The process in which I produced this project was an interesting one. One that I have never tried before in any form of writing I have ever done. It was entirely new to me in all aspects, but that is what made it interesting to me. After reading Philip Roth’s, The Plot Against America, and Kurt Vonneguts, Slaughterhouse-Five, I thought about how drawn in I was to their readings and how that had such an affect on me.
These two authors write in a similar style, with slight differences, so you can easily tell the two apart. For example, both authors incorporate the use of very detailed and descriptive events. They do not leave out any details when describing specific events, whether they are historical or fictional. While reading Slaughterhouse-Five, the amount of detail and specificity he used in describing situations such as deaths, was very powerful and helped to draw me in. Roth uses similar tactics in The Plot Against America. Another important way in which they are similar is their use of vignettes. Both authors incorporate vignettes in their works.
The differences of these two authors are monumental thought. Roth uses a strategy of incorporating a lot of historical factual events into his writing, but still uses fictional characters, along with real characters. He adds historicity to his books with the use of news reels and media, which draw readers in. Vonnegut on the other hand uses a lot of vignettes, almost more so than Roth. Vonneguts style is very unique and interesting to me because he jumps around from one time period to another without any warning at all. One minute you’ll be in a war, and the next you’ll be sitting in Billy Pilgrims office with a patient wondering why he’s so out of it. This strategy allows you to sort of get the big picture of a character, without going in a linear fashion. It keeps readers interested because they do not know what they will read next.
While Roth’s writing is a little more serious and historically factual, and Vonneguts is more of an easy read, and all over the place, both strategies that they use work very well. Both authors use these strategies to allow them to incorporate certain figures into their writing such as the stamps for Roth, and the Tralfamadorians for Vonnegut. They do not come out and say what is a figure and what is not, so the reader must intuit this for himself.
In my project, I chose to incorporate both writing styles that these author use. My project consists of vignettes explaining a subjective experience of growing up in Raleigh, NC during the time of integration in school. The use of vignettes help to show the subjective experience in certain situations that one would have to go through being an African American in this time period, that most people do not think about, or that is left out by consensus. I also employ the use of historical situations such as the Brown vs Board of Education case, and the passing of important civil rights documents to add some historicity to my project. I used Vonnegut’s strategy of jumping around from one time period to another to draw readers in and to get the whole effect of what an African American might go through, and when certain situations would happen.
...Integration... 