The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin Essay

The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin - Essay Example Composition of the narrative "Shot" belongs is very interesting and highly complicated by through its multilevel character that is created by means of several narrators usage and complexity of plot. On the top stage of compositional ladder is Pushkin by himself. ("A.P."), formally delivered the authorship to Belkin I.P. and accordingly turned himself into a publisher. We get to know about the late Belkin from the letter addressed to "A.P." written by Belkin's neighbor and elder friend who preferred to be nameless. Content of all 5 stories was told to Belkin by witnesses of the events one way or the other related to those people who participated in narrated events. All suggested for the reader correlated straight out with the true life. From the other side the story content may be essentially revised as all in all it is narrated by the third persons. Still the less implication of author's presence in narration and hence the superior social reliability and realistic portrayal of life dominate possible inaccuracy of facts. In Pushkin's stories the system of relationship between narrators looks like a pyramid: Pushkin A.S. Such a solution of composition and fixing up of imaginary authorship accounted for creation of multileveled text gives an opportunity to seize reality, to describe Russian folkway and to narrate about characters' destinies and being bent on more deeply and widely. First-hand narrators are not pococurante of what they are telling about as all the occurred events could easily happen to any of socially close to them person: understrappers, philistines, officers, provincial ladies etc.As a general rule the names of narrators and heros of stories, as well as the scene are not nominated. That is made in order to emphasize the breadth of narrative scene that expanded almost through all the Russian land.The feature of artistic method is as follows: presumptive picture of reality is represented out of the ordinary events background. Moreover out of the ordinary events themselves obey the laws of everyday reality. So here we have specific time and extent features. With an eye to understand in what way the narrator himself perceive people and events that he describes let us consider the correspondence of story and plot of the narrative "Shot" meaning that the story is a natural course of events and the plot is a course of their presentment.We can see that both the story and the plot are distinctly divided in two pieces. These pieces are compositionally repeated. Graphically it is designated by two chapters division. Artistic focuses of both chapters are represented by two duels that are symbolized by shots. Each chapter consists of three notional parts. In first part it is narrated about Silvio and officers'

Breach as a Motif in China Mieville's The City and The City Essay

Breach as a Motif in China Mieville's The City and The City - Essay Example Mieville invokes that breach at various points in the novel as a motif that represents the all-pervasive state of the East European states of the Soviet era. These breaches are investigated by a body that itself seems to be a motif that combines in itself the effects of all the motifs of breaches that govern the lives of the people in the novel’s fictional cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma. The journey of Tayodu Borlu, the protagonist of the novel and the detective who seeks to solve the mystery of a murder that serves to frame the story and provide it its thrust, is one that reveals many aspects of modern day life. These range from the lack of freedom that is experienced by people in nation states to the place of man in a universe that may or may not offer explanations. This universe, however, continues to punish its inhabitants for offences the causes of which they may not even know. The lack of knowledge that is shared by the people of Beszel and Ul Qoma is what unites them and gives them a common destiny. The notion of breach refers to an understanding of this unity in ignorance. In this sense, it seems as though the novel points to ignorance as the greatest weapon that is employed by the modern state to express its power and exercise its control over its people. To place them in a state of complete ignorance as to their own condition, accompanied by a fear of the breach makes Mieville’s work closer to a work like V for Vendetta rather than something like The Matrix. Like both these works, the people in the two cities suffer from the fact that their existence is a complex web of lies that is spun by an overarching network of authority. This authority is embodied by the Breach that is able to make a person vanish from the sight of other people. In the context of people who choose to overlook several aspects of life, the notion of a vanished person may refer to somebody who is merely overlooked, much in the same way that Ralph Ellison’s protag onist is, in the book, The Invisible Man. The reasons for the marginality of both are equally absurd and difficult to understand. This is one of the greatest strengths of Mieville’s novel- the fact that it is able to draw allusions to many other major works of fiction that talk of oppressive regimes. His ability to connect his subaltern perspective to other versions of it makes The City and the City a very complex work of fiction. The breach represents a lack of unity. While critiquing the authoritarian regimes that were a part of East European nation states during the Cold War Era, Mieville strikes at the very heart of the philosophy of these nations- the unity of their people in a classless society. He points to the disunity that states sought to perpetrate during this era and the effects that it had on people who had hitherto lived in communities that exchanged ideas and beliefs in a freer society. The lack of freedom that Borlu has in investigating the case owes itself to the lack of unity between the people of the two cities. This can be seen in the attitudes that are expressed initially by his counterpart in Ul Qom, who is cold and condescending towards him. There are, thus, many structures that the state creates for the purpose of perpetuating its own