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LEGEND, Mid-20th-Century American Fiction, Mumbo Jumbo, [green], [yellow],…

- - - - Tommy struggles to make sense of his identity and life story in the midst of the pressures, criticism, opinions, and complex interpersonal relationships of those around him. For most of the novel, Tommy experiences existential anxiety that stems from his feeling lost in the world. At the novel's conclusion, he finds a moment of solace in surrendering to his insignificance and the vast interconnectedness of the city around him.
    - - Ellison's novel is a kind of unfinished Bildungsroman that follows the narrator as he explores different identities and grapples with the social pressures that force him in and out of those identities. At the novel's beginning and conclusion we find the narrator without a concrete identity, but, paradoxically, he seems to find a kind of enlightenment through this lack of identity. His existentialist anxiety is ultimately mitigated by letting go of the need to define himself against and within existing identity constructs.
    - - Oedipa Maas's paranoia or anxiety stems from her experience of a hyperconnected world around her. A constant displacement of "truth" makes self-knowledge difficult or impossible.
- - - - Lolita
        
        All of the events and characters of the novel are coloured by H.H.'s consciousness (e.g., verbs like "raped" and "groped" are used to describe entirely non-sexual and sometimes mundane actions). While the novel gestures towards a reality outside of H.H.'s, it does so only vaguely. Lolita herself is H.H.'s solipsistic creation, based off of Dolores.
      - The Crying of Lot 49
        
        Example: Oedipa projects her paranoid meaning-making onto the Remedios Varo painting. The painting becomes symbolic of Oedipa's life and experience rather than of external, objective phenomena.
      - The Left Hand of Darkness
        
        Solipsism must be overcome by Genly in order for him to finally understand and trust Estraven. For example, Genly's narration imposes pronouns on the people of Gethen. Without the gender identity categories he is used to, Genly struggles to connect with Estraven.
  - - - Provides a direct account of the subjective experience of reality; only the narrator's experience of reality is revealed to the reader
    - - Free indirect discourse: narration of reality is mediated by a character's consciousness, and the distinction between objective and subjective reality can become blurred
        
        Seize the Day
        
        Bellow's representation of Tommy's interiority creates a kind of tension in the novel's realism. The use of free-indirect discourse blurs the line between Bellow's and Tommy's voices, or between aestheticism and realism respectively.
    - - Invisible Man
        
        The narrator witnisses this phenomenon as he moves through different communities. At the college, people are organized around a perception of reality in which the subjugation of black people is part of the natural order. Through this subjugation—and black people's assimilation into white culture—black people may find "success."
        
        The Brotherhood community is organized around communist ideals, but ultimately is willing to sacrifice black lives in the name of advancing their cause. Ras the Exhorter, a black nationalist, presents yet another reality—one in which the historical weight of black people's oppression cannot be reconciled, and black people are fundamentally distinct from white people.
- - - - Because there is no centre to objective truth, only one's own experience can be known
- - - - Marx's theory of alienation can be applied to Mucho's experience as a car salesman. Mucho experiences a "crisis of conscience" in his profession; the sense of meaningless duplication he experiences (a characteristic of capitalism, in Marxist thought) generates an "unvarying grey sickness" (p.5).