Postmodernist Text Analysis Book Review Examples

Postmodernism reflects the idea that the mind generates a reality that suits its own personal and particular needs. This departs radically from the classical idea that reality is fixed, rather than fungible. Rather than one set of stimuli for the mass of individuals to understand, this means instead that there is no one reality; instead, each individual comes to his or her own conclusions on the basis of the stimuli – but also on the basis of the mental nexus of the individual receiving the stimuli. So when we read about Mary’s impression, at the end of the scene, that she was never with the people that she remembers seeing on the shore, or that she was actually two days away by train when Charlie left, all that does is make all of her previous musings suspicious as well. When one looks at things from a postmodernist perspective, this narrative becomes totally unreliable. It’s just as likely that Mary is on the other side of the world making this all up. Note the lack of urgency in Mary’s statement “Oh. I’m so late. My mother will think I was abducted by savages” (Course reading). Then she lurches into a discussion of a “sunset blue clear with one bright star and more coming,” which is definitely not an image one would associate with an urgent onset of savages, or even the attack of an angry mother. Instead, it just forms some in a random series of images that could lead to that train or could lead just about anywhere else on the planet. Of course, a loss of absolute realism is just one possible destination on that road.