Erosive – Ali Smith
“The waking thought of her, sunlit and new, then the all-day hopeful lightheadedness, and behind it all, dull as a blown-out light bulb, the fact of the word never.” (ll. 5-7 p. 1). The quote is from the nameless main character in Ali Smith’s short story “Erosive” from 2003. As the quote implies Ali Smith tells the story of unrequited love. Through post modernistic techniques he portrays the main characters coping with hopeless love. A distinctive feature of post-modernistic literature is that they are often open to interpretation. The story can therefore be analyzed in multiple ways, and the observations I have made are not “set in stone”.
The main character in “Erosive” is a first-person narrator who falls in
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“What he means is; you don’t mow your lawn enough. Look at your garden, look at it for God’s sake.” (ll. 4-5, p. 151)
The quote is from a conversation with his neighbor. During the conversation the neighbor is mowing his lawn and the narrator interprets as if the neighbor is mocking him. The text is written from a first-person perspective, and it is therefore important to be critical towards the narrator. The narrator tells the story in his point of view, which means that the way he interprets events isn’t necessarily the truthful way they happen. The neighbor is most likely just mowing his lawn without having any judgmental thoughts towards the main character. Throughout the story the main character has multiple of these kinds of interpretations. When he is being assisted at the supermarket, he feels like the women, helping him, are finding him odd, although their conversation seems perfectly normal. This self-doubt is perhaps a consequence of the erosive process he going through, because of his hopeless love situation.
In addition to the complex main character, the composition of “Erosive” is especially post-modernistic. Post-modernism is about breaking with the established. Ali Smith breaks with the traditional perception of a story’s structure. The story is divided into four sections: an introduction of the narrator, a beginning, middle, and end. What it is particular about the structure is that after the introduction, the narrator jumps
in one’s lawn emphatically.” Price includes words with a “punch” to get the reader's’ attention,
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In this research, I plan to understand the persona’s voice and their period. Due to both author’s creativeness, I hope to find a few symbolisms and ideals that are still being implemented today. Both stories’ personas try to identify themselves as someone worthy of improvement, in social aspects. However, we might be concern that they might not pursue their known agenda and instead used all wordiness as an excuse for their actions
Ted Steinberg’s book American Green gives a detailed description of lawn and its role in America. He gives a history of lawn starting from the origin of the word “lawn” itself in the 16th century and gives wide-ranging anecdotes throughout the book that attempt to show the reader how obsessed Americans are with their lawns. His anecdotes are often meant to represent people all over America, but when you take a step back you realize that they are actually rare stories that provide little broader meaning. Steinberg fails to prove that American’s are obsessed with their lawns because of the poor assumptions he makes and examples he uses.
The farmhouses looked terrible - the dust was deposited clear up to the window sills in these farmhouses, clear up to the window sills. And even about half of the front door was blocked by this sand. And if people inside wanted to get out, they had to climb out through the window to get out with a shovel to shovel out the front door. And, ah, there was no longer any yard at all there, not a green sprig, not a living thing of any kind, not even a field mouse. Nothing (qtd. in Press 32).
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So we grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with us, that we’d be lonely forever, that we’d never meet someone to make us feel like the sun was something they built for using their tool shed. So broken heart strings bled the blues as we tried to empty ourselves so we would feel nothing”
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In order to analyze the story it would help to have a guide on what is going to be explained in this paper. The first part of the paper talks about themes, some of these themes can be easily over looked since there is layer upon layers. The second part, will explain the use of tone that helps sets the stage, and the mood of the whole story. The use of imagery is present as well, for example the use of words like dry and wet, can be found when
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