Symbols and metaphors

Written in 1968 and set during the World War II, on the surface, Lost in the Funhouse is the story of a thirteen-year-old boy’s trip to the beach with his family on the fourth of July. With Ambrose are his older brother Peter, their mother and father, their Uncle Karl, and a fourteenyear-old neighbor girl, Magda, to whom both Ambrose and Peter are attracted. Having learned that they cannot go to the beach, the group decides to go through the funhouse instead. Both boys fantasize about going through the maze with Magda, but it suddenly becomes clear to Ambrose that he has misunderstood the meaning of the funhouse which is associated with sexuality and for which he is not ready yet. He also realizes that he is different from his bother and Magda: he is not the type of person for whom funhouses are fun. Confused and separated from the others, Ambrose takes a wrong turn and loses his way. During the process of finding his way out of the dark corridors, he comes to some realizations about himself and about funhouses. The story starts with the question “For whom is the funhouse fun? ”, and answers itself; “Perhaps for lovers.”However it adds “For Ambrose it is a place of fear and confusion.”

The day the family chose for the trip is The 4th of July, Independence Day, symbolizing the transformation of our hero into an adult leaving his childhood back. However, because of the style used by Barth, it is impossible to wait for a usual initiation kind of story. Writing in the second half of the 20^th century, Barth is a postmodern author. Although he is usually praised for his usage of the techniques of postmodernist writing successfully, his works are sometimes blamed of being too much “self-conscious, self-indulgent, and selfreferential almost to the exclusion of any “realistic, ” external, or “objective” content” or being “fake and immoral because they depict life as absurd.” The reason for these attacks may be because of Barth’s own words that claim “the possibilities of fiction [has] already been used up and that nothing [is] left for writers but to lapse into self-conscious parody.” “Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality.” “When Ambrose and Peter’s father was their age, the excursion was made by train, as mentioned in the novel The 42nd Parallelby John Dos Passos.” “The Irish author James Joyce, in his unusual novel entitled Ulysses, now avaible in this country, uses the adjectives snot-greenand scrotum-tighteningto describe the sea.”By using these references, Barth informs us that his usage of language, these expressions are no longer original but have been used before. What makes the author original in postmodern period is to have a style of his own rather than talking about something original.

Barth’s work is rich with s ymbols which one can make use of many ways. The dominant symbol of the story is the funhouse itself. It is multifunctional, it is a literary symbol representing; 1. “the chaos and complexity of human experience” In the postmodern world, life is like a funhouse which does not make sense anymore. 2. “the rite of passage into adulthood” 3. “the mysteries of sex and of the female anatomy” 4. “the comic, nonlinear, and labyrinthine structure of the narrative”

It is in fact impossible to determine what has actually occurred: a thirteen-year old Ambrose may be on his way to the funhouse (or on his way back), or he may have lost his way in the funhouse where he lingers yet, or he may be an adult (married with children) looking back at his youthful experience, or he may have died, and so on. Like Ambrose, the reader is made to wander in a (textual)funhouse, and the story thus performs the very disorientation that is its subject matter. READER – COCREATOR

mirrors are significant symbols that represent the fragmanted world of Ambrose. Being so much self-conscious, Ambrose can not experience the outside world as others do or he can not just focus on the moment but his mind travels

back and forth evaluating endless possibilities forever which makes him feel “an odd detachment, as though some one else were Master.” Looking at the mirrors, although Ambrose sees many Ambroses reflecting upon each other, he can not find his real self and this makes impossible for him to find the way out.

Ambrose’s world and reality are so much in pieces that even Barth himself is not sure whether Ambrose is a real person or just an imagination of his own mind and asks ironically, “are there other errors of fact in this fiction? ”His purpose is certainly to create the effect of uncertainity on the readers to underline a characteristic of the postmodern era. His emphasize becomes stronger when he clearly states “nothing was what it looked like.”

Every word of him being written, like Barth, Ambrose is now a stroyteller as well, an assistant of the Secret Operator who stands for God himself, and helping him to create the world by words. Moreover, he dreams of designing a funhouse himself and be the operator of it in which nobody would get lost; which means he wants to reconstruct the universe as an author to give it the order it lost a long time ago back. In this funhouse, it was the duty of the operator “to balance things out; if anyone seemed lost or frightened.” At the end of the story, Ambrose seems not only accepting his lifelong entrapment within his own mind and language but also he calls the author of this story to finish it in a rational way since he has no turning back now after gaining consciousness: “He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. The he wishes he were dead. But he’s not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator-though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.” The only way left for Ambrose is to accept his fate and create worlds for others even if he knows that they are not true like the secret operator of the funhouse who knows the tricks and lies of the funhouse but whose job is to hide them in order to make others happy.

