3rd Period
Final Exam Blogpost
Influences of Postmodernism
Introduction
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, is the story about the love of two characters being relieved through multiple family generations.The narrator uses fragmentation, world-building, and magical realism to tell stories within other stories to show how the line between fiction and reality can become blurred.
Summary of Element One - Fragmentation
The entirety of “Wuthering Heights” is fragmented and told with a non-linear structure, as it is divided between two generations alongside old flashbacks and different perspectives in narration. The postmodern fragmentation mirrors the characters and their relationships with each other. Furthermore, Cathy and Edgar Linton’s marriage is fragmented between her and Heathcliff but also her father.
“Unnecessary Things” is a flash-fiction essay about a woman who rediscovers her old teddy bear from childhood, after she had completely grown up. The story begins detailing the intimate aspects of what the bear looked like during its prime and suddenly switches to what the woman is actively doing, rummaging through her mother’s old room filled with “knickknacks” and “unnecessary things”that the woman enjoys. This introduces the postmodern element, that is fragmentation. The woman switches in a disjointed structure between old memories and interconnected moments in the present. Interrupting her own narrative like this is significant because it focuses more on broader themes, like nostalgia and loss, distracting us, as an illusion from the fact that she is manipulating us to think the entirety of the story is true.
My Take - The same structural and familial fragmentation used throughout “Wuthering Heights” is also used in the flash-fiction essay, “Unnecessary Things”. They both distract the audience from the fact that they may or may not be telling the truth. The fragmented structure forces us to decide for ourselves what is reality and not.
Summary of Element Two - World-Building
At the very beginning of Wuthering Heights, we are introduced to the relationships of many different characters. Though we don’t know who is who or how they are related to one another, we can see their dynamics shift through a world that is already built.
“Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye makes talking about death seem easy and agreeable, as opposed to how terrifying and frightening it really is. When I first read the poem, the mother’s familiarity with knowing when you are dying made me question its objective, as a whole. Postmodernism world-building is when the text has its own history, setting, population, and its own identity from the very beginning. We are thrown into a situation that has its own identity before we can even tell what is going on. In the first four lines, we can picture ourselves being “seven” and “laying in the car” asking our mom questions. We are taken to a place and immediately filled with the feeling of sympathy.
My Take - In reading both “Wuthering Heights” and “Making a Fist” we start understanding the situation and relationships between characters by entering a point of climax or a key part of the storyline.
Summary of Element Three - Magical Realism
In the end of “Wuthering Heights”, a man is visited by the ghost of Catherine after Heathcliff begs her to haunt him on Earth. Heathcliff could not live without her and she could not live if it wasn't for magical realism allowing her character to be brought back by surrealism. Magical realism is also used metaphorically and symbolically in the window in Catherine’s room being used as a portal separating the mundane world and the realm of the supernatural.
Radiohead, “Pyramid Song” Amnesiac
The postmodern fabulism and magical realism is present in both the music video and the lyrics of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song”. The video creates an unfamiliar feeling in a familiar place. Some undefined figure, made up of blank shapes that have an undetermined meaning, floats around the ocean. The lyrics place us in a river with black-eyed angels. Although we can picture ourselves in these places, the black eyes and the idea of being alone at the bottom of the ocean create an uncanny atmosphere filled with suspense.
My Take -The undefined figure in the video and the surrealism in the novel both use magical realism to blur the line between fantasy and reality, which allows the audience to dig deeper into the many layers of detail and imagery.
Conclusion
In each piece of evidence, the difference between fiction and reality is undefined. In the midst of fragmentation, world-building, and magical realism, the reader chooses who or what to believe which changes how we perceive everything around us as well as who we can trust.
Works Cited
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte. Translated by David Price, Project Gutenberg, ucm.es/data/cont/docs/119-2014-04-09-Wuthering%20Heights.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2024.
"The Reader’s Guide to Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” https://wuthering-heights.co.uk/index. Accessed 10 May, 2024.
Radiohead, "Pyramid Song" Youtube, 23 January 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M_Gg1xAHE4. Accessed 10 May, 2024.
https://nerdypublisher.wixsite.com/website/post/read-between-the-lines
UNFINISHED 😊