Literary+Examples+and+Analysis

1) Diderot - //Jacques Le Fataliste (The Fatalist and His Master)// -Diderot uses contradictory short stories in the form of a digression, using seemingly unrelated pieces to emphasize his point that the master is truly the servant. For example, //“You, a man who has never in his life been wounded and who has no idea what it is like to be shot in the knee, you tell me, a man who has had his knees shattered and has a limp for the last twenty years…”// Diderot goes on to have a “metaphysical discussion” with his master pertaining to the argument that the word ‘//douleur’,// which means pain or distress, can have any significance to one who has not experienced true pain or suffering (such as having both knees shattered). This is a digression because their discussion of pain does not relate to the rest of the text.
 * Literary Examples and Analysis **

2) Upton Sinclair – //The Jungle// - At the end of the novel, Sinclair empathically drops the plot to discuss socialism.The characters cease to function in a normal manner, and show Sinclair's true message in the novel: that socialism is a way to escape the cruelties and harsh life in Chicago (and all industrial cities) that meatpacking brings. He ends the book with the repeated quote, “//Chicago will be ours! Chicago will be ours!”// Sinclair uses the character of Jurgis to accept socialism as a saving force. Although this is his message and purpose for writing the novel, it is a digression because the theme of the novel, at least to the reader, for most of the novel is that of oppression towards immigrants and the toils of working in the factories. When he delves into socialism, he abandons the plot, by having Jurgis become enlightened and obtaining a better life, almost in a Disney-esque form.

3) Proust – //In Search of Lost Time// Proust uses digressions to associate places, people and events with the narrator and the town of Combray. He uses the quote (translated), //Mr. Swann, though much younger than him, was very close with my grandfather, who was one of the best friends of his father, an excellent man but singular in that apparently, no one enough times to stop the impulses of the heart, change the course of the thought.// The word “père”, or father, sets off a discussion by the narrator of Mr. Swan’s response to the death of his wife. This is a digression because it is an aside, so to speak, which does not directly correlate with the sentence; simply the word father sets off the lengthy discussion by the narrator.

4) John Steinbeck //- Grapes of// Wrath While reading the book, one encounters multiple chapters (1, 3, 5 ect.) that are seemingly unrelated to the story of the Joads. For instance, in chapter 3, Steinbeck uses a turtle to discuss the migrant families bringing all their possessions with them on the back of their car, and struggling to move down the path to CA. The turtle is hit by a car on purpose, which parallels how the migrants were subject to "Okie" racism and anger. To one who is reading the novel for the first time, this might seem like a digression because it has no bearing to Tom Joad. However, one realizes that this is not a digression, but a symbol.