Throughout “The Devil in the White City,” author Erik Larson uses contrasting descriptions to portray the sharp differences between the magnificence of the fair and the harsh and cruel reality of Chicago. The awe-ing descriptions of the fair and the dark interpretation of the streets of Chicago comments on the beautiful facade that the Gilded age produced. The temporary and shallow grandeur of the fair masked the poverty stricken city and gave a false sense of elegance to a city deep in despair. Larsons vivid descriptions of the beauty and elegance of the fair serves to reinforce the idea of its temporary masking of the city. He describes the fair as an art piece, a historian calling it, “no more the white city on the lake… it is dreamland.”
Larson’s use of vivid descriptions allowed the author to portray Chicago’s successes from an abominable reputation that the city of Chicago once had. The start of the novel The Devil in the White City by Erick Larson talked about how atrocious Chicago was, there were little to no good aspects of the city, the prologue gave the audience the feeling of dread, fear and disgust. The city’s and nation’s only hope was the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the World Fair. There was a battle between the largest cities in America over who was going to host the fair. Numerous votes were counted over the span of a week, at the end,
The Devil in the White City was written by Erik Larson and was published in 2003. By research, Larson recreates the lives of two real men in the Chicago World Fair. He uses two different plots to show some of the history during this time. One plot line is about Daniel Hudson Burnham, the man who builds the Chicago World Fair, and the other plot is about Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, the man who is a serial killer that goes through the fair to find his victims. The novel starts out by talking about how Chicago wins the bid for the 1893 World’s Exposition.
The Devil In The White City had many plot lines that took place in Chicago around 1893 at the World's Fair. The first plot line focuses mainly on Daniel Burnham constructing the World's Fair with his partner John Root. It tells a story of struggle for the men, how they had such a hard time constructing the large Farris wheel, to having to open unfinished, then having trouble getting attendance up. Then the struggle is over for the two guys for a short amount of time. Not long after they gather up just enough money to pay off their debts, the Fair had to shut down, as the mayor of Chicago had been assassinated, honestly a more positive reputation for Chicago.
Protesters blocked trains, burned railcars and set buildings aflame. One man, General Nelson A. Miles sensed that the spreading unrest was, “‘more threatening and far-reaching than anything that had occurred before”’ (Larson 335). To make matters worse, the Chicago fair which provided over ten-thousand jobs was coming to a close. The workers, “left the fair’s employ and returned to a world without jobs, already crowded with unemployed men” (Larson
Throughout the course of his The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson describes Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair through the eyes of two different main characters: Herman Webster Mudgett—a psychopathic serial killer who builds his famous “death castle” on the outskirts of the fairgrounds, and Daniel Burnham—the director of works for the World’s Columbian Exposition. Larson employs the use of many contrasting themes within his writing including success and failure, but perhaps most importantly, murder and beauty. In order to emphasize said themes, Larson juxtaposes the accounts of his two main characters: Mudgett and Burnham. There is no doubt that the manner in which Larson portrays Mudgett is sketchy at best. Rather than introducing him with a concise description, Larson familiarizes the reader with Mudgett over the course of several chapters.
The setting is something disparate from our world, but at the same time is not too unrealistic, probably because Lowry combined the conflicts in the world. In this part, I thought that Lowry got some hints from the different cultures and situations she has seen while traveling. Since there is no clear image of the environment and the characters, I thought people would have different interpretations and different images about the story. Another good thing is that you can feel the message throughout the story, because the author has not only written but woven the message into the storyline with the actions of the characters and the occurrences. For example when Claire loses her memory, the people in the Elsewhere care with love and compassion.
This is presented in Night and “Life is Beautiful.” Night leaves a feeling of disperse and devastation when the book is over, “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eye as he gazed at me has never left me” (Wiesel, 2006, P. 115). A quote like that leaves an impression, an emotional sucker-punch to the gut that leaves a feeling of sickness that lasts.
Also, the narrator uses juxtaposition to show her innocence & compassion. The author uses juxtaposition to show how she changes from being innocent to being compassion. Shes hows this by saying
He creates beautiful compositions, but more importantly, he uses shadows to define and redefine the mood, and to tell the story. Shadows aren’t a decorative ornament, they’re a fundamental aspect to how the story plays on screen. Without them, the film wouldn’t work. Out of the Past starts off bright and sunny. Tourneur doesn’t particularly enhance the shadows in Bridgeport; it would feel wrong for such a