Metanarratives:

 The Things They Carried: metanarrative of war, no idea of war glorification. Fighting, real job of

the soldiers, is marginalized. Incidental details of what happened in the war, more focus on the

things soldiers carried. Death is also treated trivially.

 The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World: against grand narrative of life, death is the

superior binary. Without saying a single word, the dead body becomes the central protagonist,

controls everything in the story. When we read handsome, we have a sense of illusion of life, but

dead man proves to be anticlimactic.

 Death of the Patriarch (Marquez)

 The Dead (Joyce)

 The Rememberer: Metanarrative of evolution is being questioned. Also makes fun of Darwin since

evolution takes millions of years: “My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don’t

know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape.

It’s been a month and now he’s a sea turtle”. “He is shedding a million years a day”.

 The Red Wheelbarrow: grand narrative of nature as it was portrayed in Wordsworth’s poetry, now

no longer healing but destructive: “glazed with rain water”.

 A Hunger Artist: Dismantling the grand narrative of food and eating, by bringing hunger to the

centre, a narrative against survival. Instead of celebrating art, brings huger to the centre.

 The Itch: across 18 and 19 century diseases like TB were considered declarations of death, because

British imperialism did this to achieve their colonial benefits- the itch is making fun of this thing,

a mini narrative against the grand narrative of dominance of these diseases. Itching is

metaphorically orgasmic and replacement for sexuality. Magnifying personal petty issues and

stretching them to cosmic levels, “how is the itch? I think of the itch in world history and my mind
 goes blank.” “You might find that you are a part of the great narrative, thousands of years. The

holy land. The itch.”-trying to debunk larger narrative of disease through mininarrative.

 White Noise: Narrative of death rules, not life, “He is eager to see hoe my death is progressing”-

this is against grand narrative of life

 Death of Canes (Linda Hutcheon)

Parody/Irony:

 The Things They Carried: parody of war literature

 The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World : intertextual elements of Gulliver’s Travels when

he is found at Lilliput.

 The Rememberer: Postmodern irony, insulting in a sophisticated manner with a lot of warmth and

love.

 A Hunger Artist: “Because I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I has found it, believe me, I should

have made no fuss and stuff myself like you or anyone else”.

 Lost in the Funhouse: “Magda G_______, B__________ street, town of D________ Marylands”

parodying nineteenth-century fiction where blanks were used to enhance the illusion of reality.

Intertextuality: James Joyce’s Ulysses: snot-green, scrotum-tightening. Against conventional

forms of narrative and plot, uses Freitag’s Triangle to show so. Believes that this convention

cannot co much longer.

 A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: intertextuality: “They both looked at the fallen body with

a mute stupor”-Paradise Lost-Fallen angel lying in stupor.

 French Lieutenant’s Woman: Parodying 19 century Victorian novel, almost feels as if Geoge Eliot,

Thomas Hardy or some other Victorian writer is writing this. Even gives epigraphs and follows a
 linear narrative. talks about how fate of Charles is in his hand, wants to leave him empty-handed

but Victorian novelists required closure.

 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller is pressing against All Quiet on the American Front—ideas of patriotism,

bravery and martyrdom.

Maximalism:

 The Things They Carried

 A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: descriptions of the man’s handsomeness.

 The Itch: maximalist details of his everyday life such as buying shoes and itching.

 White Noise: Maximalist details of the supermarket at the end.

 Van Gogh’s Peasant Shoes and Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes

 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

 Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut

Pastiche:

 The Things They Carried: autobiography-short stories

 Lost in the Funhouse: short story-essay

 French Lieutenant’s Woman: Genre mixing of novel and essay.

 Picasso’s cubic paintings.

 Maximus poems by Charles Kolson-mix between prose and poetry.

 T.S. Eliot following and violating rhyme at the same time.

 La Frontera (The Borderlands) by Gloria Anzaldua- her memoir in which she moves comfortably

between genres.

 Sarah Sulehri’s What Mama Knew- poetic language seems like fiction not autobiography.
Fragmentation:

 A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: Discussed the protagonist, subject, in different ways,

fragmentation of the subject.

 The Rememberer: “My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don’t know how it

happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It’s been a

month and now he’s a sea turtle”.

 Before the Law: change in protagonist, fragmentation of the subject in different phases till death

 The Itch: Fragmentation of the subject.

 White Noise: Gladney not autonomous, unified, transcendental, but fragmented and anti-hero.

