Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Tiger Wife
The opening passage of Tea Obrecht's novel The Tiger's Wife is one of its most compelling, and draws the reader into the unique narrative. With the line, "the forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death," Obrecht could be resorting to a maudlin bit of poetic license. Instead, the author continues the existential description and thereby sets the stage for the tone and themes of the entire novel. By beginning with imagery of death, Obrecht welcomes the reader to ponder the meaning of life. A juxtaposition of life and death haunts the reader from the first paragraph. However, there are more juxtapositions that await the reader and which are foreshadowed in this early passage. The narrator states that the living "know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past." In addition to the juxtaposition of life and death, soul and body, is added the juxtaposition of past, present, and future. Therefore, the opening passage signals one of the main themes of the novel, that continuity and change coexist in the human experience.
Binaries are key to understanding The Tiger's Wife, which is why the opening passage is filled with an exploration of how opposites characterize human perception. The node of juxtaposition hinges mainly on binaries like "difficulties and unbridled happiness," as well as "love and guilt." All human beings experience these types of polar opposites in their life, which...
Historical situations change, social norms change, but human perception, cognition, joy and suffering do not change. Throughout multiple generations, such as the ones we meet as we read The Tiger's Wife, human beings all must die.
Therefore, the reader learns that multigenerational wisdom, continuity, and change permeates the pages of The Tiger's Wife, too. After the opening passage and its exploration of death, life, and binaries, the narrator grounds the narrative by referring to her grandparents. Grandparents symbolize a bygone generation. However, grandparents also represent wisdom and an understanding of history. Superstitions, such as those related to the proverbial forty days of the soul that offers the opening imagery for the novel, are also deeply rooted in the past. By exploring the past with grandparents, it becomes possible to understand the present and possibly transform the future. Throughout generations there is continuity of culture and core human values; but change is also inevitable. This is why the opening passage of The Tiger's Wife is remarkable. Obrecht is able to show that change and continuity occur simultaneously and that death is a counterpart of life and integral to it.
Given the setting of the novel, the author does want the reader to better understand Balkan culture and history through an exploration of…
Work Cited
Obrecht, Tea. The Tiger's Wife. New York: Random House, 2011.
Coming across Hrothgar and Unferth, Grendel further realizes that the human society is immoral and that people having nothing against harming other people. Unferth, however, presents Grendel with the concept that life sometimes has a meaning, but that only heroes can discover it. The final scene, where Beowulf battles Grendel, contributes in having the monster understand the meaning of life, as it is informed by the Geatish hero that life
Joy Luck Club and American Culture Section One (1-2 paragraph summary). Introduce and summarize the main plot of the movie. Describe the main story and characters involved. To do this in 1-2 paragraphs, you will need to be brief and focus on the main events in the movie. The Joy Luck Club (1993) was based on Amy Tan's 1989 novel and deals with issues of culture, assimilation and generation conflicts between a
Last Duchess Jealousy, Rage, and Possession in Browning's "My Last Duchess" Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" emphasizes Victorian ideals of women and allows readers to understand how they were objectified. In this macabre poem, Browning uses the themes of jealousy, rage, and possessiveness to describe what motivated the Duke to behave as he did. In the poem, the unnamed narrator has transformed his wife into an object on numerous occasions and
Your answer should be at least five sentences long. The Legend of Arthur Lesson 1 Journal Entry # 9 of 16 Journal Exercise 1.7A: Honor and Loyalty 1. Consider how Arthur's actions and personality agree with or challenge your definition of honor. Write a few sentences comparing your definition (from Journal 1.6A) with Arthur's actions and personality. 2. Write a brief paragraph explaining the importance or unimportance of loyalty in being honorable. Lesson 1 Journal
Scott Fitzgerald Hollywood Years The turning point in F. Scott Fitzgerald's life was when he met in 1918 Zelda Sayre, herself an aspiring writer, they married in 1920. In the same year appeared Fitzgerald's first novel, "This side of paradise," in which he used material from The Romantic Egoist. Its hero, Armory Blaine, studies in Princeton, serves in WWI in France. At the end of the story he finds that his
Disney sets them up, sexes them up, and throws them under the bus when they come of age. But who is complaining? Very few. The fact is celebrity gossip has become an industry unto itself. People love watching stars fall. If Disney can provide the stars, people will watch. In summation, Disney Corps. has gone from Dumbo to just plain dumb. Yet, the park Walt Disney originated in 1955 holds