Reference no: EM133301253

Problem: In the New Yorker review that you read, Bandi's translator, Deborah Smith, notes that "Bandi chose to write fiction when he could have done otherwise...and that's what interests me-the details of fictional treatment." One defining element of fiction is the use of literary devices such as symbolism. A symbol is a literary device that takes on figurative or metaphorical significance in the narrative, representing something apart from their literal meaning or function in a plot. Select one image and analyze its symbolic significance. What is the image and what does it represent in the story you have selected?
Structure: In a Guardian review of The Accusation, RO Kwon notes that each of Bandi's stories shares a similar plot structure: "In story after story, industrious North Koreans, 'innocent people whose lives consisted of doing as they were told,' accidentally run afoul of the state and lose their last political illusions. They then get jailed, escape, die, or go mad, but the real culmination of each story occurs in that instant of revelation, when they realise that, despite everything they have always been told, the state is malign." In his Poetics, Aristotle describes these plot elements as the reversal and the recognition. First, some specific event occurs that has the opposite of the intended or expected effect (this is the reversal). Then, this event leads to a discovery that moves a character from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge (this is the recognition). In tragedy, the recognition is also usually followed by a depiction of suffering.