April 1, 2012

Tropes Everywhere

I wrote about tropes in my third SCD and I wanted to discuss how it's relatable to "Stranger than Fiction".  The movies is just chock-full of tropes (metaphors, metonymy, synecdoches, and irony).  Many of you might be thinking, it is obvious that tropes are everywhere for even Killingsworth states, "All forms of knowledge and even conventional uses of language are built upon an original foundation of wordplay and figuration," (Killingsworth 122).  This foundation that he talks about is talking about language.  The ability for humans to communicate with one another.  While it might seem so simple, it is also frightening to see how contained one is in terms of communication.  Like how Harold Crick was confined to the storyline that Kay Eiffel was writing, the language that everyone in a society is put in together is frightening.  Killingsworth gives a analytical and detailed description of these four master tropes and in a way is describing a particular mode of how we talk.  Many of us use irony on a daily basis and even sarcasm is commonly used.  What is my point?  My point is that by confining the limits of a universal thing such as language it can make us feel like Harold Crick, a man who is pushed to certain decisions and tasks.

1 comment:

Ryan Borer said...

I like the idea you present here of tropes as a form of limitation. When we discussed this in class I left thinking of them more as tools which could be used to enhance a particular point through reference to some common "thing" that holds more meaning due to popular knowledge. That's not to mention the fact that I didn't even begin to think about the ways in which tropes can apply to Stranger Than Fiction. It makes a lot of sense though. I would go as far as to say that the tropes that limit Karen Eiffel's writing are the same force that limit Harold Crick's life. The difficulty that Karen has with creating a plot that strays from the normal and leaves the reader unable to associate her story with any past "trope" is what leads to her delaying the end of the book as well as her depression. The interesting thing is that in the end we realize that Eiffel had created her own trope, one of main characters being killed at the end of the book, one that was separate from those used by other authors in the movies fictional world. By sparing Harold Crick she accomplished what it was she was searching for throughout the entire movie: she broke free of the restrictions of the trope and as soon as she did so, Harold Crick was freed from the bonds that held him to his fate.

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