Narrative Techniques In Pulp Fiction

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Pulp Fiction is a film directed by Quentin Tarantino, which stars John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, and Samuel L. Jackson, and it was released October 14, 1994. It takes a very different approach to film by using a vignette style with each vignette not necessarily in order. It follows the lives of several characters that revolve around the gang boss Marcellus Wallace, and how they intertwine. Vincent (Travolta) and Jules (Jackson) are two hitmen for Marcellus and they are charged with delivering a suitcase to Marcellus. Later Vincent takes out Marcellus’s wife, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), because Marcellus is going out of town and he wants her to have a good time in his absence. While this is going on, Butch (Willis) is a pro boxer …show more content…
Another success is how the dialogue between characters seems very organic and does not always have to be about the storyline. The film takes a lot of its theming from its own name as it quotes the dictionary in how pulp fiction is “[a] soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter… A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper.” This description is a great example of what the film is like as many of the scenes are cluttered together and seemingly have not much of a connection between them. Roger Ebert says that “[Pulp Fiction] is constructed in such a nonlinear way that you could see it a dozen times and not be able to remember what comes next” (Ebert, 1994). When …show more content…
This film gets an extremely different feel than most other movies because of this. It is able to show regular people going through tasks that might not have been seen as ordinary if the dialogue had been done differently. To think that it would appear normal to watch hitmen transferring a package and shooting people sounds outrageous, but that is just what Tarantino accomplished. One of the first scenes in the film is when Vincent and Jules are in the car talking. They really do not try to have a conversation about what they are actually doing, which is going to kill a couple of people and take the package that they have, but instead they are talking about the Big Mac and what a quarter pounder is called in European countries. This would be no average conversation that people expect from two hitmen, but it does provide a profound contrast into how the lives of the two characters may not be as different as normal people working regular jobs. It also shows that they are extremely calm with the job that they are hired to do and have little amounts of stress from such a dark

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