Test Week 2 Flashcards
Analyses of The Secret History, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Great Gatsby and 1984 + literary terms
Allegory
A character, place or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance
Allusion
An object or a circumstance from an unrelated context is referred to indirectly. It is left to the audience to make a direct connection
Pleonasm
Consists of an adjective and a noun of which the meaning of the adjective is already contained in the noun. So that the author is using more words than necessary
Tautology
A combination of words that express the same thing. The same thing is said in different words
Dramatic irony
The audience knows something the characters don’t know about
Verbal irony
When you say one thing, but mean the opposite
Situational irony
When the outcome of a situation is entirely different from what you had anticipated
Litote
A statement is being made by using its opposite. There is a negation present in the sentence; you’re not wrong (so you’re right)
Points of view
- First person: narrator participates in the story. We only know the thoughts and whereabouts of the narrator -> unreliable narrator. Written in I and me
- Third person omniscient: all knowing -> reliable
- Third person limited omniscient: narrator whose knowledge is limited to just a small number of characters
Setting
Location, historical period/time and climate of the story (society and its rules and the atmosphere)
Sublime
Overwhelming environment. Is terrifying and goes beyond alle possibilities to keep the reader engaged
Suspense
The gut feeling that something bad is going to happen
Uncanny
A frightening feeling that feels oddly familiar, so it gives you the idea you have seen or experienced it before which you haven’t
Protagonist, antagonist and narrator TSH
Protagonist: Richard Papen
Antagonist: Bunny (Edmund Corcoran)
Narrator: Richard
Is Richard Papen a reliable narrator?
No, because he is obsessed with Julian’s students and therefore sees them through a romantic lens. He fails to see their mistakes, because he is so obsessed with them. His actions are coloured by his biases and emotions for instance his desire to be part of the group and his idolisation.
Richard sees clues/ traces that were right in front of him. Or at least the book is written afterwards and sometimes throughout the story Richard suggest that deep down he knew what was happening who they really were, but he just didn’t realise it or want to see it. Due to his obsession he can’t connect the events and doesn’t think anything off of the student’s odd behaviour.
Richard saw Julian as a father figure since he never really had a good bond with his own father. His own parents didn’t really speak to him. Julian was an authority figure to him and thus he admired him.
Type of narration TSH
First person point of view
Type of story/ genre TSH
- Inverted detective story (a murder mystery in which the crime is usually shown at the beginning of the novel including the identity of the perpetrator)
- Campus novel (really popular in the US after the war since more and more people were given the opportunity to go to school
- Dark academia (applies themes and styling of classical Greek and Gothic arts and architecture to modern college campuses)
- A whydunnit story: it is a mystery about why a crime is committed and not perse about who has done it.
The main conflicts in TSH
- Man vs Man: the group versus Bunny. Everyone hated Bunny, because he was very intolerant, homophobic (which wasn’t even that big of a deal back in the nineties since a lot of people were homophobes), hypocritical, a sexist, has a loud personality and teases everybody with their insecurities
- Man vs self: after they killed Bunny everybody has to learn how to cope with it. Richard started to do more drugs, he is coping with the murder with drugs and sex. Richard’s longing for the picturesque has lead to the downfall of himself in a way. His obsession with appearances and everybody else’s obsession with that is the drive for most of their actions and relationships.
The others drugged and poisoned themselves during the bacchanal to attain the terrible beauty and to go beyond their mortal selves (man vs supernatural)
The guilt of Bunny’s death haunts them: Charles becomes an alcoholic, Richard copes through drugs and sex, Charles shooting himself. They struggle with the fact that they have killed a man and need to cope with that. This is an internal conflict which is why one of the conflicts is man vs self.
Literary period TSH
Contemporary fiction
Richard Papen
- Born in Plano California to a lower-middle class family
- He is drawn to ancient beauty, extravagance and elegance because it is so different from his simple lower class Californian lifestyle
- Desperately wants to get away from his family and applies to Hampden
- Longing for the picturesque and beauty
- Idolises Julian and his exclusive little group of students (he is immensely intrigued by them which made him give up all his classes so he could be part of that elite group as well)
- Pretends to be richer, classier and more sophisticated than he is
- Only one out of the group to graduate
Julian Morrow
- Egoistic person but he disguises it as altruism. On the surface the seemed like a warm, sympathetic and altruistic person. But he was actually a cold and bitter person
- inferiority -> superiority
- When he chooses his students he selects them carefully and only looks at certain qualities. He sees things on a selective basis
- could reinvent people and manipulate them without you being conscious of it
When he finds out that they have killed Bunny he runs off. Not because he is afraid or disapproves of the murder but because he is selfish and doesn’t want to get involved in it. So he leaves the students right before their exams. Only Richard managed to graduate but long after it was supposed to happen. He only cared about his status and reputation so he flew the scene.
