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LOGOCENTRICISM

THE COLOR OF WATER
JAMES MCBRIDE


In The Color of Water, author James McBride writes both his autobiography and a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth McBride. Ruth came to America when she was a young girl in a family of Polish Jewish immigrants. Ruth married Andrew Dennis McBride, a black man from North Carolina. James's childhood was spent in a chaotic household of twelve children who had neither the time nor the outlet to ponder questions of race and identity. Ruth did not want to discuss the painful details of her early family life, when her abusive father Tateh lorded over her sweet-tempered and meek mother Mameh. Ruth had cut all ties with her Jewish family.

After arriving in the United States when she was two years old, Ruth spent her early childhood traveling around the country with her family as her father sought employment as a rabbi. Tateh eventually gave up hope of making a living as a rabbi. He settled the family in Suffolk, Virginia, and opened a store in the mostly black section of town, where he overcharged his customers and expressed racist opinions. When Ruth was a child, Tateh sexually abused her and made harsh demands on her to work constantly in the family store. Tateh cheated on his wife, in an affair of which practically everyone in town was aware. Ruth's brother Sam left home at age fifteen, and soon after, Ruth too felt she must leave. She wanted to escape the oppressive environment of both her family and the South. She was also pregnant by Peter, her black boyfriend in Suffolk, and wanted to deal with the pregnancy away from her family. She took trips to New York to stay with relatives, and later moved permanently to Harlem. Ruth's family disowned her when she left, disgusted with her preference for marrying a black man instead of a Jewish man, her general failure to embrace Judaism, and her defiance of her father. Ruth promised her sister Dee-Dee that she would return to Suffolk, but she could not reconcile her family's desires for her life with her own desires for her life. She betrayed her promise to return for Dee-Dee, and her relationship with her sister suffered as a consequence. This separation from her family recurs throughout the memoir as a painful element in Ruth's life.

In Harlem, Ruth met Dennis, to whom she was immediately attracted. She married him, converted to Christianity, and became very involved with church activities. The couple experienced a certain degree of prejudice as a result of their interracial marriage. However, Ruth recalls these years of her life as her happiest ones. Dennis and Ruth opened the New Brown Memorial Church together in memory of Reverend Brown, their favorite preacher. They had several children, and eventually moved to accommodate their growing family. When Ruth became pregnant with Dennis's eighth child, James, Dennis fell ill with lung cancer, and died before James was born. Ruth mourned his death deeply and became desperate to find a means to support herself and her eight children. She approached her relatives for assistance, but they refused to have any sort of contact with her. Ruth met her second husband, Hunter Jordan, soon after. They married and eventually had four children together.

James weaves his own life story into his mother's story. Ruth's philosophies on race, religion, and work influence him greatly. Ruth always sent her children to the best schools, no matter the commute, to ensure they received the finest possible educations. She demanded respect and hard work from her children, and always treated them tenderly. She had an unwavering faith in God and strong moral convictions. To Ruth, issues of race and identity took secondary importance to moral beliefs.

James's confusion over his identity, along with his grief for the death of his beloved stepfather, drove him to a phase of drug use and crime. After spending time with working with black men in Louisville, Kentucky, where his sister Jack lives, James became convinced of the importance of self-reliance and hard work. He began to trust in God and to work toward self-improvement, honing his skills in jazz music and writing. During his senior year of high school, James was pleasantly surprised when he learned he had been admitted to Oberlin College. He and his eleven siblings complete college and lead successful careers. Ruth remains close with her children, and, later, her grandchildren, holding holiday gatherings that remind James of his household during childhood: chaotic, but delightfully active and stimulating.


