Timothy Findley

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In what ways do you feel and to what extent does the style in which the story is written seem appropriate to the story as a whole? The book is Not Wanted On The Voyage

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This question summons a critical thinking answer for which there is no "right or wrong". This is what you could answer in an essay:

If you are a person of high religious values, this story would indeed bother you. For once, it presents Yaweh (one of God's Hebrew/Yiddish names) personified as a depressed human who needs therapy. To some people, this would be a form of sacrilege, for it "takes the Lord's name in vain" and because the author freely uses it for his own devices.

If you are an agnostic (as many artists of every genre are) this is actually an interesting interpretation of the Great Flood, complete with the use of characters quoted on the Bible to personify human emotion.

The concluding statement is that, in general, this type of literature does include highly creative elements of narrative while infusinghistorical (and, to some, spiritual) characters viewed from a totally alternative perspective, much as in the works of absurdist literature, magical realism, and historical fiction. Concisely, this is the 21st century and heretical literature does not exist. Hence, to add religious figures as personified characters is controversial, but should not be judged as "wrong" not only by means of the unwritten laws of Art, but by the constitutional rights (in America) of freedom of speech.

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