Henry Winter
- Extremely wealthy
- Speaks a lot of language but other then that the rest of the world doesn’t really affect him. He is so caught in his own world and doesn’t really care for society => ignorant
- Has limited knowledge of recent events but does happen to know a lot about ancient history
- Intelligent but everything he knows he has taught himself; he was homeschooled and never took SATs
- Julian’s favourite student
- Manipulative, lacks empathy, cold and uncaring, indifferent
Killed himself by shooting himself in his head with Charles’s gun that he took from Francis’s country house
Bunny Corcoran
- comes from old money, but now his family is rather poor. He tries to conceal his poverty and pretends to be wealthy like he once was
- Dyslectic and failing his classes. He is not the brightest and is not described as college material
- Ignorant towards people with different ideologies, sexualities and gender (narrow-minded)
- Good at homing in on other people’s insecurities
- Only one who has relationships outside Julian’s class (Marion and Cloke)
- Hypocritical and gluttonous
The group gets annoyed by his loud personality, gluttony, hypocrisy, offensiveness and lack of self-consciousness.
Bunny was aware that Henry and the other were planning on killing him, he even wrote Julian a letter suggesting this (Hotel Excelsior)
Charles Macaulay
- Eloquent person, charming, kind and caring
- Alcholic (anxiety and guilt make him drink even more after Bunny’s death
- Dominant, violent and manipulative
- towards the end his alcoholism increases and he starts acting out -> the group stops hanging out with him
- Insanely jealous of Camila he doesn’t want her to have a sexual relationship with anyone outside of him. Charles would sometimes physically abuse Camilla when he would be jealous of her and then sleep with her (incest) -> Camilla moved to the Inn at the end.
- Richard was fond of him
He drove under the influence in Henry’s car which got them into trouble. He walked into the Inn with a gun. Charles went to some clinic to stop drinking. This didn’t work he escaped with some woman and run off to Texas
He cannot cope with the murder and starts drinking heavily and getting paranoid of Henry.
Camilla Macaulay
- She knows Richard is in love with her and leads him on
- Richard is infatuated with het beauty (so once again he is obsessed with the picturesque and the outside)
- She manages to cope with Bunny’s death quite well
- Declines Richard’s proposal, because she is in love with Henry
Francis Abernathy
- Closeted homosexual marries a girl at the end and ends up deeply unhappy to satisfy his grandfather and to not be removed from the will -> tried to commit suicide. He slept with Charles who uses him and only sleeps with him when he is really drunk. He kissed Richard once
- Suffers from anxiety after Bunny’s death (man vs self) -> gets addicted to drugs and starts chain smoking
- Wealthy (old money)
- hypochondria
- attended many boarding schools in Europe
Judy Poovey
- Seems to be the only one to see the students for who they are
- Richard’s only actual friend
- Likes to gossip and takes a lot of drugs
The Lyceum in TSH
- The Lyceum: represent the secretive nature of their Greek studies. The Lyceum is isolated from the rest of the campus and is hidden away from the rest of the world. It is a mysterious, secretive and desolated place.
When people visit Julian only opens the door slightly meaning that people are only allowed to see a glimpse of that secretive world.
Represents the isolation from the rest of the world. In here the lines between reality and illusion are blurry. The students have no other teachers and classes than Julian’s so he can easily indoctrinated them and isolate them from the rest of the world. Julian creates a way of thinking and living that is far beyond normal mortality and morality. It is a place where you are free of your own consciousness.
The twins, Francis and Henry try to recreate this feeling outside of the classroom during the Bacchanal -> innocent farmer is killed
Due to the isolation and indoctrination they start to believe that those Greek and Ancient mythologies are true (man vs supernatural). They become ignorant and tend to forget about reality and morality.
Julian is the only source of information for the students and is therefore very powerful. The book was written in the nineties so phones didn’t exist yet which means Julian was their only influence at that time. There were no outside influences at the time.
Snow in TSH
After Bunny’s being killed, it starts snowing. It symbolises that darkness and evil are concealed/ shielded by their innocent appearances. It shows how appearances can be deceiving and how outer beauty cannot always be trusted
The museum exhibit TSH
Symbolises Richard’s inability to move from the past. His life now revolves around the murder. The museum exhibit represents something he cannot escape from.
