Tamara - the Watcher
The Watcher Short story by Tamara Smith Essay by Frederik Bach
The postmodern text ”The Watcher” is much more than the main character watching a security guard from a flat opposite an office building. The text is full of religious symbols, anti-realism, irony and a fluid language that sometimes seems meaningless.
Tamara Smith writes under the assumption that the modern society cannot be explained or understood. According to certain postmodern elements any connections or controlling influences on the chaos of society are very frightening, and this is what lends a sense of paranoia to the main character.
The reader is guided through a person’s relatively depressive thoughts and emotions plus her outlook on life.
The narrative technique is a first-person narrative throughout the story.
This text is presumably about a woman: “With his other hand he gently pulls open my shirt, bends down and takes the very tip of my right nipple between his teeth”.
She lives in London East End on an EC1 address. Just opposite her flat is a huge building that looks like a mock-Egyptian monstrosity. The main character doesn’t understand why this huge building is placed in this quarter. “I often see dirty nappies hurtling past my window and wonder what the office workers make of their being located here.”
This is a good example of the postmodernism style, but not the only one.
This text is actually full of postmodernism elements.
The main character is fully obsessed by the security guard in the Egyptian looking building.
Every night this anonymous guy man walks around in the huge building making sure that everything is okay. And every night the main character stares from her flat at this monstrous building. She does this so she is able to get through her lonely days by getting eye contact and caring thoughts of about/from (alt efter din mening) this man. At daytime she is besides herself unable to make her life function properly “I feel bold again in the daylight and
The postmodern text ”The Watcher” is much more than the main character watching a security guard from a flat opposite an office building. The text is full of religious symbols, anti-realism, irony and a fluid language that sometimes seems meaningless.
Tamara Smith writes under the assumption that the modern society cannot be explained or understood. According to certain postmodern elements any connections or controlling influences on the chaos of society are very frightening, and this is what lends a sense of paranoia to the main character.
The reader is guided through a person’s relatively depressive thoughts and emotions plus her outlook on life.
The narrative technique is a first-person narrative throughout the story.
This text is presumably about a woman: “With his other hand he gently pulls open my shirt, bends down and takes the very tip of my right nipple between his teeth”.
She lives in London East End on an EC1 address. Just opposite her flat is a huge building that looks like a mock-Egyptian monstrosity. The main character doesn’t understand why this huge building is placed in this quarter. “I often see dirty nappies hurtling past my window and wonder what the office workers make of their being located here.”
This is a good example of the postmodernism style, but not the only one.
This text is actually full of postmodernism elements.
The main character is fully obsessed by the security guard in the Egyptian looking building.
Every night this anonymous guy man walks around in the huge building making sure that everything is okay. And every night the main character stares from her flat at this monstrous building. She does this so she is able to get through her lonely days by getting eye contact and caring thoughts of about/from (alt efter din mening) this man. At daytime she is besides herself unable to make her life function properly “I feel bold again in the daylight and