Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Special Issue on Literature No. 4 October, 2016 Pp.20-32
A Postmodernist Reading of Anne Tyler’s Breathing Lessons, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions
Nazmi Tawfiq Al-Shalabi
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Arts, the Hashemite University
Zarqa, Jordan
Abstract :
This study offers a postmodernist reading of Tyler’s Breathing Lessons, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions .Using argumentation as a method, it comprises an original work devoted to demonstrating that these novels are postmodern. While Tyler’s novel exemplifies postmodernism, a twentieth-century movement in art and literature, in its indirect narrative method, focus on ordinary humans, highlighting family disintegration, and demonstrating that marriage is no longer a safe anchor in life, Rhys’s emphasizes Antoinette’s struggle for independence, uses irony, and is open-ended. Vonnegut’s novel ,similarly, makes use of intertextuality, depicts characters lacking free will, employs collage, and selects a content and style that are both skeptical. Obviously, each one of these novels reflects postmodernism in its own way.
Key Words: polar opposites, postmodernism, reaction, reference, self-reflexivity