Time Period: Modernist/Post-Modernist
Basic Plot: Holden Caulfield, teenage boy in the 50's of the US, narrates his own journey into adulthood - or rather his fall into it - and portrays the inner workings of this newly formed generation of adolescence, a concept new to the 50's. Caulfield thus uses explicit language and ponders the mystery of sex in order to mask his own insecurity and falsity, whilst condemning others as "phonies". Story ends with Caulfield in, supposedly a mental institution repeating his story after presumably suffering a breakdown. Novel has abundant images of transition and may be used in the context of love as he shows love for his sister, Phoebe, along with Jane Gallagher, a childhood sweetheart.
Quotations:
"I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff"
"You never even worried with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy"
"Sex is something I really don't understand too hot"
"Old Phoebe. She was somebody you always felt like talking to"
Time Period: Post-Modernist
Basic Plot: The highly educated Humbert Humbert stays with Charlotte Haze and her daughter 'Lolita' in Ramsdale after the break up of his marriages in France and in inspiration for a new novel. His obsession with "nypmhets" is catalysed by Lolita and immediately Humberts obsession grows and consumes him; marrying her mother to become her father, taking her on a road trip so as to be alone and even paying her to stay with him. The novel shows this obsession grow and also the point at which he forces Lolita into running away. Whilst not justifying paedophilia exactly Nabokov gives insight into the mind of one posessed by young girls and thus may be used in the context of obsessive love as Humbert's obsession blinds him and whilst he loves Lolita he does not do what is best for her. He realises his guilt often whilst describing his love for Lolita, along with using french and images of fairytale to perversely almost appeal to her youth. However, Humbert's other love affiars are also portrayed and his relationship with Annabel in particular may be used to suggest why his fancies remain locked in time, frozen within a young girl, the embodiment of Annabel.
Quotations:
"All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other."
"I broke her spell by incarnating her in another"
"I knew that I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not forever be Lolita"
"I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais."
"Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after."
Time Period: Post-Modernist
Basic Plot: Jane is embarking on the journey of single motherhood in the 60's a time when such a thing was greatly frowned upon, and indeed she seems to punish herself by taking lodgings in the L shaped room. However, at the very bottom of the social pile alongside Jews, Blacks and prostitutes, others segregated, she finds love of friends and love of the struggling writer Toby. Such and odd community provides Jane with the strength to continue her pregnancy as she gains self-empowerment. In terms of love she explores the relationship between her and her father, the father of her child and the new love of Toby. When speaking about her past she never mentions people’s names only stating; “The actor” or “The doctor”. This changes when she enters her new home in the “L-shaped room” as Toby sees right through her “mystery-woman” act and opens her up, however, she still likes to categorise her work from home life.
Quotations:
"That poor half-baked little bitch is going to have a baby, without ever having understood what love really means."
[Toby and Terry]"Two dogs stand facing each other...The pointless, primitive fighting instinct of the male"
"Well of course i've been in love...I suppose. I mean, I must've been musn't I?"
Time Period: Post-Modernist
Basic Plot: Great example of post-modernist literature as the novel uses several narrators and perspectives to tell the story that takes place in the Great Depression in Ohio. It becomes evident that each narrator's reliability is different and the reader has to actively seek the truth. Pecola is a young black girl, impregnated by her father, abused and of the belief that what is white is beautiful. Her obsession with Shirley Temple and having "blue eyes" is all in the desire to be percieved, and percieve herself as beautiful in a world where she feels dirty and unworthy. It becomes evident that her mother and father too had troublesome childhoods; her mother being defined by her disability and her father rejected by his own. Claudia (9) is the voice of reason and arguably the perspective the reader should take the most truth from. The novel may be used in terms of love to show the selfless love of Claudia and her sister towards Pecola as a result of the love given to them by their own parents, along with highlighting the perverse nature of the Breedlove family and how the lack of love they recieved from their own family and society affected the next generation.
