Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers By George Orwell

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“A book about dead bodies is a conversational curveball. It’s all well and good to write an article about corpses, but a full-size book plants a red flag on your character” (Roach 14). This statement, from the novel Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, proves how a story needs to be extraordinary to stand out and make an impact. This novel and the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell both are examples of proof for the following statement:
“A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling; it must have something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experience of every average man and woman”-Thomas Hardy.
In order to have a story with telling, the story needs to be bigger than the everyday experience of average
…show more content…
For example, in the novel Animal Farm, the animals believe that humans, who have authority, are evil. “Is it not crystal clear, then comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings?” (Orwell 20). The animals see humans as the cause of all their problems and believe humans keep them from their freedom. This has a direct correlation to how humans in the real world feel about rich people with authority and power. People reading Animal Farm can understand the animals because of what they both have in common: a dislike of authority. Another connection the animals have with readers is placing blame on others. “The rats, which had been troublesome that winter, were also said to be in league with Snowball” (Orwell 78). The animals had been blaming Snowball for all their problems, even though the problems had nothing to do with him. People always blame others for their mistakes and misfortunes. People deal with guilt and stress by projecting their problems onto others, just as the animals are doing. Readers can relate to the reactions of the animals, thus allowing readers to reflect upon themselves, as they judge the characters of the novel. In the novel Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, the author brings up how cadaver research has discovered that shoulder straps could save lives in the event of a plane crash. “Most airplane safety improvements are assessed from a cost-benefit viewpoint… ‘It’s gonna cost us six hundred and sixty-nine million to put the things in’ So long, shoulder straps” (Roach 126). This points out a situation that could directly face a reader: a plane crash. Readers are provided the extraordinary experience of a plane crash, and then relate to it directly. Readers know that shoulder straps could save their lives, but they aren’t in use. Both novels create an out of the ordinary

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