Word: protagonists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Massacre" shows why some people like to call Carter a feminist. The story traces the life of another Moll Flanders, but focuses on her career in the New World as an indentured servant, rather than on her bawdy past. Carter avoids the literal picaresque by making the protagonist ironically self-aware of the conventions of 18th century narrative: "...my name is no clue as to my person nor my life as to my nature." Stripped of a name, the voice could be that of any period picaresque character, Moll Flanders or--Tom Jones...
Reading Margaret Atwood's short stories is like seeing life studies done by an artist famous for large, symbolic canvases. Absent are the extended metaphors that gave form to her earlier novels. The protagonist of An Edible Woman, for example, feels so cannibalized by the people in her life that she serves her fiance a bride made of sponge cake and icing, then flees from the altar. Gone too is Atwood's allegorizing. In last year's The Handmaid's Tale she offered a vision of America transformed into a Fundamentalist Christian theocracy...
...acquires an elegant neck, the dominant hue changes to a formal white, reflecting Andersen's change of mood. The story is sometimes read as a revenge play, but Van Nutt makes it clear that he regards the duckling's progress as a happy tale of growing up, giving the protagonist (and the young reader) the enviable role of Everyduck...
...asking for divine assistance, became a household face and name in an unfinished political mini-series. There is more to come, and it remains to be seen whether North will someday be regarded as a bit player in an ephemeral scandal of a widely popular Administration or the central protagonist in a torturous national drama...
...reprise Nixon's role, therefore, is like asking Morgan Fairchild to undertake Lady Macbeth. The goal of any serious dramatic production--and for the first time, Reagan's audience is forced to be serious--is to achieve some kind of emotional catharsis. In witnessing the tragic fall of the protagonist, the audience can hope to achieve not only an understanding of the ephemeral nature of man's fortune, but also a sense of well-being based on the fact that, whatever their problems, they are not suffering like the poor schmuck on the screen...