27. The power of the language in D.Barthelme’s At the End of the Mechanical Age.

“At the End of the Mechanical Age” represents a parody of fictional traditions and the various structures of storytelling they employ. By juxtaposing such structures, Barthelme exposes—to both scrutiny and laughter—the historical consciousness of the modern age. When biblical or creation myths jostle with “true romance” materials, then the modernist belief that we stand at the end of a long historical process, and thereby derive a certain cultural and social advantage, is given the lie. At the same time the themes of divorce, repression, and secular self-doubt enter the mix, as they do in the tradition of nineteenth-century realist novels, but in a telegraphed way that some critics see as one of the hallmarks of Barthelme’s style. He not only parodies his characters and their concerns, he also mocks the very possibilities and burdens of storytelling itself. Because he calls into question the mechanics of this central cultural activity, and by extension the ability of language to represent reality, he is often credited with influencing many aspects of postmodernism. His point of departure is certainly the suggestion, first developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s, that industrial society was evolving into a state that would be fundamentally different from that which had defined it for the previous two centuries—what some commentators have called postindustrial society. Barthelme pokes fun at this notion without fundamentally overturning it, by having the two main characters, the unnamed “I” and his eventual wife, “Mrs. Davis, ” speak of “the end of the mechanical age” as if it were the same thing as talking about the end of the day, a precise thing with a particular nature and schedule. Clearly, whatever will happen to humankind, it is not something that can be controlled, at least not by the average citizens that make up middle-class society. While “the end of the mechanical age” is the period of time that covers the length of Barthelme’s story, it is also a phrase that may be used metaphorically when referring to the end of any of the various periods given within the story.

At both the beginning and at the end of Barthelme’s story, we find the main characters Tom and Mrs. Davis, living in the time of “the end of the mechanical age; ” and across the story we find a number of different periods in collage form involving relationships as well. As soon as the story begins, we find Tom saying that “[t]he mechanical age is drawing to a close” (Barthelme 2814), and we find the story ending -yet ongoing- at “the end of the mechanical age” (2818). Throughout the story, however, several periods take place with clear demarcations given. While the main story revolves around a central relationship-that of Tom and Davis- within it are found a number of minor time periods involving the marriage (or a kind of relationship) between Jake and Davis, the dating period of Tom and Davis, the marriage of Tom and Davis, and the wished-for relationships between Ralph and Davis and Tom and Maude.

“[T]he end of the mechanical age” period covering Barthelme’s overall story, works as a fictional version of the biblical “time of the end” period. Yet, the whole period in Barthelme’s story stretching from the beginning of creation to the time of the end is called “mechanical, ” because as the story points out, God engineered everything mathematically from the beginning of creation, to function mechanically, aided by electricity or grace. Everything else we’ve been taught -according to the story- is “apocryphal heterodoxy”

The individual stories found within the overall story are marked off by “blackouts” or “brownouts” –known also as “temporary dimming” (Barthelme 2818)- and distinguished by certain characteristics. The Jake and Davis relationship is recalled by Davis and spoken of as though it were a marriage relationship, in mentioning that Jake “had a lust for life, and life had a lust for him”, which seems to imply that she knew him pretty good for quite a while –as one gets to know one in a marriage relationship- along with the fact that she “was inconsolable when Jake passed away”. The next period would be that of Tom and Davis’ dating period, which starts at the beginning of the story when they meet at “the grocery store” (Barthelme 2814) –God with a flashlight at the basement checking the grace meters points to this beginning (Ibid.)- and ends when the boat they are in sinks during the flood (“God then rained forty days and forty nights, when the water tore away the front of the house we got into the boat, ” 2815; “At that moment the water jumped into the boat and sank us”, 2816; this period ends with them sinking under water in the boat. The next period is that of Tom and Davis’ marriage ceremony -started off by God’s presence shining bright (Barthelme 2816)- that ends with a “brownout” at their divorce, their lives continuing under dim light. And the last period, is the one wished for involving Ralph and Maude, which is comparable to the Bible’s time of the very end found within the “time of the end, ” when “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased”; for Ralph may be a type of concept character that stands for progress, neatness, wealth and vice (“credit cards, ” “flaws, ” “natty, ” and “prosperity”; Barthelme 2814, 2815), and Maude another kind of concept character that represents progress as well, for as she names “tools” she stands for ways, keys, organization, methods and techniques

