Claim "Chunks"

CLAIM CHUNKS

Claim:

 One way to think about the reason that Aimee Bender alienates and confuses the reader in The Healer is to give the readers connections to the similarly alienated and alone characters in the book, because this makes the complex themes of the book, which come from the characters and their precarious situations, stronger and far more meaningful to the reader by making the themes more connectible to the reader’s experience while reading the book. We can see examples of how Bender alienates the reader to make their experience relate to the experience of the characters, and therefore to the themes, when Bender introduces characters like Roy, and also in the interactions between the outcast and strange characters in the story like Fire Girl, Ice Girl, and the narrator, Lisa.

Chunk 1: Aimee Bender alienates and confuses the reader in The Healer

Chunk 2: This give the readers connections to the already isolated characters in the book

                

Part 1: The characters in The Healer are alienated and isolated.

               

  Part 2: If both reader and characters are alienated, then the reader to connect with characters.

Chuck 3: This connection makes the complex themes in the book, which come from the characters and their situation in the book, more meaningful/stronger to the reader, because the reader can more readily connect to the themes.

Part 1: The themes in the book are derived from the alienation of the characters in the story.

Part 2: Being able to connect to characters who show the themes make the themes stronger and more meaningful.

Part 3: Part 2 is true because the reader, like the characters, is also alienated and isolated in reading the story, so the reader understands the alienation-based themes more easily.

Chuck 4 [A+R]:

                Acknowledgement: Some might say that the reader would be able to understand the themes without being alienated first.

                Response: While the reader might be able to see the themes, they wouldn’t be as valuable because alienation is a feeling which isn’t very common, and the themes are based around alienation. So, because the reader gets the feeling of alienation in the text, the themes are more relatable, and therefore stronger and more meaningful, to the reader.