Questions about Narration and Point of View

Questions about Narration and Point of View

1. Does the narrator speak in the first, second, or third person?

The point of view varies according to the narrator’s position in the story and the grammatical person the narrative voice assumes.

1. In the story narrated in the past or present tense? Does the verb tense affect your reading of it in any way?

The verb tense used has an effect on the narration of a story. However, the present tense is also frequently used, it can lend an impression of immediacy, of frequent repetition, or of a dreamlike or magical state that isn’t subject to the passage of time.

1. Does the narrator use a distinctive vocabulary, style, and tone, or is the language more standard and neutral?

Yes, the narrator often uses distinctive vocabulary in his or her work or literature, often to express emotion and feelings throughout their work.

1. Is the narrator indentified as a character, and if so, how much does he or she participate in the action?

Not in all works of literature the narrator is revealed, nor are they identified as a main character. When the narrator is involved in the story they are often a main character and play important roles.

1. Does the narrator ever seem to speak to the reader directly (addressing “you”) or explicitly state opinions or values?

Yes, I believe that there are many times where the narrator is “speaking” to the audience or to the readers.

1. Do you know what every character is thinking, or only some characters, or none?

Sometimes you know what the character is thinking, and you know exactly what they intend to do next. However, that’s not every case, sometimes you have no clue what the characters are thinking.

1. Does the narrative voices or focus shift during the story or remain consistent?

I believe that the focus shifts during a story, its changes due to the angle that the author wishes to present to the reader.

1. Do the narrator, the characters, and the reader all perceive matters in the same way, or are there differences in levels of understanding?

No, absolutely not, everyone does not share the same opinion. Some opinions may be similar but no opinion is exactly the same, there will always be differences.

The Jewlery

The Jewelry

1. What parts of “The Jewelry” correspond to the five traditional phases of plot :

• Exposition: When M. Lantin and his wife come into story.
• Rising action: M. Lantin falling deeply in love with his wife, then her sudden death.
• Turning point or climax: When he discovers his fortune that he didn’t know he had.
• Falling action: When he quits his job and starts a new life.
• Conclusion: When he re-marries, and his life was miserable.

1. Once the secret of Madame Lantin’s jewelry is revealed, what details from earlier in the story take on a different significance?

                After Madame Lantin’s death the fact that her mother basically put her out there in society for all of these men. Making it look like prostitution. Also, how she flaunted her “false” jewelry, and her going to the theatre by herself.

1. How and why might the story’s end-especially its last paragraph-defy expectations? How does it once again change your interpretation of earlier events and of Lantin’s first marriage?

                Well I didn’t expect that her jewelry to be actually real, I just seen it as her thinking it made up for the less material things that she claimed she didn’t have. Or in other words made her feel better not being a wealthy. Latin wasn’t going to depart with her jewels until he learned the value of it all. Which made him greedy, and then he choose to make profit from all her jewels. Clearly the only reason he moved on so quickly into a new marriage was that now he had money, I guess it made him happy.

Personification

Personification is a figure of speech where animals, ideas or inorganic objects are given human characteristics.

                When thinking of personification the children’s book Charlotte’s Web that I read in 2^nd grade comes to mind. Charlotte’s Web uses personification in order to tell the story. However, the story is about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by a spider, Charlotte, by spinning words into her web.

Dialogue

                Dialogue is the conversation between characters in a drama or narrative. A dialogue occurs in most words of literature.

                In twilight one of the most popular lines, or as in literacy terms “dialogue,” occurs between two main characters Edward and Bella in the meadow.

Edward- “And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.”

Bella- “What a stupid lamb.”

Edward- “What a sick, masochistic lion.”

Simile

A simile is a type of figurative language that does not mean exactly what it say, that makes a comparison between two otherwise unlike objects or ideas by connecting the with the words “like” or “as.”

 An example of a simile in a very popular children’s poem by Robert Burns, is “A Red, Red Rose.” “O, my Luve’s like a red, red rose,”

Flashback

A flashback is a narrative technique that allows a writer to present past events during current events, in order to provide background for the current narration. By giving material that occurred prior to the present event, the writer provides the reader with insight into a character’s motivation and or background to a conflict.

Many story lines provide a flashback in their poem, narrative, or etc. When using a flashback it gives extra information that is crucial for understanding of the story. For explaining a flashback I chose the book Something Borrowed, during the story the narrator is constantly bringing up events from the past that play important roles in her decisions. Such as telling about the many sleepovers she had with her best friend Darcy. Darcy always got what she wanted, and also anything Rachel desired. Flashback plays an important role when Rachel continues to continue her affair with Dex, Dary’s fiancée.

Narrator

Narrator is one who tells a story, the speaker or the “voice” of an oral or written work.

Almost every work of literature has a narrator to tell the story. In some cases the narrator isn’t always the main character. However, in The Notebook, the narrator isn’t named at first, but he simply asks the question “Who am I?” Noah, the narrator, is an older man re-telling a book that his wife wrote when she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer, with a note inserted in the margins saying, “Read this to me and I’ll come back to you.” Everyday Noah goes to the nursing home and reads to his wife in hope that she returns to him.

Theme

                Theme is a common thread or repeated idea that is incorporated throughout a literary work. A theme is a thought or idea the author presents to the reader that may be deep, difficult to understand, or even moralistic.

                When thinking of theme I thought of The Scarlet Letter and how sin was constantly repeated during this novel. During The Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne has a child with Dimmesdale, both suffering from their sins. However, Hester suffers publicly with being forced to wear a scarlet embroidered “A” on her chest at all times. Dimmesdale, on the other hand chooses to not reveal that he is the father of Pearl, and lives with the burden of his sin. Later on in the novel Dimmesdale dies of a sickness, but clearly made himself sick over his concealed secret. As you can see everything leads back to sin, resulting in the theme of The Scarlet Letter.

Symbol

                A symbol is a word or object that stands for another word or object. The object or word can been seen with the eye or not visible.

                Symbolism plays a huge part in story, poems, and plays. One of my favorite plays has to be the Crucible, but it doesn’t have a lot of symbolism throughout the play. However, the witch trials and McCarthyism is symbolized throughout the entire play. Such as the paranoia about being accused a communist back in the 1950s. In this case you was being accused of being a witch, and often hung for such accusations.

Gothic

 Gothic is a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque, and other “dark” subjects.

When given the word gothic most people think of uncivilized teenagers dressed in black clothing. Then again, that’s just a stereotype. When dealing with literacy gothic is often seen as mysterious and dark, all of which makes it my favorite style of literature. The most known gothic stories are Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Castle of Otranto. Then again, the one series that comes to my mind is the Twilight Saga Series by Stephanie Meyer. It involves forbidden romance, horror, and vampires, all the ingredients for a perfect gothic series. The series starts off with the love between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, sounds sweet…right? Not really, the twisted part is that Bella your normal American girl, but she is madly in love with a 107 year old vampire! Yeah that’s right a vampire, blood sucking immortal. During the whole series it goes through the survival of Bella with the Cullen secret, to the many deaths of the towns’ people due to the roaming nomads throughout Forks. With this dark and twisted story-line it has to be one of my favorite series.