Essay 2 The representatin f Clare’s death, n the ther hand, seethes with the plitics f racial hatred, marriage, scial mbility, male dminance, and heternrmativity in 1920s Harlem. Because the narrative glsses ver her thughts and des nt prvide an actin sequence–she was afraid, she turned, she jumped; r, she laughed, she was pushed, she fell–Clare passes ut f literary cnventins that stage female victimizatin r intlerable psychic cnflicts. Early in Passing, we learn that Clare Kendry fled frm tyrannical, racist aunts by passing int a white marriage and that Irene Redfield fled frm any hint f risk-taking int a tenuus marriage and infinite tea parties. Despite Irene’s stensible lyalty t “racial uplift,” she des nt fault Clare entirely fr her chice t pass, t cmmit race suicide. The wmen first reunite, after all, at the tp f the Draytn Htel where Irene herself is passing t btain refuge frm the crwded, “burning” streets f Chicag. Irene is relieved t be in “anther wrld, pleasant, quiet, and strangely remte frm the sizzling ne that she had left belw”. Althugh this ability t pass (up) int “anther wrld” des nt cme withut substantial lsses, Clare cnfides in Irene that having mney is crucial t her happiness: “‘all things cnsidered, I think, ‘Rene, that it’s even wrth the price'”.
The Term Paper on Nella Larsen’s Passing African American
The Harlem Renaissance was a turning point for many African Americans. A vast amount of literature was created specifically for this group during this era. It was a period when the African American "was in vogue" and "white thinkers and writers were devoting a considerable amount of attention" to them (Taylor 91, 90). For the first time, African Americans were being told that it was okay to be ...
Anxius t escape her “pale life,” Clare attaches herself t Irene and t Irene’s scial wrld in Harlem. Irene reslves several times t cut ff cntact with Clare, but she never manages t d s. In the final scene, Clare, Irene, and Brian attend a party at the irnically named Freeland’s apartment. Having discvered his wife’s secret, Clare’s husband, Jhn Bellew, barges int the party and races tward Clare, calling her a “damned nigger.” Clare stands “at the windw, as cmpsed as if everyne were nt staring at her in curisity and wnder, as if the whle structure f her life were nt lying in fragments befre her” (271).
As Jhn flies tward Clare, Irene hurries t her side, “her terrr tinged with fercity,” and lays her hand n “Clare’s bare arm. ne thught pssessed her. She culdn’t have Clare Kendry cast aside by Bellew.
She culdn’t have her free” (271).
Clare must be cntained by marriage, r death, in rder fr Irene t feel safe: Irene knws, “If Clare was freed, anything might happen” (268).
The danger that Clare embdies, released when Irene pens the envelpe in the first scene, culminates in this frantic cnfrntatin between identity, desire, and the threat f freedm. The narrative pauses, as it des thrughut the telling f this intense cnnectin between the tw wmen, t reflect back n the mment: “What happened next, Irene Redfield never afterwards allwed herself t remember. Never clearly” (271).
The narrative disengages frm the time f the fall, leaping frward t a partial memry. Since mst f the narrative depends upn Irene’s recllectin, we dn’t have access t what “really happened” either.
Smehw Clare falls ut the windw–which, cincidentally (r nt), Irene had pened a mment befre. This blurred event causes a great deal f speculatin, inside and utside the fictinal text. (11) Still, the final mments f uncertainty and lss in Passing are cmplexly marked as female–bth descriptively in the fcus n Clare’s bdy and structurally in the ambiguity f the fall. n the way dwnstairs, Irene is struck by the thught that Clare might still be alive, “a thught s terrifying, s hrrible that she had t grasp hld f the banister” (273).
The Term Paper on Interesting Narrative
“Who are we looking for, who are we looking for? It’s Equiano we’re looking for. ” –those are the words from a chant about the disappearance of an African boy. The disappearance of Olaudah Equiano has become a subject for a national folklore. All along the sixteenth – nineteenth centuries thousands of Africans captured in West Africa had been shipped to be sold in slavery. Many of them ...
Clare passes, briefly, fr a tragic mulatta r burgeis suicidal “white” wman: the “blnd beauty” with her “ivry skin” and “ivry face” is either a murder victim r a suicide. Yet, if Clare chses t jump, her decisin is prmpted by a white supremacist husband and a desperate friend rushing at her; if Clare is pushed, she is a “cmpsed” victim–“There was even a faint smile n her full, red lips and in her shining eyes” (271).
Clare refuses t abdicate, even at her death, her “revlutinary pssibilities” r her smile. There is smething self–willed abut her disappearance, abut her willingness t risk everything–twice.
Writing abut Clarissa, Elisabeth Brnfen defines self-inflicted death as “bth the literal attainment f alterity thrugh death and the perfrmance f an autbigraphical desire” (142).
In a far less prtracted scene f dying than Clarissa’s, Clare achieves this dual legacy as well–but we nly knw the cmplicatins f her desire thrugh Irene’s hld n the narrative. We cannt think abut Clare and her death withut thinking abut Irene and her desire. It is this relatinal perceptin f self-destructin that mves the text–rightly praised fr its psychlgical subtlety–away frm individual cnsciusness, tward cmmunity and tward histry. The narrative stages an active intersubjectivity that lcates intentin in the public sphere as well as in the tense, almst illegible, queer “and” between Irene and Clare. Clare’s disappearance differs frm Edna Pntellier’s walk int the sea, Lily Bart’s decisin t risk the chlral, Anna Karenina’s leap in frnt f the train, Emma Bvary’s run t the chemist, and Miss Julie’s acquiescence t Jean. In these realist texts, readers “see” the actin; narratrs r stage directins cnvey the cnsciusness f the main character.
Passing ffers n such access t Clare’s thinking r t the actin itself. Fllwing Tdrv and Barthes, Peter Brks refers t narrative as “essentially the articulatin f a set f verbs” (111).
The expected verb in Passing is missing. What catapults Clare ut the windw is nthing. Nthing in the text. And, as Derrida reminds us, “There is nthing utside the text.” The cnclusin f the nvel–an ending that Davis calls “unrealistic and smewhat ambivalent” (319), that Wall refers t as “abrupt and unearned” (107), that Jnathan Little defends as “cnsistent with the internal lgic and rganic design Larsen sets up” (173), and that Cutter praises as “a strke f genius” (97)–summarizes the hermeneutical crisis. Butler writes in Bdies that Matter: “As a term fr betraying what ught t remain cncealed, ‘queering’ wrks as the expsure within language–an expsure that disrupts the repressive surface f language–f bth sexuality and race” (176).
The Essay on Narrative (fiction) texts
Children should be able to distinguish narrative texts from expository ones. For a child to be familiar with each type of text means to possess sound communicational, analytical, reading, and writing skills. DQ 14 It is critical that children are able to distinguish expository texts from narrative works of writing. Generally, there are several features which make narrative and expository texts ...
This queer ending expses what the natinal narrative seeks t cnceal as it disrupts the very surface f a prper ending..
