Analysis Of The Fall Of A City By Alden Nowlan

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Samuel Novak
Butler marianne
ENG2DI-09
08/03/2023

The danger of imagination

Alden Nowlan's short story “The Fall of a City” is about the power of imagination and memory; Alden shows that imagination can often take one's perception of reality and warp it. To start with, Alden Nowlan displays and gives us an insight as to what is going on inside of teddys time multiple times within the story, especially at the beginning. Although I want to emphasize the dinner scene because it shows how delusional he is. “Half the time, he doesn’t know whether he’s living on earth or on Mars.” Out of the corner of his eye, Teddy looked at his uncle’s round, florid face and reflected on the resemblance to Zikla, Duke of Anders. (Nowlan, Alden. The Fall of a City. p. 2.) Here Alden Nowlan shows that if you become so invested in these imaginary …show more content…

As shown when his aunt attempts to help him face the actual reality that he doesn't even register it. Furthermore, he continues his illusions that even if he did hear what his aunt said he would probably forget what she said. Later on in the story after the dinner scene, Teddy's uncle goes upstairs to see what he was doing up there and after discovering what had been up there he says this. “You’d never believe it, but that great big lummox has been playing with paper dolls!” “Paper dolls!” his aunt laughed dubiously.

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