place and time. His story is just a little slice of the experience of growing up going to Sag Harbor, an experience shared by Benji’s friends, relatives, and community members across generations. What I took away from the book was much less about Benji’s personal journey, and much more about the very unique community and time period that it took place in. In the book, Benji and his friends are framed as one iteration in a series of crews that came down to Sag Harbor in years past and years to come. Benji discusses the crews that came before him. His grandparents were the first residents to build houses in Sag Harbor. His parents once roamed the beaches just like he and his friends did, and eventually went ...
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Black Swan Green, a Collection of Short Stories

        As I read Black Swan Green , I thought it was interesting how the pacing of the book is set up. Rather than one continuous narrative, each chapter of the book dives into its own incident from Jason's life during this year, acting as its own complete story with connections to the rest of the book.           One feature of Black Swan Green ’s narrative structure that makes it feel more like a collection of short stories than a single, continuous novel is the book’s tendency to feature a particular character in only one chapter. The most memorable example of this is Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck. Madame Crommelynck is introduced when Jason goes to visit the Vicarage to discuss his poetry, and she offers him some valuable advice from the perspective of a much older and more experienced artist. Her presence dominates the entire chapter, with much of it dedicated to learning about her past, personality, and the knowledge s...
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Story and Medium

Fun Home is, as I am sure most readers have noticed by now, a graphic novel. This decision is natural given Alison Bechdel's background as a comic artist, but I think it is interesting to consider how its nature as a graphic novel influences how we experience these moments from Bechdel's childhood and adolescence.  The fact that this book is a graphic novel made it challenging to engage with at first. Fun Home, while being a graphic novel, is still a very intricately worded book, and when combined with the wealth of visual information in every scene (so much important detail in this book is shown, not told, which is awesome), this makes it kind of overwhelming on the first read. Every page just contains so much  that I found my self doubling back, rereading, and noticing details that I missed the first time I looked at them. But, I think the blending of narration and images allows the story to come together in a really unique way. The most emotional moments of the book ar...
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Why the Rosenbergs?

               “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs.” (Plath 1) That’s kind of an odd way to start a book, isn’t it? When I first started reading the Bell Jar, I was curious what the reference to the Rosenberg execution was doing here. Was the line simply added to ground the story in the historical period in which it took place? If so, why not just say, “It was the summer of 1953?” And if that were the case, why does the execution come up again halfway into the book, during the conversation with Hilda? I think it is clear that this is not just an offhand reference. To me, the repeated nods to this event seemed intentional and important, and I think they had a lot to do with Esther’s detachment from the world around her as her mental health worsened.                 But first, who were the Rosenbergs?             ...
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Holden Caulfield and You

The Catcher in the Rye 's unique narrative style creates a connection between the reader and Holden Caulfield. The fourth wall is broken in the very first sentence of the book. The first sentence reads: "If you really want to hear about it." From the beginning, Holden is speaking directly to you . The tone of The Catcher in the Rye is very informal. Holden tells his story through swear words and sentence fragments, which was odd to see from a book written in 1951. These choices make it feel less like reading a book and more like hearing Holden tell you his story. Salinger also uses italics  to indicate stressed words syllables in Holden's retelling of the book's events. When he is talking about the boarding school's reputation for turning out clear-thinking boys, he says, "They probably came  to Pencey that way." The stress on the word "came" indicates Holden's disgust with the idea that boys are made more mature by going to Pencey. And...
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