Narrative mode

Memories are works of fiction, individual representations of occurrences in our life whether real or imagined. They provide the framework for creating meaning to past events in others lives a well as our own. Zora Neale Hurston said that “Like the dead-seeming cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me.” By this she meant that in order to interpret the incidents and directions of her life, a piece of her past and where she came from had to be known.…

“The narrator is the person from whose perspective a story is told.” They are the ones responsible for recounting the events that occur in the book. There is various types of narrators that one can find in novels: First-person singular, third-person limited, omniscient., and many more including alterations of these mentioned. Wayne Booth declares: “Even the most unconscious and Dionysian of writers succeeds only if he makes us join in the dance”; this inclusion is achieved through the narrator.…

James Joyce utilizes free indirect discourse throughout Dubliners. That is when he writes the characters and their attitudes and emotions influence the way the story is narrated. This adds a layer of complexity to the writing in which the reader better to fully understand the character and the changes taking place within them through a close following of the word choice and tone in the story. “Eveline” details an adolescent girl who must choose between staying home and going away with her lover,…

Mark Haddon’s, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, is a well written piece of fiction, that displays unique literary merit. From the very first page of the novel the reader is plunged into the interior mental landscape of a fifteen year old autistic boy named Christopher. Christopher’s understanding of the world is distinctly different than an ordinary persons. Haddon is successful in making The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, a work of art attracting and…

Strawberry Spring and A rose for Emily are two great stories that have some similarities between them. Both are full of mystery and surprise, but certain aspects of them made them different. Strawberry’s Spring Narration is better because the protagonist of the story is the one doing it. The ending is more surprising and changes completely the way in which the reader had understood the story. Strawberry’s Spring protagonist has a more interesting personality and has a more active role in the…

Stories can sometimes contain an unreliable narrator. Many times it can be difficult for the reader to detect if the author is reliable or unreliable. Greta Olson explains in detail how to determine if an author is unreliable through her article, “Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators.” She includes details such as textual signals, implied author's, irony inconsistencies, indications and external circumstances to support her claim. However, Olson does not include…

using fiction and introducing different viewpoints, O’Brien is able to strengthen the truth behind the story. In order to tell his story, O’Brien uses many different types of elements, ranging from unfinished works to altering the stories to fit his narrative. However, Calloway claims that this is an autobiography. A generalized autobiography is a recollection of one's’ life written by he or she. In this book, O’Brien writes his stories from other perspectives too, and since a reader may be…

write this story in the such a difficult point of view. The reader cannot gain a full understanding of the conflict and the characters without having each of their points of view and knowing their innermost thoughts. “Stream of consciousness is a narrative form in which the author writes in a way…

INTRODUCTION “Novel and shorter works of literary fiction are narratives: in other words, they all in some sense present readers with a ‘telling’ rather than an ‘enacting’, and this distinguishes them in an important sense from the drama[,]” and “generally restricted to works with characters, action and a plot” (Hawthorn, 2010, pp. 6 & 237). In this paper, The Cave by Jose Saramago, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the third book of the global phenomenon from the Potter series,…

Throughout the ages, we have seen that a symbol in literature can suggest more than its average run of the mill meaning. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” she uses several different symbols for their realistic and symbolic meanings. On the realistic level, each symbol sets as a part and that has its own place in the story but represents a hidden thought or idea upon closer inspection. She uses symbolism for these items in the story to create a sense of foreshadowing and to create some…