Perspectives

This part of the analysis will give you a few extra points to put the text “The Sentry” by Téa Obreht in perspective. We will look at the literary and time period and similar works.

Literary period and time period

“The Sentry” is a contemporary, postmodernist short story. Postmodernism typically describes and refers to fiction published after the 1960s as a reaction to Modernism. Given the length of this literary period, Postmodernism includes very diverse authors and works.

However, there are certain general features associated with this literary period, some of which are also present in Obreht’s short story. For example, the narrative is fragmented at times - the story is not entirely chronological, as it includes references to adult Bojan.

The Yugoslav Wars took place throughout the 1990s and represented a series of v...