ANALYSIS:

Logocentrism is  Inherent in Saussure’s reasoning a structuralist approach to literature began in the 1950s to assess the literary text, or utterance, in terms of its adherence to certain organising conventions which might establish its objective meaning. Again, as for Saussure, structuralism in literary theory is condemned to fail on account of its own foundation: ‘...language constitutes our world, it doesn’t just record it or label it. Meaning is always attributed to the object or idea by the human mind, and constructed by and expressed through language: it is not already contained within the thing’


The Color of Water by James McBride tells two emotional stories. One of the stories is told by his mother, who is a Caucasian, and one by him, who is black. The mom talks about how hard it was growing up being Jewish. Worst of all her dad treated her harsh and sometimes even touching her sexually. Then she started her rebellious stage and started going out with black people even though he knew her dad would disapprove of it. This was the 1940's so this was dangerous for both of them. She talks about the many obstacles that she overcame in her like. For example, when her husband died leaving her with eight kids to attend to. Then she somehow found ambition to get all her kids to college. The son talks about the many challenges her mom had to overcome in order for him and his siblings to get a proper education. For example, when her second husband died leaving her with twelve kids to support she still manage to get all of them to college. This book seemed boring to me but if you are interested in how hard it is for a black person and a white person to fall in love and concur all the obstacles that came their way then you might be interested in it. This book is short but since it was boring to me, I found it to be very long. The book does not have hard language it is actually quite easy.

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GENRE CRITICISM




SAFE HAVEN

NICHOLAS SPARKS

Safe Haven Summary

When a mysterious young woman named Katie appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo. Despite her reservations, Katie slowly begins to let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community and becoming increasingly attached to Alex and his family.

But even as Katie begins to fall in love, she struggles with the dark secret that still haunts and terrifies her ... a past that set her on a fearful, shattering journey across the country, to the sheltered oasis of Southport. With Jo's empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one of riskier rewards ... and that in the darkest hour, love is the only true safe haven.


CRITICISM

Genre criticism is about criticizing a text based on its structured.  Nicholas Sparks is considered to be a novel in genre criticism since it is a long narrative book divided into chapters. I liked the characters, especially Katie and Alex. I loved how delicate they were at the beginning, Katie because of her husband and Alex because of the death of his wife. They were careful and I liked how they didn’t just jump into a relationship, especially as there were small children involved. I was impressed that even though Katie had left Kevin she refused to sleep with Alex because she was still married. I thought Sparks was right to do that – it added integrity to the book and characters.The ending of the book was so exciting! Kevin came and chased Katie. The ending was tense, but really good. There was a twist that I didn’t see coming and I enjoyed the ending. I was satisfied and gripped until the end.This is a great book. The ending was fast moving and the storyline was lovely. I think Sparks dealt with the issue of domestic abuse and death very well. 

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DARWINISM



The Time Machine

H.G WELLS




A group of men, including the narrator, is listening to the Time Traveller discuss his theory that time is the fourth dimension. The Time Traveller produces a miniature time machine and makes it disappear into thin air. The next week, the guests return, to find their host stumble in, looking disheveled and tired. They sit down after dinner, and the Time Traveller begins his story.


The Time Traveller had finally finished work on his time machine, and it rocketed him into the future. When the machine stops, in the year 802,701 AD, he finds himself in a paradisiacal world of small humanoid creatures called Eloi. They are frail and peaceful, and give him fruit to eat. He explores the area, but when he returns he finds that his time machine is gone. He decides that it has been put inside the pedestal of a nearby statue. He tries to pry it open but cannot. In the night, he begins to catch glimpses of strange white ape-like creatures the Eloi call Morlocks. He decides that the Morlocks live below ground, down the wells that dot the landscape. Meanwhile, he saves one of the Eloi from drowning, and she befriends him. Her name is Weena. The Time Traveller finally works up enough courage to go down into the world of Morlocks to try to retrieve his time machine. He finds that matches are a good defense against the Morlocks, but ultimately they chase him out of their realm. Frightened by the Morlocks, he takes Weena to try to find a place where they will be safe from the Morlocks' nocturnal hunting. He goes to what he calls the Palace of Green Porcelain, which turns out to be a museum. There, he finds more matches, some camphor, and a lever he can use as a weapon. That night, retreating from the Morlocks through a giant wood, he accidentally starts a fire. Many Morlocks die in the fire and the battle that ensues, and Weena is killed. The exhausted Time Traveller returns to the pedestal to find that it has already been pried open. He strides in confidently, and just when the Morlocks think that they have trapped him, he springs onto the machine and whizzes into the future.

