Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Chaos is...revealing

Toni Morrison is known for her poetic prose, thrown together in a seemingly chaotic but brilliantly cohesive manner. Beloved is a prime example of this style, as it skips seamlessly from one time and voice to the next. This flowing chaos is particularity apparent in the voice of Beloved. Both her reflection chapter and her other interactions with characters, are confusing and chaotic to an extreme. The majority of her sentences are not sentences at all but rather fragments pieced together in a jumbled mess. Morrison uses this style not to confuse the reader but rather give him insight into the lives of Beloved and her family. It also gives her novel a distinct look and feel characteristic only of Morrison herself. I adore Morrison’s style and wish I could mirror it in my own writing, incorporating the chaos to build a bigger and more beautiful picture.

Toni Morrison~Beloved

Monday, February 21, 2011

Chaos is...the plot

Alvar lives a quiet life. His life is free from chaos, that is at least until Lindys walks through the door of his art gallery. Lindys brings an entirely new dimension into Alvar’s life, throwing him out of his daily pattern and driving him to commit acts he wouldn’t have dreamed of in different circumstances. Both the fictional “author” and Karin Fossum thrive on this jolt and chaos. For both it provides the conflict and ultimately the plot line. Broken argues that without chaos life continues as planned, and though there are plenty of books about life as planned, there are few that would appeal to Karin Fossum’s target audience. However, through her characters, Fossum also argues that life is safer without chaos. It may not open doors, but it does keep you comfortable. Fossum challenges the reader to choose between chaos and order, something we all chose between and something that is prominent in the creative writing process.

Broken~Karin Fossum

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Chaos is…part of the natural order

Unlike all of the other characters on this blog, Meursault lives in a distinctly mellow state. Chaos washes completely over him, affect only others. By killing the Arab in a rather random act of violence Meursault tosses his world into a chaotic mess, only to sit back and observe it all. For Meursault life is chaos and so it needs very little attention. His character is purposely distant because very few humans share this view. He is an anomaly living in a clam state, suggesting, yet again, that life is neither possible nor human without a little bit of chaos. This also applies to the creative process as, like many of the other authors, Camus uses a chaotic and unexpected event to drive the plot of his novel.

The Stranger~Albert Camus