The Narrative Impacts the Reader
How the story is presented and what the reader understands by it is more important than what is actually said. The story “Who Do You Think You Are” by Alice Munro is a story of a girl named Alice who trying to find out who she really is. By observing the story and looking at how it was written, we can see how the narrative affects the reader. Looking at Munro’s use of the unexpected, details, and point of view, one can see how the narrative affects the reader’s comprehension of the story.
Writing the unexpected and keeping the audience entertained is a crucial part of every story (Awano). Munro does an excellent work keeping her readers engaged by using the characters in her stories to surprise the reader. …show more content…
Third-person omniscient POV lets the reader know more than the main character knows. “’The village idiot,’ said Phoebe, trying to comprehend these things, with her inexhaustible unappreciated politeness” (Munro). The reader knows what is happening in Phoebe’s mind, and what she is thinking. There is no way the protagonist would know that much detail about what Phoebe is thinking, which makes it omniscient. In spite of that, the story is filtered through Rose’s perspective. In a parallel story written by Alice Munro called “Royal Beatings”, the protagonist Rose talks about her mother’s death: “Rose was a baby in a basket at the time, so of course could not remember any of this. She heard it from Flo, who must have heard it from her father” (Munro). Rose gets information orally, which is often an unreliable source. She heard it from one person, who probably heard it from another. Ajay Heble writes, “Munro reveals the extent to which the story, despite its third person narrator, is primarily filtered through Rose’s perspective” (Heble). The story is written in third-person omniscient POV filtered through the protagonist. Through this style of POV, Munro is able to control what the reader knows about the narrative. This makes the narrative complex, and an interesting read since the reader does not obtain all the straightforward information given to them. The consequence of the
How the story is presented and what the reader understands by it is more important than what is actually said. The story “Who Do You Think You Are” by Alice Munro is a story of a girl named Alice who trying to find out who she really is. By observing the story and looking at how it was written, we can see how the narrative affects the reader. Looking at Munro’s use of the unexpected, details, and point of view, one can see how the narrative affects the reader’s comprehension of the story.
Writing the unexpected and keeping the audience entertained is a crucial part of every story (Awano). Munro does an excellent work keeping her readers engaged by using the characters in her stories to surprise the reader. …show more content…
Third-person omniscient POV lets the reader know more than the main character knows. “’The village idiot,’ said Phoebe, trying to comprehend these things, with her inexhaustible unappreciated politeness” (Munro). The reader knows what is happening in Phoebe’s mind, and what she is thinking. There is no way the protagonist would know that much detail about what Phoebe is thinking, which makes it omniscient. In spite of that, the story is filtered through Rose’s perspective. In a parallel story written by Alice Munro called “Royal Beatings”, the protagonist Rose talks about her mother’s death: “Rose was a baby in a basket at the time, so of course could not remember any of this. She heard it from Flo, who must have heard it from her father” (Munro). Rose gets information orally, which is often an unreliable source. She heard it from one person, who probably heard it from another. Ajay Heble writes, “Munro reveals the extent to which the story, despite its third person narrator, is primarily filtered through Rose’s perspective” (Heble). The story is written in third-person omniscient POV filtered through the protagonist. Through this style of POV, Munro is able to control what the reader knows about the narrative. This makes the narrative complex, and an interesting read since the reader does not obtain all the straightforward information given to them. The consequence of the