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| Plot Summary of A Walk on the Wild Side |
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"Country boy Dove Linkhorn, son of Fitz (preacher and cesspool cleaner), defiler of women, smarter than he looks bum, leaves Texas for New Orleans where he fits right in for a while, with the depression-era cripples, prostitutes, pimps, flimflam artists, and prison-life.
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Charles Smyth, Resident Scholar
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"Dove Linkhorn, a teenager, leaves Texas and hopes to find something better in New Orleans. It is the Great Depression, there are no jobs, and Dove cannot read. He tries working on a ship, selling coffee pots, making colorful condoms, but finds he is best paid using his body to "de-flower" a "virgin" in peep-shows. Feeling degraded, he starts drinking heavily. Meanwhile, he falls for one of the most beautiful prostitutes in the brothel he works for, Miss Halle Breedlove. She was once a school teacher, and was forced into prostitution because her husband found out she was passing as a white women, when in fact, she's a black woman. She tries to teach Dove to read in bed, they run away together, visit the zoo. Then Dove must return and face Miss Breedlove's jealous, insane lover, a man whose legs were cut off from a train rolling over them. He propels himself on a cart with wheels, and confronts Dove in the bar one day. Algren's great character study in the decadent life of the Big Easy. "
Joan Clare, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of A Walk on the Wild Side |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- upbeat
Time/era of story
- 1930's-1950's
Life of a profession:
- prostitute/stripper/porn
Poverty, surviving
Yes
Kind of living:
- general poverty story
Crime & Police story
Yes
Story of
- conman stealing/fraud
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Outside culture (society)
- American South
Job/Profession/Status story
Yes
Ethnic/regional/gender life
Yes
Main Character
Gender
- Male
Profession/status:
- unemployed
Age:
- a teen
Eccentric/Mental
Yes
Eccentric:
- a bit retarded
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- hard edged
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Dumb
- Average intelligence
Physique
- very athletic
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- 20's-30's
- 40's-50's
Profession/status:
- thief/con artist
- small businessman
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- an average amount
- a substantial amount
How sensitive is this character?
- mean, arrogant
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- bulging muscles
- average physique
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 6 ()
United States
Yes
The US:
- Southeast
- Texas
- Deep South
City?
Yes
City:
- New Orleans
Small town?
Yes
Small town people:
- dumb Rednecks, like Gomer Pyle
Misc setting
- prison
- moving train
Style
Person
- mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
- explicit references to torture
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- touching of anatomy
- orgies
- actual description of hetero sex
Lot of foul language?
Yes
Unusual Style:
- a lot of flashback and forwards
- a lot of stream of consciousness
- No single main character?
Amount of dialog
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
- significantly more descript than dialog
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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