The experimental design and layout of the book is an interesting addition to the novel itself, that in itself can be analyzed separately than the actual text and story. Not only are there negative chapters but come to the ending when Eric finds himself “falling head first. The ocean rushing up and hitting the back of [his] neck with a hard splash and then- the surface receding in hiss and bubbles below [his feet]” , the novel becomes more of a piece of art with blank pages that turn into pages with increasingly bigger pictures of a shark (327-373). The shark jumps off the page, and one could say even into the readers own mind, and then the pages repeat the line, “fingers clasped my wrists and forearm and dragged me back up towards the surface with a” (371-379). This moment was special for it seems like a meta-fictional moment experimenting with the narration of the story, when analyzing whom this shark is really coming after. Then after the shark attack, the pages are blank with only this line about coming back to the surface, to reality, to our conscious mind. This clever experimental tactic plays with the reader’s subconscious and conscious mind, like a Rorschach test would, the underlining theme of the novel.
Rorschach Test Shark Imagery
03 Tuesday Dec 2013
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