Zadie Smith's, "The Waiter's Wife"

Résumé du document

This document is an essay, entirely written, in which we compare Zadie Smith's "The Waiter's Wife" to a novel/short story read for this course and which is detailed in the document. The essay treats the following two aspects: characterization (how the characters are established and how they develop) and narration (from which perspective is the story told and how does this affect the meaning.

The reading list:
Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book. Any edition. 2008. 300 pages.
Kushner, Tony. Angels in America. Any edition. 1991. 250 pages.
McCarthy. No Country for Old Men. Any edition. 2005. 300 pages.
Oyeyemi, Helen. The Icarus Girl. Any edition. 2005. 325 pages.
Peck, John and Martin Coyle. Literary Terms and Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan. 1993 or 2002 edition. 241 pages.
Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. 1991. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0141014081 (or Part I: A Survivor's Tale: M).

Extraits

[...] Home essay Zadie Smith's “The Waiter's Wife As Margaret J. Wheatley, who studies organizational behaviour, once noted that "There (was) no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about", we may question, especially since the most prevalent ghettoization suspicions in many places around the world, with all the implications of communities, enforcing people to deal with «multiculturalism». While Wheatley defined herself a «global citizen», we can only face the true face of the world resulting in an association of different and more or less powerful community organizations. [...]

[...] On the contrary, Alsana's portray appears to perfectly match the traditional Muslim woman's identity as she is «small and rotund, moon-faced and with thick fingers she hid in the folds of her cardigan». These archetypes are to feed the mutual representations, highlighting most especially the perceptions of the Indian immigrated community in a modern western country. English people are perceived as «rude» people while black people are considered as unfriendly. This way, Salman claims for himself, «I'm not a waiter. That is, I am a waiter, but not just a waiter». [...]

[...] The same way, Tony Kushner's modern play also deals with many different and single community's identities which are more troubled and presented as many contrasting portrays offering to deal with the way people elaborate specific and extracultural relationships to progress. Ethnicity also defines, in the first place, each of the play's characters, even when they grow and transcend their individual fates. Then, the operative contrasts are many, mainly dealing within the axe defined by the socially included and excluded. Louis Ironson appears as a perfect Jewish stereotype, employed as a federal court defender, he's tortured, anxious, ambivalent and feeling continuously guilty. [...]

[...] ) you might see the truth better than I . ». By contrast, Angels in America's narrative is more complex and elaborated, offering the characters to overpass and change their initial conceptions. These two narratives are similar not only by the topic but also by the writing process.We have the English-style and the American perception about multiculturalism with its limitations in one case and its liberation in the other. Kushner characters' destiny appears to be deliberately turned and moved through their intimate desires and personal wishes. [...]

[...] Harper: Where? Joe: Just out. Thinking. Harper: It's late. Joe: I had a lot to think about. Harper: I burned dinner. Joe: Sorry». If the global progression of the narration as well as the one of the characters is being made far more visible and spectacular within the divine presence of the Angel in Kushner's play, Zadie Smith's short story isn't deprived of evolution, which grows first as a mental process rather than a physical one. [...]