The Time Traveller makes several more stops. In a distant time he stops on a beach where he is attacked by giant crabs. The bloated red sun sits motionless in the sky. He then travels thirty million years into the future. The air is very thin, and the only sign of life is a black blob with tentacles. He sees a planet eclipse the sun. He then returns, exhausted, to the present time. The next day, he leaves again, but never returns.


CRITICISM:

Darwinism is based on Charles Darwin theory of evolution so technically speaking Darwinism talks about human evolution and development and the story time machine shows how the time traveler go back to the past and travels in to the future to develop himself and to know the story behind his past. The book tells the story of a man, who is always referred to simply as The Time Traveler, who invents a time machine, which takes him to the year 802,701.  There, he finds that the human race has evolved into two species’ – the Eloi and the Morlocks.  On the face of it, the Eloi seem to live a wonderful existence, filled with pleasure.  However, the time traveler discovers that, as they want for nothing, and therefore have nothing to strive for, the Eloi have also seemingly lost the ability for intelligent thought.  (Without goals, there is no need for strategy and forethought).  However, there is a darker reality lurking underneath the surface (both literally and figuratively), in the Morlocks – a species who only come out in the darkness, and who inspire fear in the Eloi.  

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NARRATOLOGY

THE WITCH
EDILBERTO K. TIEMPO


SYNOPSIS
Stories say that a witch known as Minggay Awok (awok, meaning witch in Visayan language)resides nearby the creek separating the barrios of Libas and Sinit-an. Her strange appearance, solitary life and rare visits in the barrios feared the people. She has always been blamed whenever strange things happen. Thus, Minggay was often subjected to various killing attempts in order to stop the curse that she allegedly placed on them. However, their suspicions were never proven. One day, a boy who occasionally visits his uncle in Libas met an old woman while fishing in the creek. She had been so kind to direct him to a spot where he can get more shrimps. They chatted for a while until the boy finally realized that she is the "witch" that he had heard about. He immediately walked away with the shrimps and the dilemma of his encounter with the witch's contrasting image with the old woman by the creek.



CRITICISM:

Narratology refers to both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception.While in principle the word may refer to any systematic study of narrative, in practice its usage is rather more restricted
The short story the witch narrates the story of minnggay who was accused of being  witch.  In the story they took a deep analysis of minggay’s life and what causes the spread of rumors in their town about her being a witch.  The narrator of the story narrate his experience as he encounter the rumored which.  In the end, the twist of the story is that minngay is the long lost grandmother of the narrator.

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ARCHETYPAL CRTICISM



LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

The story revolves around a girl called Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hooded cape/cloak (in Perrault's fairytale) or simple cap (in the Grimms' version called little Red-cap) she wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sick grandmother.
A mean wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public. He secretly stalks her behind trees and bushes and shrubs and patches of little grass and patches of tall grass. He approaches Little Red Riding Hood and she naïvely tells him where she is going. He suggests the girl pick some flowers, which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He swallows the grandmother whole, (In some stories, he locks her in the closet), and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandma.
When the girl arrives, she notices that her grandmother looks very strange. Little Red then says, "What a deep voice you have," ("The better to greet you with"), "Goodness, what big eyes you have," ("The better to see you with) "And what big hands you have!" ("The better to hug you with"), and lastly, "What a big mouth you have," ("The better to eat you with!") at which point the wolf jumps out of bed, and swallows her up too. Then he falls fast asleep.
A lumberjack (with the Brothers Grimm, and always in German tradition, a hunter), however, comes to the rescue and with his axe cuts open the wolf, who had fallen asleep. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They fill the wolf's body with heavy stones. The wolf awakens and tries to flee, but the stones cause him to collapse and die. (Sanitized versions of the story have the grandmother shut in the closet instead of eaten, and some have Little Red Riding Hood saved by the lumberjack as the wolf advances on her, rather than after she is eaten.)[4]
The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no written versions are as old as that. Specifically, the tale parallels how an innocent victim can be taken in and controlled by a criminal mentality, therefore, facilitating further subjection of a crime or harm against a vulnerable victim through mischievous criminal intent by removing the victim from a familiar or "safe" public location - facilitating the crime in an effort to isolate the victim by drawing her to another location "away from the public eye" where the criminal entity has complete control over the victim.


