Research Assignment: Concept of Post-Modernist Fiction

POST-MODERNIST FICTION
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Post-Modernist Fiction
Postmodernist fiction is an essential term, or set of ideas, that came about as a result of the academic study since the mid-1980s (Gladson & Wordon, 2011). The concept of postmodernism appears in various courses or areas of study. Some of the common areas include art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. The beginning of post-modernist fiction is not well known since its technicality complex to locate where it starts from. For one to well understand this term, one should understand the concept of modernism. It’s because the term is believed to have originated from modernism. Modernism is fully explained following two historical facts. To begin with, the actual meaning refers to the broad movement in western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850. It is characterized by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasizing innovation and experimentation instead in forms, materials, and techniques (Hoffmann, 2005). The methods are meant to create artworks that better reflects the modern society. Modernism is often regarded as the succession of art movements that critics and historians occasionally have used over time. This movement is roughly coterminous with the twentieth-century western ideas about art (although traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism emphasizes the use of visual arts, music, literature, and drama while ignoring the ancient methods. High fashion period emphasizes the use high standards of art, regarding making the art, consumption and the meaning of the art. The components making up modernism are well known as major determinants in poetry and fiction art used from 1910-1930 (Sleuth, 1993).
Concept of Post-Modernist Fiction
Postmodernist fiction refers to deliberately fabricated critical work that aims at showing reality in the fantasy literature. The literature may be have been written or not yet been improved and it is newly improved. It is used by the authors to portray the picture of realism in fiction stories. Thus, the stories which are fictitious, are seen to be real by the readers of the literature. The writer achieves this by use of various styles while creating the material. Some of the symbolic forms used include, for instance, irony, metafiction, and many others. The concept of fiction entails creative stories, incidences, and literature away from realism but to appear real. The writer aims at emphasizing on the idea of expressionism to show the feelings that one intend to portray elaborately. While constructing postmodernism to ensure that it is superior, one need to regard the criterion of interest. In such circumstances, many audiences’ attention is captured. While making fictional literature, one should ensure that the principle of keeping it interesting is exhaustively adhered to. Just like modernism, postmodernism follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. The art of postmodernism favours reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destroyed, decentred and dehumanized subject. Postmodernism, although, to some extent seem to be similar to modernism, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Innovation in postmodernism, for instance, probable to present a divided perception of human subjectivity and history but gives the views as something of profound sadness, an issue to be avoided as much as possible since if not, the result is grief. Many modernist works always maintain that artistic works unite the literature, making the meaning be seen clearly and ensures the text flows. It is lost when it comes to the current life whereby art will do a lot that many have been unable to do (Adams, 2007).
Many Authors used this concept of postmodern fiction. For example, Kurt Vonnegut also commonly used this technique: the first chapter of his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five is about the process of writing the story and calls attention to his presence throughout the book. The fact is that the novel by Vonnegut focused mostly on a writer’s life experience. For instance during the time of firebombing of Dresden. The Author further elaborates the facts coming from his creative works. He does this by using fictions in a cunning way such that the readers can see the realism in the fiction created. The same case is considered in the novel of Tim O'Brien's particularly his collection stories of 1990. When it comes to the story of ‘The Things They Carried’, pertaining the experience by one platoon during the Vietnam War. The story portrays the character of the author by the name Tim O'Brien. Despite the fact that he was among the fighters, the message is explicitly addressed. The story is perceived to be more of reality than a fiction one. Picking one of the stories in the novel, for example, the story of "How to Tell a True War Story", it elaborately explains the reality of giving out the story. When the author openly portray fiction while telling the story, such stories can be perceived to be real and no one can believe such stories are fictional. Another primary example is the novel written by David Foster Wallace called ‘The Pale King,' in his story, he suggested that the copyright page only regarded it to be fiction for the right reasons and that everything within the novel was non-fiction. He also employs a character in the story by the name, David Foster (Vonnegut, 1969).
The publication made by Tim O’Brien ‘The Things They Carried’ is a postmodern works of short stories. The stories are grouped to form a cycle, for instance, a group of American soldiers during and after the Vietnam War. To briefly describe this postmodern novel, its main character is the writer by the name Tim O’Brien. The story elaborately explains the author’s experience in the war as well as the experience by his comrades. To mention a few stories written in the novel, one is about the amount of weight subjected to the soldiers by the instruments they carry. Tim’s trying to flee to Canada to avoid going to Vietnam, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s obsession with a woman named Martha, and Kiowa, the Native American soldier, dying in the rice paddy. The text is said to be postmodern because, although the novel is not real, it blurs the line between reality and fiction through its use of figurative styles, for instance, metafiction. The book clearly portrays some unrealism, therefore, preparing the reader to know that it is a false one. In this case, the novel talks directly to the reader and exhaustively explains how stories can control the truth. To demonstrate a little bit, in the circumstance when O’Brien reveals about killing his daughter, The girl asks him to tell the truth, and he says he can honestly give a response, "Of course not," or "Yes." The author can change the tricks and present whatever version of reality he thought of. The author prioritizes his feelings expressing them sincerely to be seen as real. He did this to ensure that the intended message is communicated to the audience as a real issue that happened. These instances add much value to the artistic process of the novel and the modern writing. The book in many times tells how some things shown to the audience were very far from the truth. An example in the novel is the killing of the baby elephant and the death of Kiowa. The writer states that in his stories he only wanted to explain the things he was afraid of looking at them (O'brien, 1990). He, therefore, can attach faces to grief and love, and pity and God. The Author, in this case, portrayed his extent of bravery. In most of the situations in the novel, there is much imprecision about what is perceived as fictional and what is real. When using postmodernism approach in writing books, stylistic devises are usually incorporated. Styles such as varying narrative styles, syntax, and other stylistic devices are utilized in the novel. Postmodern fiction is employed in the stories targeting the audiences of the literature. The audience is also able to know the realities in the novel and distinguishes them from creations. The same case Tim did, in the event of The Things They Carried, making the reader think about what is a "story" and what is "real " (O'brien, 1990).
The Purpose of Postmodernism Fiction.
Many authors currently are employing the technique of postmodern fiction while creating their stories to ensure that the readers see the realism in the fiction story created. Users need to be able to envision themselves in that world through a character with whom they can at least minimally identify, but otherwise, this is about as reductive of an account of the appeal of fiction. Most novels emphasize character closer to life, for more natural. Presuming that "more natural" novels are from Tim’s point of view. The attitude strikes many as they read the story as compared to contemptuous of "the novel" as a form of literary art, as anything other than an opportunity to project one's psychological preoccupations onto fictional characters. The order that type applies is, after all, an aesthetic order without which a work of fiction has no reason for being. Unless one can turn novels into some religious meditation or "spiritual" quest, which is about all one can make out of the attempt to force fiction to "answer important questions that they may have about their life" and of language like "amount of blood the reader and character share." When the stakes are raised this grandly, "art" can't be anything but a nuisance.
Comparison between Modernism and Postmodernism
Innovation employs lamentation of fragmentation idea, provisionality or coherence. Postmodernism, in contrast, seldom operate lamentation process of the notion of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates.
Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to explain some of these differences. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural constructions which accompany distinct stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate specific cultural practices including what kind of art and literature is produced. In his writing, he considers first market capitalism that happened in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States and all their spheres of influence. The first part is associated with particular advancement in technology. To name some of them: the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second part occurred from the period of the late nineteenth century until the...