Still Life With Woodpecker

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Contemporary Literature Final Critical Analysis of Still Life with Woodpecker The novel Still Life with Woodpecker is written by Tom Robbins, and is mostly a love story about a girl who comes from a monarch structured family. The main character is a princess who is looking for her prince but runs into all this trouble along the way. In the midst of telling the story from a 3rd person point of view, Tom Robbins also includes context from his own head into the story through the medium of his Remington SL3 type writer, but his thoughts are put into a philosophic context about love in the upcoming new age. The story itself and Tom’s views both are taking place at the turn of the century. He makes the point of how love has changed and has no level…show more content…
The recognition of phallic symbols in modern literature is a very important skill to acquire, because it gives insight into parts of the story that other people who read the story may never have realized while reading. The first lesson I learned is to never trust a first person point of view narrator, because his account of the story is usually biased. This is important because the narrator may describe himself as all power, but in reality but very weak. In real life this can be helpful while observing certain advertisements because usually it is someone who helped in the creation of the product being advertised that is saying how great it is, so you can’t trust them. The movie Fight Club was an excellent example of how analyzing the background of movie/story can help make sense of what happens in the rest of a story. Everything in the movie is confusing at first because no one realizes that the narrator’s imaginary character, Tyler Durden, is made up in his head representing who he wants to become. Everyone ends up calling him Tyler, even though he says he isn’t Tyler. At first this is all very confusing, but once you realize that Tyler is a made up character inside of the narrator’s head it begins to make sense. All of the other things he does begins to make sense, too. In the context of the short stories we have read and analyzed, I have learned how there…show more content…
Not many people say anything about it to me, but crosses really do have multiple meanings depending on who’s wearing it. Many people who see cross jewelry interpret it as a sign that the person wearing it is a Jesus freak, or they assume the wearer doesn’t do anything mischievous as far as being associated with partying and using drugs and alcohol go. To a stranger seeing me wear one they could even think that I’m just wearing it as a piece of jewelry with no meaning behind it, and they may not even think that I go to church or have Christian morals or values at all, because many people wear crosses and see it as just a piece of flashy jewelry . For all of these reasons I purposely took my cross off of the necklace chain that came with it because I didn’t want the real reason I wear it to be confused. The true reason I carry the cross with me has nothing to do with what people believe it means. I carry the cross with me because about two years ago, I had a very close friend that had heart complications and passed away while at the church I attended. I obtained the cross a couple of months before this, but it always sat on my shelf at home and never received any attention from me. My friend had received the same cross as me, and he carried his cross with him everywhere he went, so after his passing I began to carry mine to carry on his ritual as a way of honoring and remembering

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