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4.1.1 Rewriting of Homer

The Homer in history lost his sight in his 40s.Homer in the novel is even moreunfortunate,gradually losing his sight as a teenager.But he holds himself to the standards ofnormal people.He worked hard on his hearing,and not only could he move normally,but hefelt even sharper than the average person.Homer possesses great insight,and his blindness iscompensated by his keen sense of hearing and familiarity with the house.Homer in the novelcan recognize facial features by touching faces and plays the piano from memory.He foundand recorded changes in the world around him with the sensitivity characteristic of blindpeople.He could tell the width of each block by counting the number of steps between tworoads,and sense the development of times by the sounds and smells of the street.Homer,shaped by Doctorow,has many excellent moral qualities.

Chapter 5 Conclusions

Doctorow is a famous American postmodernist writer who occupies an important placein the history of American literature.He is recognized as one of the masters of Americanhistorical fiction.Homer and Langley,although written late in his life,is one of his mostsuccessful works.Doctorow was a humanist.He believed that literature should never bedivorced from reality,and he showed a strong concern for society,politics and history.Through his pen,Doctorow evokes the reality of life,which gives his work a distinctlynew-historical bent.In his novels,he shows his profound reflections on history and text andon the development of society.He closely links fiction and reality,presenting readers with anew interpretation of history and fiction.On the one hand,he examines what history is,andon the other hand,he explains the real meaning of the text.This echoes the theory of NewHistoricism.

In Homer and Langley,the First World War,the Second World War,the Vietnam War,theKorean War and other major events of the 20th century are all mentioned.Problems andupheavals in society,such as organized crime represented by gangland activity,assassinations,and the plight of urban poor are also mentioned.In addition,landmark eventssuch as the invention of automobile and television,the development of computer,popularmusic,and the moon landing are also mentioned.All of these historical events are integratedinto the lives of the Collyer brothers.Doctorow uses his extraordinary narrative skills topresent the reader with a story of the Collyer brothers and the history of the development ofAmerica.In this novel,the phenomena and characters described in the text carry a certainmetaphorical meaning.Through these depictions of historical events and characters,Doctorow conveys his views and reflections on history and the present.Doctorow not onlyextracts material from history,but also processes it in his way.He uses postmodernistabsurdity narratives to reshape historical material.Not only does he reflect reality with hisaccurate depictions,but also manages to evoke deep feelings in the reader through hisre-creations.

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