CRITICISM

Archetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes (from the Greek archē, or beginning, and typos, or imprint) in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in a literary work.
Archetypal literature uses symbol and in the story little red riding hood they use the  wolf to symbolizes fear and power. The theme of vulnerability is evident and represented in varying degrees. Through the vocabulary and plot, we are shown how Little Red’s portrayal as innocent and ignorant are dangerous and tragic personality flaws. It is interesting how the child and the elder adult are portrayed in similar fashions in these fairy tales. They each are portrayed as innocent, naïve, and trusting of the ‘unknown’; in this case the wolf. They are left in compromising positions in each version of “Little Red Riding Hood”, demonstrating that women in particular must be on their guard about men and strangers. The themes go beyond just simple vulnerability in children and elders, but also touch on gendered issues. The tales portray women as kind-hearted and naïve, while the men are either portrayed as wolves or saviors. In the Grimms’ tale in particular, the gendered roles are more obvious. Both the child and grandmother are eaten up by the wolf without hesitation, showing how women can be easily taken advantage of and hurt in society when they are not cautious. The wolf is portrayed as ugly, hairy, and beastly; a stark contrast to Red’s kind nature. In this particular tale, a hunter who knows the grandmother saves the child and woman. He is clever and quick thinking, cutting the wolf open to save the women and avenge the wolf. These tales demonstrate many morals and lessons from a viewpoint of traditional patriarchal societies.