Quotations:
"Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it – taste it – sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base – everywhere in that house." (Claudia)
"Dandelions. A dart of affection leaps out from her to them. But they do not look at her and do not send love back. She thinks, 'They are ugly. They are weeds." (Pecola relates and loves the ugly weeds)
"She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit." (Pauline)
"The hauntedness would irritate him – the love would move him to fury. How dare she love him? Hadn't she any sense at all? What was he supposed to do about that? Return it? How?" (Cholly doesn't know how to return the love of his daughter)
"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe"
Time Period: Contemporary
Basic Plot: Disgrace follows Professor David Lurie as he enters into relations with student, and arguably muse, Melanie Isaacs. He becomes obsessed by her and yet the concept of love seems to fail him completely. His use of prostitutes and his inability to love show that he lives love through literature and cannot relate it to reality. After suffering disgrace in the city he moves to the country where the remnants of Aprtheid South Africa are still abundant. The rape of his daughter at the hands of black people shows not only the masculine instinct of ownership and posession, something Lurie actually empathises with, but also how this new South Africa is born of rape and is a confused and illegimate fusion of two identities. Obsession is therefore evident along with a warped sense of romantic love that is caught in his love of the works of Byron but which Lurie cannot make tangible. There are few quotations about love but plenty of sex that show the absence of love;
Quotations:
"For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well. On Thursday afternoons he drives to Green Point. Punctually at two p.m. he presses the buzzer at the entrance to Windsor Mansions, speaks his name, and enters."
"Were he to choose a totem, it would be the snake. Intercourse between Soraya and himself must be, he imagines, rather like the copulation of snakes: lengthy, absorbed, but rather abstract, rather dry, even at its hottest."
"He existed in an anxious flurry of promiscuity. He had affairs with the wives of colleagues; he picked up tourists in bars on the waterfront or at the Club Italia; he slept with whores"
"Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core."Drama
Basic Plot: Disgrace follows Professor David Lurie as he enters into relations with student, and arguably muse, Melanie Isaacs. He becomes obsessed by her and yet the concept of love seems to fail him completely. His use of prostitutes and his inability to love show that he lives love through literature and cannot relate it to reality. After suffering disgrace in the city he moves to the country where the remnants of Aprtheid South Africa are still abundant. The rape of his daughter at the hands of black people shows not only the masculine instinct of ownership and posession, something Lurie actually empathises with, but also how this new South Africa is born of rape and is a confused and illegimate fusion of two identities. Obsession is therefore evident along with a warped sense of romantic love that is caught in his love of the works of Byron but which Lurie cannot make tangible. There are few quotations about love but plenty of sex that show the absence of love;
Quotations:
"For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well. On Thursday afternoons he drives to Green Point. Punctually at two p.m. he presses the buzzer at the entrance to Windsor Mansions, speaks his name, and enters."
"Were he to choose a totem, it would be the snake. Intercourse between Soraya and himself must be, he imagines, rather like the copulation of snakes: lengthy, absorbed, but rather abstract, rather dry, even at its hottest."
"He existed in an anxious flurry of promiscuity. He had affairs with the wives of colleagues; he picked up tourists in bars on the waterfront or at the Club Italia; he slept with whores"
"Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core."Drama
Time Period: Post-Modernist
Basic Plot: Plot focuses on Blanche DuBois and the spiritual and physical journey she faces upon the crumbling of her beloved "Belle Reve" - the old fashioned America. She seeks the arms of a man as she feels no identity within herself, she looks to prostitution and her sister to find warmth but both efforts are fruitless. Her spiralling madness alienates Stanley, Stella's husband, and the two conflict in a way symbolic of the old south and new south. There is much comparison between Blanche and a moth, being attracted to the warmth of men and then being burnt by them. Williams uses great dramatic motifs and devices such as the street noise, lighting, "Polka" and detailed stage directions that almost make the reader more priviledged than the audience. In terms of love this play may be used as the passionate love between Stella and Stanley is animalistic almost, the familial love Stella attempts to show her sister and the confusion Blanche has over ove - in particular her late husband whom she feels guilty over still upon discovering his true sexuality. Love seems to be the light that Blanche is attracted to and yet she seems unable to reach it.
Quotations:
" Remember what Huey Long said – "Every Man is a King!" And I am the King around here, so don’t forget it!"
"Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens"
"Blanche moves back into the streak of light. She raises her arms and stretches, as she moves indolently back to the chair"
"What you are talking about is brutal desire – just – Desire! – the name of that rattle-trap street-car that bans through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another…"
