Having a narrator can affect stories in a lot of different ways as we saw in Shawshank Redemption, Memento, and Stranger Than Fiction. In the next few paragraphs, I will tell you how they affected me and some of the things that when through my mind at the time.
In Shawshank Redemption the narrator is speaking in first person point of view and telling the story of Andy Dufresne. The narrator who is Red is also a prisoner befriends Andy and is know sharing his knowledge of what happened. The narrator creates a weird effect in my opinion. For example when Red is narrating and says “ I must admit I didn't think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him; looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over. That was my first impression of the man.” you figure that this story is in past tense and is not current but you don’t know how much time is past since then. Which leads to one wondering just how long has it been since all these events have happened.
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In Memento the narrator is also speaking in first person point of view and is telling the story of himself.
The narrator who is Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. But he has a hard time remembering things which makes you question all his decisions. Like when Leonard Shelby is narrating and says “So where are you? You’re in some motel room. You just…you just wake up and you’re in…in a motel room. There’s the key. It feels like maybe it’s just the first time you’ve been here, but perhaps you’ve been there for a week, three months. It’s…it’s kind of hard to say. I don’t…I don’t know. It’s just an anonymous room.” it makes you question just how much he really knows about himself and just how much of what he says can be believable. I say this because the narrator depends so much on the ink tattooed on him and his photos with writings that he doesn't know what is real or not or what has happened
already. In Stranger Than Fiction the narrator has a Limited Omniscient Points of View. I say this because the narrator is an author who is creating a book on the main character. They live in the same world but the author doesn’t know that the main character is a real person. Like when Karen 'Kay' Eiffel who is the narrator says “This is a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch”, you get the feeling that Kay knows a lot about Harald but why doesn’t she know that he lives in the same world as she does. Also, another thing that I found interesting about the narrator is that she speaks less and less the more Harold becomes more independent and stops worrying about numbers all the time. That is how Shawshank Redemption, Memento, and Stranger Than Fiction all has a narrator that affects the stories in different ways.
The first story I'm going to talk about is The Klondike gold rush and how this narrator affects it is going to be Klondike gold rush. In this story the P.O.V is third person but the main character talks about their opinion on the laws and the weather conditions the miners were in the narrator says and how hard it was to get or find any gold when mining "it was impossible to dig in the winter when temperatures could reach -60°F" so the story is mainly based on the narrators' opinion.
In the short story “Time and Again” by the author, Breece D’J Pancake recounts the story of a veteran farmer who is a snow plow driver for a living. The nameless narrator is a widower and his son disappeared. Reading the short story for the first time it is apparent that the author makes it a challenge for their reader to understand the story. The story at first is confusing and leaves the reader questioning the character. After a second or third read, it is noticeable that the author sets clues and makes it more obvious that this is a story of a murderer. The author often uses clues and the use of syntax to expose who the narrator is as a character and how that influences his actions.
Throughout the autobiographical narrative written by Gary Soto, many different literary elements are used to recreate the experience of his guilty six-year old self. Different elements such as contrast, repetition, pacing, diction, and imagery. Soto narrates this story as a young boy at a time when he seems to be young and foolish, Soto foolmaking mistakes, but at the same time hoping to learn from them. Soto uses each of these devices to convey different occurrences in the narrative.
Mitchell Stephens plays on our emotions in so many different ways in this novel. At first Stephens comes in almost like a hero, trying to find justice for these hurting people in the small town of. Stephens causes our perspective to change with his statement that “ there are no accidents. I don’t even know what the word means, and I never trust anyone who says he does.” “Someone must be to blame.”
The author uses short, simple sentences that manage to say a lot in a few words. The author also uses imagery. He also puts in his book references to historical events. These references increase the understanding and appreciation of Billy's story by suggesting historical and literary parallels to the personal events in his life. The novel does not have smooth transitions from one event to the next.
In contrast, syntax provides a new perspective to the narrator s behavior as sentence structure draws attention to her erratic behavior. By her last entry, the narrator s sentences have become short and simple. Paragraphs 227 through 238 contain few adjectives resulting in limited descriptions yet her short sentences emphasize her actions providing plenty of imagery. The syntax quickly pulls the reader through the end as the narrator reaches an end to her madness.
Madge is frightened. Up ahead, there is an accident where a motorcycle is down and a familiar face, Bob the gas filling attendant, is limping across the road. Bob asks Madge to help him stand the motorcycle back up. The reader may think that Madge has a way out of the situation with Bob’s help. The man thought to be Eunice, now tells Madge that he is actually Mr. Tabor. He says he is going to go help. Then Madge feels a sign of relief. The author describes the scene. Mr. Tabor tells Madge to drive away, and she does. She hears a noise, and the reader knows that Bob got shot. Madge drives off as quick as she can to her husband. She is so frightened that she couldn’t tell him until the next day what she experienced. They returned to town. Madge’s husband said that Mr. Tabor was at his desk at the mill, and Bob, the gas attendant, was not at the filling station. Bob told his boss the night before that he was leaving. Madge’s husband returns to tell Madge that nothing happened, but Madge and the readers know what happened. The author uses suspense to keep the reader’s attention and interest. In the end, Mr. Tabor is the one who helped take out the women killer, but the readers may have thought that he
During the story his father tries to remember the moments he lived in the eighties; but nothing came to mind. It was like if he was never born. He knew nothing, everything was
*the narrator is looking back on what he has once witnessed long ago, and it's haunting him, makes him feel guilty and ashamed.
Carver progresses the narrator’s tone throughout the story, from disdainful to cautious to introspective by developing his relationship with Robert, and forcing them to interact with each other, to express that false presumptions about strangers, based on someone else’s experience or stories, can be misleading.
The story is understood to be told presently by the narrator looking back on his past.
Unreliable narrators provide insight into the way they see the world by limiting the reader to one viewpoint. By providing a new set of eyes for the reader to see through, the author can give insight into the narrators mind and the way he or she perceives the world. Whether it is William Faulkner who gives every side of the story except the main character’s, J.D. Salinger who provides insight into the narrator through his criticism of others, or Suzanne Collins who has the reader make realizations about the narrator as she makes them about herself, authors use unreliable narrators to explore new depths of character understanding and growth.
a. This story haunts him, it is easily shown that it haunts him on how he writes. O'Brien writing style is short and to the point because he does not want to remember the story and the details of him killing someone. That is a reason why it is short and to the point.
The main character, Edie, provides the narration of the story from a first person point of view. She tells her story based on an event from her past. Because she narrates the story the reader is unable to be sure if what she tells of the other characters is completely accurate. Because one does not hear other character's thoughts one could question whether Edie interpreted them correctly. Or has time caused her to recall her story different from the way it actually happened? For example, Edie says it is hard for her to recall how she felt when she had to do dishes without a dishwasher and heated water. It had been so long ago her perception had been altered. Sometimes time can play a role in why truth can be so hard to see.
"The role of the narrator influences the type of relationship we have not only with him or her but also with the story" (Landy 75). This quote was taken from our Literary Studies book in which we have read several stories concerning different styles of narration. Narration is one of the most important components of a story. The characters, plot, setting, and theme are also significant, however the narrator sets the mood and also the pace of the story. Two good examples of narration is the short tale The Zebra Storyteller by Spencer Holst and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. These are stories in which the narrators retain certain styles of narration. An outside book that we have not read is the fairy tale Cinderella. In these three works, the narrators have specific functions or duties to carry throughout the story.