Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk was first published in 1955. Describing American values and aspirations from 1930 to the 1950s was highly appreciated by the readers. The romantic opus about a seventeen years old Jewish girl in America with dreams of becoming an actress turned to be an instant bestseller. One might find a lot of factors that led to it: the author’s writing style, the lightness, and simplicity of depiction, the ordinariness of the topic chosen, etc.
I believe that all these factors contribute to the book’s success, but the most influential one is the way the Americans were shown and the ideas that looked fresh at the moment they were revealed.
On the one hand, the author depicted the common views of Americans of the 1950s including “we-know-what’s-best” parental figures, ethnic traditions, and ethical issues. On the other, Wouk succeeded in showing how the main character managed to rebel against them. Marjorie changes a lot in her life and overgrows many of the traditional views of that time. The young girl even does the forbidden: she has sexual intercourse before marriage, thus “the strongest assault on her old convictions came from a most unexpected quarter: her own body.” (Wouk 345) American women in the 50s were supposed to get married and raise children. Marjorie, on the contrary, did not want to get married at all. She dreamed of becoming an actress that contradicted the idea of the 50s. It was not common for women of those days to strive for independence.
I believe that the public liked this rebellion of the girl, for it symbolized a new era in the history of American society. The rebellion demonstrated that the person could change a lot in one’s life if he or she desperately wanted it. The book may be considered as a forerunner of the would-be societal changes: the coming 1960s indeed brought significant changes to sexual attitudes and behavior. I suppose that the American 1950’s readers felt those changes and even anticipated them, therefore, the book that pointed at the possible changes that might appear was generally recognized.
I believe that the writer’s style is a determining factor of this or that work’s success. This is especially true when it comes to Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road and Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar. Both of the books got public acclaim due to the skillfulness of the authors’ depiction. Being similar in lightness and simplicity, the authors’ styles differ somehow.
My close examination of the two paragraphs, one taken from the Revolutionary Road and the other from the Marjorie Morningstar empowers me to outline the following differences in the styles of the two writers:
- Yates resorts to longer sentences if compared to Wouk. Thus the author manages to create some tension while describing the characters and the events. Wouk, on the contrary, prefers short sentences to make his narrative flow. In this way the reader gets an assumption of distinct hearing every sentence that the author pronounces;
- For Yeats it is common to use rhetorical questions. This makes the reader think of the problems he raises. The other author uses ordinary sentences, which seems to encourage the reader to take everything for granted. The rhetorical sentence is used by the author to give additional expressivity to the description;
- Wouk is more detailed in his narration, whereas Yates renders only the most essential;
- In Wouk’s narration epithets prevail: “murmuring” (auto traffic), “bright blue” (sky), “little white” (tufts of cloud), “bare pretty” (shoulders). Yates’s narration is full of metaphors: “the movement of the play come and carry them and break like a wave”, “they had all put their hearts into their work”.
All these differences considered, I suppose that they make the authors’ styles to be useful tools of rendering their messages. Their uniqueness has made the works fascinating to the reader and never-dying.
Works Cited
Wouk, Herman. Marjorie Morningstar. Back Bay Books, 1992.
Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road. Vintage, 2000.