28. Oral tradition in written text. Strategies of storytelling in L.M.Silko’s Lullaby.

“Lullaby” is a short story that first appeared in a book entitled Storyteller in 1981. This was a book written by Leslie M. Silko that uses short stories, memories, poetry, family pictures, and songs to present her message. The book is concerned, in general, with the tradition of story-telling as it pertains to the Native American culture

Throughout the story there are quite a few conflicts. Some are internal between Ayah and herself and others are external ones through Ayah, the white man, and Chato, her husband. The story is told by the main character, Ayah. She’s an old woman retracing tragic memories of life occurrences like the death of her son, Jimmie, in a helicopter crash during a war. She was not sure about what happened to him until a man in khakis drove up in a blue sedan and told her that he was dead and how he died. Jimmie was the one that taught Ayah to sign her name. She regrets this greatly as she relays the loss of her other two children who were taken by white doctors because they were thought to have a disease, allegedly given to them by their grandmother. They were taken because, in fear of the white men who were yelling and pointing for her signature, she “signed” the children away. Later on, when they were brought to visit, it was apparent the children were forgetting their customs and language; further evidence of the completeness of her loss. These events seem to have severely alienated Ayah towards Chato as well. Especially those specifically related to the children as indicated by, “She slept alone on the hill until the middle of November until the first snows came. Then she made a bed for herself where the children slept. She did not lie down next to Chato..

The storytelling is not only a way of life; it is also a continuation of life in the community, an act of showing that there was not anything lost, nothing was dead, nobody was gone; in stories everything is held together regardless of time”.T he storyteller in a community passes down the spiritual inheritance among the native people. Leslie Marmon Silko construct new voices of her own by the re-telling the tribe stories. Every story is a part of a big story. As a result the meaning of a story cannot be exhausted and completely carried out by the teller itself. Leslie Marmon Silko is a storyteller constructing new voices of her own by re-telling the old communal stories. " Lullaby" is one of the most noted pieces in Storyteller. The “lullaby’ of the titleis a song for the newborn as well as the dying in this story.The story opens to Ayah sitting under a tree, caught in a reverie of memories. She remembersthe birth of her children. Three experiences caused Ayah the most pain: Jimmy’s death, the confiscation of Danny and Ella and Chato’s service to the people who do not share the Navajo way oflife and principles they follow. All of those things led to a slow alienation between Ayah and Chato.

RACIAL AND CULTURAL OPPRESSION

Native Americans throughout the history in a lot of ways were under the oppression of the white people. First they took away their land, destroyed the nature, and then they tried to destroy them as a nation. When they were finished with killing, that for them was justified, they found other ways to oppress the Native people. Finally, the rancher who employs Chato isanother symbol of oppressive white authority. When Chato breaks his leg on the job falling off a horse, the rancher refuses to pay him until he is able to workagain. And when he determines that Chato is too old to work, he fires him and kicks the old couple out of their home to make room for the new workers. These actions add class oppression onto the condition of racial oppression from which Ayah and her family suffer

LANGUAGE BARRIERS Language as a bearer of culture is central to Ayah’s sense of loss throughout herlife. The language barrier between Ayah and the white doctor who eventually take her children away is an important factor in Ayah’s experience. Because she does not speak their language, she has no idea why they have come to her home.

DEATH AND LOSS Ayah’s life is characterized by a series of traumatic losses of her family membersat the hands of the white culture. Loss of traditional culture, loss of nativelanguage and loss of family are each brought about her encounters with white culture. Her son Jimmy dies in a war, fighting for the U.S. government, the very government responsible for the destruction of his native culture. Ayah lost her two youngest children, Danny and Ella when they were taken away to a government institution. Their removal from the family home leads to their alienation from their native culture and language, as well as their familyJuxtaposed against these traumatic losses is the burial of two Ayah’s babies who did not survive. For Ayah, it was easier to accept the death of two of her babieswhen she was able to bury them in a traditional way on their native land than to accept the theft of her children by the white culture.“It was worse than if they had died; to lose the children and to know that somewhere, in a place called Colorado, in a place full of sick and dying strangers, herchildren were without her”

29. Postcolonial criticism and D.Hwang’s play M.Butterfly