Outer Reaches of the Palindrome Page: 16
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episode (and this is a very miserly estimation on my part) where one character overhears part of
a conversation and innocently dreams to life a dire situation, but at the last moment little Billy
finds out that his parents really aren't going to sell him to the gypsies - they're taking the silly
little goose to the circus for his birthday!
Of course, I'm venturing out on a limb and saying that this plot tactic is and always has
been so widely utilized in literature, television, drama, and film because humans misunderstand
each other all the time. Language, with all of its delightful ambiguities and homonyms, lends
itself often to misinterpretation, and we humans, with our vast and complex brains and emotions,
rely heavily on imagination. The power of a fragment is that it prompts, maybe even demands,
the reader to contextualize it.
Palindromes induce a feeling of fragmentation upon the reader; the palindrome, like all
other forms of literature, invites the reader to contextualize its text. Reading a palindrome, like
reading any work of literature, is an interactive process between the text and the reader- the
poem or the prose suggests, and the reader contextualizes. This is what qualifies a palindrome as
literature. The fragmented mood often evoked by a palindrome comes, in my opinion, from two
things: A). Even if a palindrome reads or sounds awkward, it describes the objective world, and
no matter how absurd the content of the palindrome may seem, a reader will unconsciously
bridge gaps in an attempt to derive meaning; we rely on our imagination when we read. B). Half
of the palindrome comes from the author; the other half comes from something else: form.16
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McConnell, Michael Constantine. Outer Reaches of the Palindrome, thesis, December 2003; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4407/m1/19/: accessed May 22, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .