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Strategies
for Survival: An Approach to Steinbeck's The Grapes of
Wrath
-- S S Prabhakar
Rao
Steinbeck's
epic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is usually considered as
a negative portrayal of the adverse effects of the Great Depression
on human psyche. This paper, however, looks at the novel as
being essentially affirmative as it is a fictional construct
of Steinbeck's belief in the `uplifting' role of literature,
as unequivocally declared in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Social
Realism and Performance in the Work of Richard Yates with
Particular Reference to Revolutionary Road
-- Kate
Charlton-Jones
Richard
Yates's novel Revolutionary Road takes as its starting point,
for a critical look at the mid-1950s suburban America, the
production of a play; aptly called The Petrified Forest, the
play is a disaster. The agonizing performance acts as an ironic
metaphor for the way the middle-class Americans lead their
lives. As Yates observes, we act our way through our daily
experiences, adopting a variety of roles, masking even from
ourselves our intentions.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Aesthetics of Native
American Theater: Hanay Geiogamah's Body Indian
--
Tessy
Anthony C
The
aesthetics of Native American theater is very different when
compared to other theaters. This is mainly due to the perspectives
of Native Americans and their world view being different.
Though the mainstream Americans wished to give Native American
culture an honorable burial, the Native Americans were not
willing to vanish, but had actually begun to assert and articulate
their own modalities.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
The Grotesque Body
and Agency in Katherine Dunn's Geek Love
--
Neeraja Sundaram
This
paper reads the grotesque in Katherine Dunn's (1989) popular
novel, Geek Love, as a reconfiguration of agency. The `grotesque,'
as defined by Geoffrey Galt Harpham (1982), refers to beings
that cannot be contained by any appropriate noun—a `species
of confusion.' Geek Love tells the story of a family of such
`grotesqueries'—genetically engineered `freak' children
that are bred by their `norm' parents—to revive the declining
profits of their traveling carnival.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Norman Maclean: His
Life as a Scholar and
a Close Look at Young Men and Fire
--
Eric B Berg
In
this essay I will make a brief introduction to Norman Maclean's
(1902-1987) life and intellectual contributions to the American
intellectual tradition. Norman Maclean was a graduate of Dartmouth,
an English Professor at the University of Chicago, a charter
member of the Chicago School of Critics, a Pulitzer Prize
nominated author, a strict Aristotelian, and an accomplished
fly-fisherman from Montana.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
A
Man's Road Back to Himself Is a Return from His Spiritual
Exile: Platonic Influences in Saul Bellow's The Actual
-- Gustavo Sánchez Canales
In
a span of more than 60 years of prolific writing, the Jewish-American
novelist Saul Bellow (1915-2005) devoted his efforts to reflect
on key issues —man, history, life and death, among others.
Taking one or more of these subjects as a point of departure,
Bellow approaches the calamitous situation the contemporary
man/woman has been going through in the light of religion,
philosophy, etc. This paper focuses on the influence of the
Platonic concept of eros in Bellow's novella The Actual (1997)
and attempts to demonstrate how Bellow's characters Harry
Trellman, Amy Wustrin and Jay Wustrin are, respectively, the
counterparts of Plato's figures of the lover, the beloved
and false lover, as explained in Plato's The Phaedrus.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
The Antibiotic
Imagination: Writing Disease in Contemporary America
--
Pramod K Nayar
This
essay looks at nonfictional disease narratives in contemporary
America. It explores narrative strategies in works like Richard
Preston's The Hot Zone, John Waller's The Discovery of the
Germ and Thomas Hager's The Demon Under the Microscope. It
isolates three principal modes. The first mode is that of
the exploration and discovery narrative, where the quest for
causes, cures and safety measures are elaborated.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
The Far Side of Paradise:
An Unconventional View of the US
-- E
Nageswara Rao
America
is looked upon as a paradise by people from all over the world.
The pastoral ideal of the Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson
has faded. American writers such as Henry David Thoreau, F
Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway lamented this. The Civil
War spurred industrialization and urbanization, leading to
air, water and soil pollution. Abraham Lincoln's definition
of democracy seems hardly valid now, since the political system
is controlled by powerful corporations and lobbies.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
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