Comment on classmate post (minimum 75 words) are due by end of day Saturday.
RESPOND TO THIS PERSON/ Sean Holmes – Tuesday, November 22, 2022, 10:39 AM
Discussion Board 20 Lit 60,
Class,
The protagonist of our book seems to connect with the narrative style as well. Anton Shammas is a conundrum in and of himself. His background, religion, citizenship, and family’s residence all defied expectations and went against the grain of conventional wisdom. Although Arabic, his family was Christian rather than Muslim. They lived in Israel even though they were Arabs. The character is characterized in several ways, which corresponds to the plot because it jumps around in various directions. Alternating between “the tale” and “the teller” and switching locations frequently. At times, it might be exceedingly challenging to understand where and what is happening. This, in my opinion, clarifies what an arabesque is in literary terms. In the case of our book, it was to make all these various stories somehow link to reach a conclusion. It basically reads like a lot of randomnesses that force the reader to look for connections. Of course, there are some obvious links and other things in our book, but a lot of it felt arbitrary. The lectures from the professor came to the rescue at this point. I would have been absolutely lost without them. I think this story is depicted in this way to enable anyone to draw the connections they desire. Both law and literature are highly subjective. Instead of giving their readers the obvious solution, writers prefer to maintain their curiosity. I’m not really aware of any literary works that simply state the story’s lesson in plain English. Maybe children’s books, but even they have connections that people have only recently discovered. In my opinion, an author would want their material to allow for ongoing review outside of the book, therefore, leaving things open-ended allows for that. Overall, it seems that both the book and the character do a good job of expressing each other. Although both the main character of the novel and how the novel itself is written are connected by randomness, there is a deeper message in every piece of literature that the reader must fin themselves. The similarity between these two is due to the literary definition of an arabesque.
Sean
