Both writers see narrative as overwhelmingly malleable, shattering traditional novel forms. Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is diffuse with, tone, plot, and characters seem to wander all over the map. Gunter Grass’ My Century is constructed in a similar manor. However, both novels carry a strong thematic and emotional content. Kubdera’s shattered, oblique approach to narrative, and Grass’ step-by-step march through the years. This essay will comment on the effectiveness of Kundera’s and Grass’ style of story telling.
The Book of Laughter and. This book reads more like a series of connecting short stories than a novel. The main character Tamina, a sympathetic young woman in Eastern Europe who is drifting along without any defined goals. Her husband died shortly after they fled their country. Her husband was her entire life, and she fears that she will lose her memories of him. Through a series of events, through the course of the novel Tamina learns a lot about life and love.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is divided into several parts, with some parts sharing the same titles. This is to emphasize the idea that the novel is a series of variations on a set of themes. Two parts of the novel center Tamina, but each of the other five sections focuses on several unrelated characters that only …show more content…
“The Stupidity of people comes from having a question for everything… The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions.” This represents a world longing to be compartmentalized so what better way to betray this felling then by offering different perspectives, from charters that are a small part of a larger
The Book of Laughter and. This book reads more like a series of connecting short stories than a novel. The main character Tamina, a sympathetic young woman in Eastern Europe who is drifting along without any defined goals. Her husband died shortly after they fled their country. Her husband was her entire life, and she fears that she will lose her memories of him. Through a series of events, through the course of the novel Tamina learns a lot about life and love.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is divided into several parts, with some parts sharing the same titles. This is to emphasize the idea that the novel is a series of variations on a set of themes. Two parts of the novel center Tamina, but each of the other five sections focuses on several unrelated characters that only …show more content…
“The Stupidity of people comes from having a question for everything… The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions.” This represents a world longing to be compartmentalized so what better way to betray this felling then by offering different perspectives, from charters that are a small part of a larger