The Magic Lacking According to Oxford Dictionaries, magical realism defines as, "a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy". "Elsewhere" by Gabrielle Zevin kind of uses the magical realism writing technique. This book exhibits five out of the six factors of magical realism. It shows lyrical, almost poetic writing, it examines the aspects of human nature, extraordinary events are often accepted as ordinary, has many implicit criticisms of society, and a few examples of authorial reticence. The one factor that this book does not exemplify is cultural hybridity. Elsewhere contains writing that, at times, seems to be almost lyrical and pleasing to
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Teenagers tend to lie about events that do not even need to be kept a secret so basically, they lie just for the sake of lying because it is "fun". Many times Liz would tell little white lies that she did not necessarily need to tell, for example multiple times Liz told Betty she was needed eternims to buy clothes, when she could have just told her she needed them to go scuba diving but she could have withheld the information about going on "The Big Dive". Young adults tend to believe they will never die. This causes them to live carelessly and not take caution in anything they do. "Young people tend to think they're immortal. Many of them can't conceive of themselves as dead..." (Zevin …show more content…
One examples of this is Zevin's decision to write only slightly about the incident with the mermaids. Liz was dying at the bottom of the oceans while a couple mermaids came up to her and began to criticize her. They made fun of her for rude reasons like: she couldn't even talk, she's probably dumb, and she looked like a slug. Zevin decides to speak only briefly about this because she wanted the reader to automatically think about society and previous experiences the reader has had with mean people, and really be able to connect emotionally with the novel. This technique worked because humans would easily make this connection.
This book does not show any examples of cultural hybridity. The closest thing to it was Liz's mention of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The only culture in this society would be the American society. Even though Elsewhere doesn't technically take place in America, the characters in the book live their lives out in the way of Americans.
Lewis
Teenagers tend to lie about events that do not even need to be kept a secret so basically, they lie just for the sake of lying because it is "fun". Many times Liz would tell little white lies that she did not necessarily need to tell, for example multiple times Liz told Betty she was needed eternims to buy clothes, when she could have just told her she needed them to go scuba diving but she could have withheld the information about going on "The Big Dive". Young adults tend to believe they will never die. This causes them to live carelessly and not take caution in anything they do. "Young people tend to think they're immortal. Many of them can't conceive of themselves as dead..." (Zevin …show more content…
One examples of this is Zevin's decision to write only slightly about the incident with the mermaids. Liz was dying at the bottom of the oceans while a couple mermaids came up to her and began to criticize her. They made fun of her for rude reasons like: she couldn't even talk, she's probably dumb, and she looked like a slug. Zevin decides to speak only briefly about this because she wanted the reader to automatically think about society and previous experiences the reader has had with mean people, and really be able to connect emotionally with the novel. This technique worked because humans would easily make this connection.
This book does not show any examples of cultural hybridity. The closest thing to it was Liz's mention of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The only culture in this society would be the American society. Even though Elsewhere doesn't technically take place in America, the characters in the book live their lives out in the way of Americans.
Lewis