Monday, April 27, 2009
"Secondary" Escapism
I feel like I was a but tongue-tied in my paper presentation last week, and now that I am actually writing this paper I have gained a little clarity. I am breaking up Hill's escapism into three categories. The first being the most common escapism where the reader delves into a world where the impossible is possible. Like The Graveyard Book or Harry Potter. Some of Hill's stories are like this, and this is what I'm thinking of as "Primary" Escapism. The second kind I have dubbed "Secondary" Escapism. I think of this as when something paranormal happens to the characters, and they recognize it as paranormal. It is beyond the parameters of the world they know which is the same world we know, so the characters escape rather than the readers. The third would be a literal escape which Hill uses very frequently as well as "Secondary" escapes. Okay maybe this is a but clearer now. Even to me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I didn't think you were necessarily tongue-tied in class last week, but starting to actually write anything always presents the opportunity to see your own thesis more clearly because you see it physically forming in front of you.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of escapism this way before, but I like all 3 of the categories you have formed to describe it. When you talk about the third one though, the literal escape, what exactly do you mean by that? I mean, I sort of understand, but in my mind, I'm also overlapping literal escape with the first two. I think literal escape is hardest (for me) to describe because I tend to combine it with elements of your first escapism and second escapism categories.
I mean like a character actually making an escape from danger in a story. I kind of like to think it's a bit ironic that Hill contains a lot of escape plots in his escapism loaded stories. Andy actually brought this point up to me because he started bringing up all the different escapes made by the characters in the stories.
ReplyDelete