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NEO CLASSICISM



GULLIVER'S TRAVEL


SUMMARY
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
Mural depicting Gulliver surrounded by citizens of Lilliput.
4 May 1699 – 13 April 1702
The book begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. He enjoys travelling, although it is that love of travel that is his downfall.
During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than 6 inches tall, who are inhabitants of the island country of Lilliput. After giving assurances of his good behaviour, he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favorite of the court. From there, the book follows Gulliver's observations on the Court of Lilliput. He is also given the permission to roam around the city on a condition that he would not harm their subjects. Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours, the Blefuscudians, by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the island nation of Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the court. Gulliver is convicted of treason for "making water" in the capital (even though he was putting out a fire and saving countless lives)—among other "crimes." Gulliver is charged with treason and sentenced to be blinded. With the assistance of a kind friend, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship which safely takes him back home. This book of the Travels is a topical political satire.
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag 
Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer by Richard Redgrave
20 June 1702 – 3 June 1706
When the sailing ship Adventure is blown off course by storms and forced to put in to land for want of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found by a farmer who is 72 feet (22 m) tall (the scale of Brobdingnag is about 12:1, compared to Lilliput's 1:12, judging from Gulliver estimating a man's step being 10 yards (9.1 m)). He brings Gulliver home and his daughter cares for Gulliver. The farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. Since Gulliver is too small to use their huge chairs, beds, knives and forks, the queen commissions a small house to be built for Gulliver so that he can be carried around in it. This is referred to as his 'travelling box'. Between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being carried to the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state of Europe with the King. The King is not happy with Gulliver's accounts of Europe, especially upon learning of the use of guns and cannons. On a trip to the seaside, his travelling box is seized by a giant eagle which drops Gulliver and his box into the sea, where he is picked up by some sailors, who return him to England.
This book compares the truly moral man to the representative man; the latter is clearly shown to be the lesser of the two. Swift, being in Anglican holy orders, was likely to make such comparisons.
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
Gulliver discovers Laputa, the flying island (illustration by J.J. Grandville.)
5 August 1706 – 16 April 1710
After Gulliver's ship is attacked by pirates, he is marooned close to a desolate rocky island, near India. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island ofLaputa, a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical ends. (La puta is Spanish for "the whore." Since Swift was in Anglican holy orders, he, like so many of them, viewed reason as what Martin Luther had called "that great whore" and regarded Deism, whose practitioners attacked revealed religions, with pure horror.)
Laputa's custom of throwing rocks down at rebellious cities on the ground seems the first time that aerial bombardment was conceived as a method of warfare. Gulliver tours Laputa as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought about by the blind pursuit of science without practical results, in a satire on bureaucracy and on the Royal Society and its experiments. At the Grand Academy of Lagado, great resources and manpower are employed on researching completely preposterous schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons (see muckraking).
Gulliver is then taken to Balnibarbi to await a trader who can take him on to Japan. While waiting for passage, Gulliver takes a short side-trip to the island of Glubbdubdrib, where he visits a magician's dwelling and discusses history with the ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the "ancients versus moderns" theme in the book. In Luggnagg he encounters the struldbrugs, unfortunates who are immortal. They do not have the gift of eternal youth, but suffer the infirmities of old age and are considered legally dead at the age of eighty. After reaching Japan, Gulliver asks the Emperor "to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed upon my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix," which the Emperor grants. Gulliver returns home, determined to stay there for the rest of his days.
[edit]Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms


Gulliver in discussion with Houyhnhnms (1856 lllustration by J.J. Grandville.)
7 September 1710 – 2 July 1715
Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to the sea as the captain of a merchantman as he is bored with his employment as a surgeon. On this voyage he is forced to find new additions to his crew whom he believes to have turned the rest of the crew against him. His crew then mutiny, and after keeping him contained for some time resolve to leave him on the first piece of land they come across and continue as pirates. He is abandoned in a landing boat and comes upon a race of hideous, deformed and savage humanoid creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly afterwards he meets a race of horses who call themselves Houyhnhnms (which in their language means "the perfection of nature"); they are the rulers, while the deformed creatures called Yahoos are human beings in their base form.
Gulliver becomes a member of a horse's household, and comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting his fellow humans as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization, and expels him.
He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship, and is surprised to see that Captain Pedro de Mendez, a Yahoo, is a wise, courteous and generous person. He returns to his home in England, but he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos and becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables.
This book uses coarse metaphors to describe human depravity, and the Houyhnhms are symbolized as not only perfected nature but also the emotional barrenness which Swift maintained that devotion to reason brought.


Gulliver's Travels is a misanthropic anatomy of human nature; a sardonic looking-glass. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has not adequately characterized human nature and society. Each of the four books has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Book I, written between 1721 and 1725, may reflect the concerns of Swift's own day, and of his own life — it may be a politico-sociological treatise in the form of a satire; a protest against Imperialism and Colonialism; an attack on the corrupt Whig oligarchy which had displaced the Swift's Tories in London — a defence of Tory policies, an attack on the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, and on the expensive and bloody trade wars which had accompanied the twelve years of Whig government — but it is also, on a deeper level, a satire on the universal human tendency to abuse political power and authority, to manipulate others and deceive ourselves. It is at once a folk-myth, a children's story, and a misanthrope's gift to mankind: in Lilliput, which is, quite literally, a microcosm, the vices and follies not merely of England but of all mankind are epitomized. Swift points out that when men are six inches tall, their squabbles seem petty, and their pomp and ceremony ridiculous: he leaves it to us to take his point.

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