Motifs TSH
- Social class
- Beauty and aestheticism
- Friendship
- Secrets and deception
- Nature vs nurture; was Richard a bad person or was he sucked into it by bad influence? Were the students real murders or just indoctrinated and obsessed with beauty that they would go above and beyond?
- Guilt and consequences
- Alienation and isolation
Themes TSH
- The corruption of beauty
- Beauty and terror (Julian’s lecture
- Intellectual persuits
- The dangers of isolation
- The superficiality of beauty and appearances
- The consequences of secrets
- Reality vs illusion
- Manipulation vs paranoia
- Guilt
- Envy
Plot diagram TSH
Introduction: Richard introduces himself
Inciting incident: Richard applies to Hampden after he found a brochure
Rising action: Richard joins Julian’s class and starts hanging out with the students. He is intrigued by their intellectualism, elitism and mysteriousness
Climax: the murder of Bunny Corcoran or the murder of the farmer
Falling action: the aftermath of Bunny’s death
Resolution: the consequences of the murder catch up to the students. They all move on with their lives. Richard graduates eventually, Francis is married and nearly killed himself, Henry is death, Charles lives in Texas.
Is TSH novel chronological?
No, because Richard constantly interrupts himself in his flashbacks with other longer flashbacks (= non-linear narrative structure)
Title explanation OFOTCN
The title one flew over the cuckoo’s nest comes from a children’s rhyme in which they sing that one flew west, one flew east and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest. To fly over the cuckoo’s nest means that you have gone insane.
In American slang cuckoo means crazy.
In the story most of the patients eventually escape the hospital, so they go their own separate ways suggesting they are the ones that flew west and east. McMurphy ends up being insane, so he is the one that flew over the cuckoo’s nest. McMurphy invaded the cuckoo’s nest and has become deranged as a result of that.
In the novel the hospital represents the cuckoo’s nest.
Protagonist, antagonist and narrator OFOTCN
Protagonist: Randle McMurphy
Antagonist: Nurse Ratched
Narrator: Chief Bromden
Type of narration OFOTCN and is the narrator a reliable narrator?
Type of narration: first person point of view, told by Chief Bromden.
On the one hand Chief Bromden is quite a reliable narrator, because he knows all about the hospitals secrets which are being shared during the staff meetings during which he is the only patient that is allowed to be present in the room, so he knows things that other patients don’t know about. By his pretending to be deaf and stupid people usually don’t lower their voices when he is near allowing him to eavesdrop and know a lot about the patients and the staff. Which makes him out of all the character in the novel the best narrator, since he knows the most and is quite an observant type. On the other hand suffers Bromden from hallucinations and he has been in the hospital for years, being isolated from society and having received some shock therapy and other brainwashing therapy, which makes him an unreliable narrator. In conclusion, I believe that Chief Bromden is an unreliable narrator due to his hallucinations and can therefore not be fully trusted.
Bromden’s thoughts might be slightly influenced by the hospitals ideologies and he has conspiratorial theories about a thing called the Combine.
Genres of OFOTCN
- Allegorical novel
- Counterculture novel
Main theme of OFOTCN
The dehumanizing effects of institutionalization and the struggle for individuality
Types of patients in OFOTCN and how do they interact with each other?
- Acutes
- Chronics:
- Walking chronics (Chief Bromden)
- Wheelers: being wheeled around the hospital
- Vegetables: basically brain dead
The Chronics and the Acutes are separated in the day room. The Acutes don’t want to get near the Chronics, because it reminds them of what they might turn into in the (near) future.
Chief Bromden
- Half native American
- Pretends to be deaf and dumb; from an early age people weren’t paying attention to him and thus he decided to just not speak to them anymore and people automatically assumed that he was deaf and dumb
- Suffers from hallucinations
- Is a tall man, but feels really small due to him being constantly belittled. His father’s alcoholism, the way his mother treated him and his father and the way he is being treated in the hospital make him feel weak, small and powerless
- Driven by his fear for the combine
He has visions in which the machinery of the combine are working beneath the ground at night doing terrible destructive things to human bodies. He also hallucinates about fog.
McMurphy
- Likes to gamble and rebel
- Is in the hospital for psychotic although he says he is in the hospital because he wanted to escape the work farm. He pretended to hear strange sounds, so that he could be admitted.
-Sexually free man, which is something Nurse Ratched is fiercely against
- He realizes that Bromden isn’t stupid and deaf
