English paper book write up Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

English paper book write up - Essay Example All this changes when he meets a wannabe thug named Cleveland, and they explore a darker side of Pittsburgh together. Without any real direction, Art decides to discover a more dangerous life than what he had previously known. Art, being the son of a gangster, feels unable to express his sexual confusions openly with his family. The novel centers on the struggles of the protagonist as he searches for ways to satisfy his own desires while living up to his father’s expectations. As we find in the book, this isn’t a possibility. The book handles the issues of the main character’s sexuality very plausibly. The reader can feel his frustration and see his confusion as he goes back and forth between heterosexual lovers and homosexual lovers. Many of the characters, in fact, seem to have an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, except for Phlox and her unsympathetic views of homosexuals. The book relies heavily on its setting to influence the mood of the book. Growing in Pittsburgh himself and attending the University of Pittsburgh, Chabon was right at home as he was describing his characters walking through Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, amongst other locations. The industrious nature of the city also adds to the rather bleak nature. The â€Å"cloud factory,† one of the many factories of Pittsburgh, also plays an important role later on in the book. Set in the mid-80’s the characters are constantly making pop-culture references, perhaps as an ode to Andy Warhol’s pop art as Warhol was another Pittsburgh native. Chabon’s prose is very fluid, and the descriptions he gives of the city of Pittsburgh paints the city very vividly. The bleak landscape becomes very real for the reader. However, sometimes his penchant for creating interesting writing goes too far, and some of the dialogue between characters tends to be lofty and unrealistic. This can be a bit