Engelsk noter

Born Again
- the story is told from the main characters perspective
- a girl who hasn't had sex in years, finds herself pregnant. Some men starts to attack her, they
are the Brothers of the Divine order of the dead saints. They attack her because she is
carrying something who will (be the reason to doom day) end everything, they must
therefore destroy it.
Resume
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Themes
- schizophrenia
- control
- hectic business lives

Postmodernist features
- Contingency = inexplicable pregnancy
- Physicality (violence) = many violent/bloody details about the deaths  quotation from
roadrunner.
- Fragmentation = many unconnected scenes
- Deconstruction = quotations from roadrunner, horro movie  rosemary’s baby,
commercials, the bible
- Treating serious matters in a comical way = the indifference to violence, cartoon description

Question for groupwork

1) How do you see / understand the repeated last minute rescues of Nancy Loughlin?
- she is invulnerable, supernatural, magic, cartoon-like. ‘
- something inside of her that protects her, maybe the baby. (maybe she is carrying antichrist
(a evil thing, that can’t be destroyed)).

2) How do you feel about the improbability of these situations? Do they remind you of other
genres?
- horror
- (science fiction)

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3) Who are the attackers and what is their reason for wanting Nancy dead?
- Brothers of the Divine order of the dead saints, because she are carrying something that
must be destroyed.

4) Nancy finds it difficult to believe that she is in fact pregnant – why? – What explanation
might you suggest? (with support in the text, of course)
- Because she hasn’t had sex for years. Maybe it’s a rare disease, that have the same
symptoms as a pregnancy
- Maybe she got really drunk and can’t remember she slept with some guy.

5) What happens in the operation theatre? – why?

- when she is getting an abortion, the doctors are murders just like the other men who try to
kill the baby.

6) Explain the possible interpretations of the title.

- evil is being born again (antichrist), she is born again as a virgin, she is pregnant without
having sex like the virgin Mary  but instead of having Christ she is having antichrist.
- She is being born again, “she live”, begins smoking again, tries a lot of different things p. 87
last line. She goes against the society. Social sins = her vices. Social behaviour – religious
code of behaviour. She is feeling sinful (because she want’s to eat the fudge tub), feeling
wicked, the wickedness is inside her now.

7) Note down elements of the story that point to its belonging to the postmodern view of life
and literature.
- fudge tub (marsbar)
- the business life
- (stress) independent
(se postmoderne features)

8) Any leitmotifs?
- whore of Babylon
- fudgetub = postmodern.

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 9) How does the author make use of other genres and does she have a point-of-view?
- makes fun of the action and horror effects

Answer the first 4 questions on p. 88

1) business woman, carrier woman, higher social class
2) no time for vices ( - sex, - drugs, - cigarettes, only wine!), independent, stressed
3) this can’t be happening, surreal, trying to convince herself that it’s not real.
4) Fudge tub p. 77 l. 12-13  chin was wet with saliva.

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