OPPapers.com Essay Index >> English >> Gertrude Stein: Making Perception
We have many free term papers and essays on Gertrude Stein: Making Perception. We also have a wide variety of research papers and book reports available to you for free. You can browse our collection of term papers or use our search engine.
Gertrude Stein: Making Perception. Gertrude Stein's work The Making of
Americans is a wildly experimental expression of language. ...
... we have instead of God." Hemingway's perception of the ... can he quite succeed in making
his females ... he used two quotations: first, Gertrude Stein's comment, "You ...
Submitted by nutmeg2006 on December 10, 2007
Category: English
Words: 1059 | Pages: 5
Views: 61
Popularity Rank: 107,822
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)
Gertrude Stein's work The Making of Americans is a wildly experimental expression of language. In her work, she demonstrates the principles of Modernism through radical narrative techniques and ambiguity of words. Modernist artists of her time, like Pablo Picasso, challenged perception by using shapes to create pictures in order to convey meaning. Similarly, through manipulation of sentence components and repetition, Stein creates a visual experience that juxtaposes self awareness with the perception of others.
The use of repetition in the passage is noticeable as is its inherent importance. Stein uses the same words in each sentence, but with varying degrees of subtle differences. In the sentence, "Every one has it to say of each one he is like such a one I see it in him, every one has it to say of each one she is like some one else I can tell by remembering" the repeated use of "every one" drives the idea that all people, including oneself are familiar and the same. Stein reinforces the idea that we are repeated in each other, and insists that in knowing and remembering someone from our past, we will be able to know someone in our future.
Not only does Stein use the same words and the passage continues, but she sprinkles the passage with words that have a visual and active meaning to them, giving the reader a visual picture of life. Effective verbs like "living", "remembering", "seeing" all have visual connotations as do the words "making", "resembling", and "looking". The flow created by repetition and the expressive verbs create a psychological experience for the reader. This experience enables awareness of the words and creates a meditative tone that changes the understanding of how we think
Stein wrote this passage in a way that forces the reader to look to the words for meaning. This idea of looking to the interior to find value in the exterior is exactly what Stein was trying to achieve when writing The Making of Americans. The...
You must Login to view the entire paper.
If you are not a member yet, Sign Up for free!