Sylvia Plath's Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit and Joyce Cary's Growing Up.

PLATH AND CARY:SHORT NOTES.

1)      Think of the implications of the titles? Do they contextualise or signpost the stories? ‘Growing Up’   suggests in its open way the ambiguity surrounding change in terms of time and individual? Interestingly this story is quite ‘tight’ in its actual telling or chronology?  ‘Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit’  suggests an unusual   juxtaposition and specifity in memory which serves to  authenticate or validate the story? The idea of a narrative being a ‘rites of passage’ tale is useful too.

2)    Assumptions haunt all the levels of each narrative. The Mother does not prepare the child for the shattering of her ideals as she believes SLEEP can allay most fears and troubles? Actually it gives way to different forms of war-fare in the story. The father in Cary has a fixed ‘anti-growth’ story or narrative about his young girls that they react against and abolish through their literal introduction of conflict into his reading of him (and the dog as his surrogate self). Think of the conflicts involved in both stories and the choices and changes that are brought about through this conflict?

3)    The stories work well in even opposite ways. The father ironically  learns to grow up through the aggressive intervention of the daughters in his version/reading  of their characters. The child in Plath finds the world savage and self-seeking and realises that even or especially adults let you down?

4)      Do the titles actually leave the protagonist with their own dignity? They do not apportion blame specifically? Or is blaming not an issue? OR is it a case of eternal displacement? We live in worlds where everything in some way is standing in for something else? This is how language works and it might mirror the workings of the mind and the very functioning of society?  CIVILISATION is an illusion? VENEER of civility? The experience of modern living makes victims of us all through repression?