 French Lieutenant’s Woman: Offers 3 endings to the novel, leaves it to the reader to pick an

ending of their choice.

 Hero of Catch 22- a typical anti-hero

 Billy Pilgrims from Slaughterhouse-Five

 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner- Narrator Benji Compson is a 30 years old child, not

in his wits. No unity, cohesiveness, cohesion in his narration. Readers cannot connect the dots

easily.

 The Scream by Edvard Munch- Fragmentation of subject shown through a scream, looks like a

protest against the end of wholeness.

Fabulation:

 The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World: superstitions, the people offering their

deceased to stay protected from the wind. Representation of life is fantastical, movement away

from realist and representational literature.

  A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: fantastic element in realist literature, willing suspension

of disbelief. Man’s presence becomes normal after a few days.

 The Rememberer: magical feminism, magical realist element.

 Lost in the Funhose- fabulating things and presenting them in a real, shattered world.

Reverse Gender Roles:

 The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World: male characters become shadowy, almost

irrelevant, their presence doesn’t count much, place buzzing with ladies. All alive men

marginalized by one dead man.

 The Rememberer: normative conventional binary has been reversed. Here, man is the target of

female gaze. He is reduced to an animal in front of her eyes. “He’s small”. Powerless, she has the

agency. “Do you remember? Do you remember?”. She is the rememberer, which is an attribute

of humans. Dehumanization and animalization of the male subject, leading towards total

annihilation of the male subject: “like an eye-floater into nothingness”.

Relativism:

 The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World: a number of interpretations, e.g. Marxist,

postcolonial

 The Red Wheelbarrow: Marxism, Socialism, Isolation, Alienation.

 Before the Law: “It is possible says the gatekeeper, but not now”. Sense of contingence. Relativism

brought to the language. Extreme case of inaccessibility of law, it is actually inaccessibility,

multiplicity of language, presences and absences in language and its invisible binaries. “Here no

one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it”.

 A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: Marxism, ideological switch, Postcolonialism.
Capitalism\ Commodity Fetishism:

 The Rememberer: “Annie don’t you see? We are all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting

bigger and bigger and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough

heart”. Going towards the age of machines.

 Before the Law: access to law difficult due to gatekeepers. Nature of law is objectified through

attitude of the gatekeeper. Gatekeeper represents guardians of the law.

 A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: the old man becomes a commodity, the people buy it for

some time and then throw it away

 White Noise: Postmodernism has given names of colors to noises, white noise is the noise of

consumer’s culture and capitalism in the markets. Binge watching TV. Neoliberal capitalist,

American consumer culture dictates their lives. Babbett trades her body for medicine-pharma as

part of capitalist consumer culture. Finishes the novel in a supermarket store- consumer market,

“this is the language of waves and radiations, or hoe the dead speak to the living.”

Temporal Distortion:

 Before the Law: “There he sits for days and years”.

 Lost in the Funhouse: breaks linearity of language.

 A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: lapse of time, enormous wings symbolize that he came

from a faraway place in time. Humans have a connection with the past but also get impatient and

want to move on.

 The Itch: Narrative switches throughout the story.

 French Lieutenant’s Woman: Pioneer example of historiographic metafiction, engaged with

history or past tradition of novel writing. Interbreeding of 19 century literarture and postmodern

times.
  Beloved and Jazz by Tony Morrison- multiple narratives, readers confused.

Metafiction:

 Lost in the Funhouse: Inserts passages inside the story. “A single straight underline is the

manuscript for Italic type which in turn is the printed equivalent to oral emphasis of words and

phrases as well as the customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention.”

 French Lieutenant’s Woman: the writer comes in the story in chapter 13, this chapter is a

commentary and does not look like a chapter in a novel, “this story I am telling is all imagination.

These characters I create never existed outside my own mind.” Novelist himself enters the train

in the novel in chapter 55, talks about how fate of Charles is in his hand, wants to leave him empty-

handed but Victorian novelists required closure.

 How to Tell a True War Story by Tim O’Brien

Simulation and Simulacra

 White Noise: second part of the novel “toxic events” is related to this. SIMUVAC-pharmaceutical

company- they are simulating evacuation due to toxic radiations in the air. Signifiers replace

signified, when reality replaces another reality that is not available, for example, SIMUVAC.

 The Gulf War Did not Happen by Baudrillard- whatever media shows us we think it is war but the

reality is different.