1.) Use the following short quote from David Vann, who is an author and writer. His words emphasize the importance of setting in literary analysis and creative writing. Apply his thoughts to the Winslow book, The Winter of Frankie Machine.
“Landscapes (setting) indirectly illustrate the interior life of the characters and further the drama.”
To complete this first question of the assignment, explain this quote and its relationship to the novel. This analysis should include how the interior life and thoughts of certain characters are present in Winslow’s text through the “mirror image” of certain settings. Then describe how setting and landscape may illustrate criminality and obsessions within the plotline of the Winslow novel. You can choose any character or setting you wish but these elements should be fully explained.
Here are a few more points, if you need them, about settings in general. They are in addition to what I have presented in my lectures.
1.) Settings-physical location, time period, social milieu, and background events. These areas help plot evolution and character development.
2.) Specificity-accurate/current or past historical details, geographical knowledge of and physical structure connected with place, time of day, sensory details.
3.) Novelty- new expressions or unusual aspects associated with geographical location and physical space.
4.) Familiarity-well known landmark, or place/city/ country making storyline more approachable cognitively and emotionally.
2.) The second part of this assignment will consist of applying a quote, taken from The Hydra Head by Carlos Fuentes to our novel. Although we have not read the Fuentes’ work directly, many concepts and thoughts within this quote are applicable to Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine. You do not have to read the Fuentes novel as this question only refers to the ideas in Fuentes’ quote.
Here is the quote:
“We sought a place where we might be masters, not slaves. But one is master of himself only when he has no slaves. We did not know how to be masters, without new slaves, so we ended up by being executioners, in order not to be victims. We found victims to escape being victims. Each of us looks at the other and sees only his own suffering in the eyes of the enemy. To reject the others’ suffering, inevitably a mirror image of our own, [leads to] our only recourse, violence… power knows itself to be temporary, [so] it is always cruel.”
Although this quote was taken from a book, we did not read this semester, it presents many ideas about the book, The Winter of Frankie Machine, which we did read over this semester. In a two- page essay like response, explain how the dynamics of domination/oppression, cruelty, killing and criminality/obsession are present in Winslow’s book.
You might try to explain how the dynamic of domination/oppression (master/slave) is present in Winslow’s text. Since this quote seems to foreground violence and victimization as an integral part of the domination and oppression relationship, you might want to mention its presence in some way in the novel. Violence and victimization many times accompany suffering and predation. These elements often surface when there is an absence of mediating structures, such as government, police, military, church, families, education, etc., or when there is complicity among them.
