Defamiliarization in the Movie Gulliver's Travels

Defamiliarization refers to a writer's taking an everyday object that we all recognize and
the things that we are all familiar and, with a flick of his or her magical pen of creativity, we
change our perspective to a particular thing and we see it in a new way. The word
defamiliarization was coined by the early 20th-century Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky
in his essay "Art as Technique." He argued that defamiliarization is, more or less, the point of all
art. Art makes language strange, as well as the world that the language presents. This particular
theory is very rampant to genres like sci-fi or science fiction and travel stories.

Speaking of travel stories, we could see the effects of defamiliarization in the movie
Gulliver's Travels which was originally a satirical travel story of Jonathan Swift. It is evident
when Gulliver visits the land of the giant Brobdingnabian people and gets a glimpse of the
women's skin pores up close:

This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us,
only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen through a magnifying
glass, where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough and course,
and ill colored.

Notice how Gulliver makes the fair skinned English ladies into plain ugly women. For us,
the fair skinned women are very beautiful creatures but after he described them, something once
beautiful, fair, and familiar is now totally strange. Also in the scene when Gulliver encountered
the Liliputians, we noticed how tiny they were and how enormous Gulliver is. We often believe
size really matters that the bigger, the better but when Gulliver fights with the official who was
plotting against the Emperor, he was defeated. We could now see that not all big guys can defeat
those who were inferior to them. Liliputians are also excellent builders as you can depict in the
scene wherein they were building a splendid house for Gulliver. This manifests that in midst of
size they could be excellent compared to those who are greater than them. We saw another
perspective that is being great without thinking of the size.

Indeed, defamiliarization allows us to see ordinary things in a different way. It transforms

the somewhat normal event into somewhat quirky and strange. As what Viktor Shklovsky stated
it is an art. Changing usual things into something strange is an art.

https://www.shmoop.com/literature-glossary/defamiliarization.html
 Feminist Perspective in the Story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share
a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social rights
for women. Although feminist advocacy is, and has been, mainly focused on women's rights,
some feminists, including bell hooks, argue for the inclusion of men's liberation within its aims
because men are also harmed by traditional gender roles. Feminist theory, which emerged from
feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's
social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to
respond to issues concerning gender.

The Yellow Wallpaper was recognized as an early feminist indictment of Victorian

patriarchy in early 1970s. The Yellow Wallpaper gives an account of a woman driven to
madness as a result of the Victorian rest-cure, a once frequently prescribed period of inactivity
thought to cure hysteria and nervous conditions in women. It could be said that it was based on
the authors personal experience for this treatment originated with Dr. Weir Mitchell, who
personally prescribed this cure to Gilman herself, as Gary Scharnhorst points out. She was in
fact driven to near madness and later claimed to have written The Yellow Wallpaper to protest
this treatment of women like herself.

In the story, the woman named Jane was misdiagnosed by hysteria and she was
prescribed to have rest cure. She was isolated from everyone and she cannot see anyone but her
husband and nurse. She was also deprived to write, which is the only that made her feel better. It
was not the deprivation of writing and the isolation that they did but they completely shut her
down to the world. They deprived her all the possibilities of healing herself which leads her to
total insanity. There are symbolisms found in the story, the yellow wallpaper itself. According to
Scharnhorst her wallpaper is the heavy bedstead, which is nailed to the floor. The
interpretations of this feature are variations on a theme, ranging from an image of the narrators
static sexuality Victorian women were counseled that conjugal relations were a womans duty
simply to be borne until a sufficient number of children arrived and it was no longer necessary.
See how the society treated the woman as a mere tool in producing children and they were
owned like mere property by the man.

The author may have written this as an expression of the suppressed feeling she had,
especially rage (since it has been stated earlier that it was based on her experience). Modern
women, by reading such texts, can gain a new perspective on our present situation. We can also
learn to avoid past pitfalls. Since we are now living in 21st century, we can now learn from the
past and to make it better --- not to live with the same misery all over again.

http://www.lonestar.edu/yellow-wallpaper.htm
 Stream of Consciousness in the Novel Ulysses
by: Christine Joy P. Corpus

Introduction

Ulysses by James Joyce written in 1922 is a masterpiece which outshines many major works of

modern literature in style, structure, theme and nearly all elements. Joyces Ulysses has been

famous for his stylistic experimentation and innovation, and that is the stream of consciousness

technique. He has used multiple narratives extensively along with the shifts in each new episode

of the novel. This term end paper will tell the reader the strategy on how Joyce paved the way

into embedding it into the novel due to the fact that it was a novelty at that time. Also it will tell

how Joyces previous works are related and how they contribute to Joyces technique. There will

be episodes and sections of the stream-of-consciousness used in Ulysses and its climax in the

final chapter.

The introduction and the Evolution of Stream-of-Consciousness in Ulysses

When Joyce published Ulysses he was aware that its style was unique for the age and not

many people would have found it attractive to read since the technique hes using is very novel

to the readers at that time. Regarding the literary critics of the time it was clear that Ulysses

was a masterpiece. On page 352, the first encounter with the stream of consciousness is found,

the fourth page of the book, we enter Stephen's mind for the first time:

Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.

This short episode opens the door to the rest of the novel. This is a hint for later, and

intentionally was put there just to touch readers curiosity. Other examples of these:
Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures
of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.
Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.

Here we can see the inner thoughts of Stephen Dedalus. The author allows us to see the stream of

thoughts that was going on to the mind of Dedalus. As seen in the line it was clear that the

thoughts just flow and it was uncontrollable in the sense that there was no logic and word order

in the lines presented. Another example is the line of Bloom in Lestrygonian episode, he

saunters through Dublin observing and musing.

Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shovelling scoopful of creams for
a Christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies.

It was very clear that words that comes out from his mind are completely irrelevant to each other

like in Stephen Dedalus point of view.

Language Used in Ulysses

In Penelopes episode one word that attracted lot of attention is the word yes. Penelopes

chapter begins and ends with this word. Molly Bloom is not highly educated and her thoughts are

not occupied with science, languages and philosophy. Rather her diction is of an average person

in Ireland of that time. What is an interesting fact even though she has some Jewish blood in her

there is no trace of any Jewish word.

yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the
rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was
a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or
shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well
him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I
yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to
me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said
yes I will Yes.

In some parts of the Ulysses, especially in the Third Episode, Latin, Italian and German words

can be found. Below example illustrates it:

 Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: PHYSIQUES, CHIMIQUES
ET NATURELLES. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of MOU EN CIVET

Conclusion

Stream-of-consciousness as a technique goes hand in hand with the interior monologue. If the

stream is psychological technique, then the monologue is a literary one. Both help the reader

understand ones psyche, the first renders the thought process and the second enables it to be put

into a literary work. Joyce uses the stream of consciousness technique as a narrative technique in

order to explore the mental and inner truth of all the characters. As depicted in the novel, inner

thoughts of Molly and Stephen are revealed and as their inner minds are revealed; their

personality became clearer to the readers. It is through reading their streaming thoughts that a

reader will be able to get in touch with the characters in the story and eventually gets the deeper

meaning of the story, its not just understanding narrative as whole but getting to know the

characters which are the important components of the story that makes it whole. Still, Ulysses

remains a challenging piece of literature engaging both readers and scholars alike into

interpreting it.

References:

http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanfiction/stream-of-consciousness-in-

ulysses.html#.Wa-6x9J97IV

http://www.geoffwilkins.net/wiki/Ulysses.pdf