Narrative mode

Joe Gillis: A Character Study Joe Gillis is one of the most interesting characters to ever grace the silver screen, and a character that is still studied to this day. While Gloria Swanson’s historic performance of Norma Desmond garners more attention and praise, I would make the argument that William Holden’s portrayal of Joe Gillis is just as intriguing. Billy Wilder created a character that I have never been so unsure of, he is one of the great examples of the anti-hero. He’s not a great guy,…

When one reads a story, there are two things that affect how one interprets the story. There is the tone of the story and how the story is written. The tone of the story is set by the person who narrates the story. Thus, the narrator oversees how the reader interprets the story and how the reader is given the story. When the narrator is a reliable source of information, the reader gets the full story without bias and the narrator is impartial. However, when the narrator is unreliable due to…

Un-Traditional Narration In the nineteenth-century, traditional narratives were the epitome of the literal world. Traditional narratives were written to allow readers to follow along a storyline fairly easily. Stories would focus on order where events would occur chronologically. This type of narration was extremely linear with a start, middle, and end to the story. Stories would have a climax, resolve of conflicts, and then closure usually with a “happily ever after” ending. This type of…

real parents are, insinuating that Addie’s past still haunts her children and they are now left to deal with her consequences. Addie’s chapter is so interesting because Faulkner places it towards the end of the story. The chapter interrupts the narrative of the family’s journey to reveal part of the families dynamics and how, even after death, Addie got her revenge on Anse for giving her a child she did not want: “My revenge would be that he would never know I was taking my revenge” (173). By…

As Evelina’s function as a narrator is to offer background and cultural context, it comes to no surprise that she encounters Warren. She adds “points” regarding him, furthering those established by Marn. Evelina meets Warren while in a psych ward, both as a worker and as a patient. In one of their first encounters, Evelina states that “He tried to give me money—dollar bills folded fine in a peculiar way” (229). Warren’s action with the folded up dollars would strike anyone as odd, yet, as the…

Henry James’ Brooksmith is the narration by an unnamed character about his experiences with a servant names Brooksmith during and after his conversations with Brooksmith’s master Mr Offord. In the story, Brooksmith starts off as more of a background character to the narrators and Mr. Offord’s conversations. But as the story goes on, Mr.Offord becomes ill, ultimately bringing Brooksmith into the story’s spotlight. Later on in the story we see the death of Mr.Offord, and then begins the decline of…

Third-person limited narration and first-person present tense/retrospective narration are two different types of narrations used in literature. These narrations can be seen in Uplike’s “A & P” and Cheever’s “The Swimmer”. “A & P” is about a man named Sammy who works in a grocery store. He notices a group of three girls dressed in bathing suits walk in. As they walk around the store, Sammy cannot stop looking at them. As the story progresses, Lengel, the manager, ends up telling the girls they…

Leave it to writer/director Park Chan-wook to not leave any stone unturned in his erotically-charged and stylish drama The Handmaiden. We have mystery, betrayal, an explicit love affair, and a healthy dose of cringe-worthy violence and unreliable narrators all conveniently tucked inside a beautifully composed costume drama set in 1930s Korea, where a manipulative con man sets in motion his most complicated ruse to date. Told as a triptych, where three segments are referenced as "books", The…

speaking directly to the narratee the narrator effectively breaks the fourth wall of the narrative, however, this is not to say she is reliable in the story she tells. Though a seemingly plot-less story (Scoville Lecture 3), the series of events and in turn, climax, fall onto the narrator herself. The narrator struggles to convince the narratee to believe in the world she is trying to describe throughout the whole narrative. She begins by saying “How can I tell you about the people of Omelas”…

two boys to the depths of sadness. Thus, the state of grief is examined. Porter wrote this as a hybrid novel, meaning that he combines a range of genres in separate stories to reveal a central, underlying theme. Through the use of disconnecting narratives with varying forms of literature, Porter portrays Dad and Boys’ lamentation to suggest that individuals manage grief differently. Porter implies that Dad’s way of dealing with bereavement is by creating an imaginary figure, thinking that…