Paris 1991 Essay

Kate Walbert
This Study Guide consists of approximately 24 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Paris 1991.

Paris 1991 Essay

Kate Walbert
This Study Guide consists of approximately 24 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Paris 1991.
This section contains 1,316 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Paris 1991 Study Guide

Perkins is a professor of American and English literature and film. In this essay, Perkins examines the tensions between illusion and reality in the story.

In her short story “Paris 1991,” Kate Walbert immediately contrasts light and dark. The story opens with Rebecca's arrival by plane “into the city of light [where] she descends in darkness.” This first juxtaposition of light and dark imagery illustrates the tension between illusion and reality in the story, as Rebecca's fanciful imagination clashes with the evidence of her emotional emptiness. Paris's “gray storm-ridden sky” colored “a strange mauve” forecasts a confirmation of her sense of meaninglessness rather than the prospect of a significance for which she has been searching.

Rebecca believes that the famously romantic city is a perfect setting for conceiving a baby. She yearns for something to provide her with a sense of meaning, to alleviate the ennui of her...

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This section contains 1,316 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Paris 1991 Study Guide
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