Analysis of the chapter 2

This is a chapter two’s extract from Nice Work, by David Lodge a freelance writer.

If someone is interested in Postmodernism’s culture, this text is fascinating and an excellent example too in order to find out points about the topic: the woman who appears is Postmodernism’s embodiment.

All the text is commuting in create the characterization of the female Robyn Penrose.

The character comes to life in contrast with another character, Vic Wilcox, and  firstly the narrator tells the woman’s way of thinking and in a second place her social position. The narrator starts the narration using the technique of telling, instead of showing. Therefore the reader has no freedom to make a personal idea because he/she can just follow what the narrator explains. Then in the text there’s a third person omniscient and intrusive narrator. That is to say, he knows everything about characters and their thoughts, he steps in the text (as an example, the expression “let us”) and he speaks in third person.  So he plans the way he wants the reader to make up an idea of the character in his/her mind. Such plan is sustained by categories and the reader may even not be aware of. The categories are:

-          Use of contrast with the character who’s already been told, Vic Wilcox

-          The choice of a name which explains idealism (Robin reminds to Robin Hood) and a surname connected to literature character’s occupation (lecturer) and her social position creates an idea of precarious too. So it is very different from the traditional because the narrator doesn’t rely on physical description. In particular she is the Victorian novel character’s parody for her characteristic and also for character’s name who’s her opposite (Vic is an abbreviation of Victorian, a name which reminds Victorian novel)

-          Language used by the narrator to emphasize her link with semiotic. Indeed she’s a semiotic teacher, but in the text she’s a sign (the object of semiotic studies) to treat Postmodernism

This character is a pretext for the narrator to deal with Postmodernism’s characteristics and to discuss novel’s role.  

This text is an excursus of novel’s evolution from ‘700 to nowadays too. It has had his most expression during the 1800 as a capitalism’s product. But, as capitalism’s crisis started, novel’s one started too because it’s the genre which put the character in the centre. Then during the Modernism some writers, as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, have revolutionized world’s narrative: the plot has been reduced to the minimum and the importance was given to monologues and to stream of consciousness. So, which is reader’s position? Absolutely precarious, as Robyn’s life: the reader has to fill in all the links omitted.

After this period there’s the crushing, a miss of the centre. In the moment when high and low art have not been divided anymore, it’s not possible to talk about art and in Postmodernism this is reflected to literary too: because there’s no a reality, it has to produce itself. Therefore there are as many meanings as the number of points of view. In all this, the man has a marginal position and he could create his identity according to each situation. But the real sense of things must be found in ourselves, so we are alone and weak. And the real significant is exteriority, but it’s precarious like everything. This because we’re consumers and no more clients: we buy in order to collect and not because of a need. Our life condition has changed and we’re hybrids. So we must pose the attention on signs in order to communicate. Indeed we’re not what we think about us, but rather what the others understand from us: our way of behavior, our expression, our language. Behind everything there are signs, and they communicate us things.

To end this description the narrator emphasizes she’s different from Vic Wilcox again. Like a circular structure he repeats his thesis underlining the differences between the two women. But these two characters are symbols to make the reader conscious of the rupture occurred with the Postmodern .