Friday, January 27, 2012

Q&A 1, Second Answer

The basic form of my question is: As people feel emotions differently, how can the use of literary style communicate emotion consistently to all readers?

The answer to this appears fairly straightforward - it cannot do so.  While literary style can indeed communicate emotion, no matter what form of literary style is chosen there will always be at least some people who are not able to identify with the emotional content.  This is especially true, I think, in regards to contemporary novels with radical, controversial styles; even critically acclaimed works of this types, such as Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, or Tony Morrison's Sula, can still present emotions in ways which do not speak equally to every reader.

However, this is not to imply that literary style is useless in communicating emotion.  If one takes one's audience into mind when writing, one can at least increase the percentage of readers who are able to identify with the emotions contained in one's works.  Of course, some works are undoubtedly intended for a general audience, and it is in cases such as these that one is probably best off using a less literary style.

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