Sarah narrated the story very well by selecting very exciting verbs to use in her autobiography. One example of this is when Sarah says “When I hold up two gloved hands, Robert holds up his own open palms”. Sarah could have used a less exciting way to say this, which in turn would result in a colorless autobiography. Sarah presents Robert in the very first paragraph. While Sarah’s description of Robert was lacking, it seems it wasn’t essential to the autobiography because Sarah did an exceptional job at making sure the reader can hear and visualize Robert. An example of this is when Robert is instructing Sarah the proper boxing technique, Sarah made it seem extremely immersive by using great detail. Sarah was lacking in terms of describing
the setting. An example to support this would be the in the second paragraph when Sarah says “He wraps my hands in tape and teaches me to stand with one foot perpendicular to the other” without describing the setting or the place. Sarah did a phenomenal job conveying the significance of the autobiography. One way she did this was with her word choice. Sarah used exiting words such as “leisurely” and “gingerly” to show the significance of the autobiography.
In Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall the narrative style is apparent. We know that it is the character Anna whose point of view this story is from. It is essential that it is told from her point of view, because the arrival of Sarah will ultimately affect her the most. We get a sense of the pain that she has undergone, as well as the over-whelming sense of love and pride she has for her family. As Anna explains, “…I didn’t tell him what I really thought. He was homely and plain, and he had a terrible holler and a horrid smell. But these were not the worst of him. Mama died the next morning. That was the worst thing about Caleb” (MacLachlan 4). It also reveals to us the tremendous amount of responsibility that is resting on her young shoulders.
Since people do not know the background of everyone, they attempt to fill in the gaps and end up creating their own story. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Rivka Galchen’s “Usl at the Stadium,” the authors leave out important information of the characters’ lives, which allows society to come up with their own stories for the characters instead.
The excessive use of detail is a primary way that Salinger keeps his reader interested in his stories (Kazin 296). At all times in the story Salinger describes something. A prime example of the excessive use of detail is the following:
The narrator's insensitivity reveals itself early in the story when his wife's blind friend, Robert, comes for a visit after the death of his wife. Almost immediately in the beginning of the story the narrator admits "A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to." [Carver 2368] He even goes so far as to suggest to his wife that he take the man bowling. He hears the story of Robert's dead wife and can not even imagine " what a pitiful life this woman must have led." [Carver 2370] The narrator is superficial, only recognizing the external part of people and not recognizing the value of a person on the inside.
For instance, we don’t even know the narrators name. However, all the other characters are explained in a great amount of detail. First, there is Miss Mandible. She is the teacher and you can tell that she is an experiences and older than many of the other characters and she seems to be sexually attracted to the narrator of the story to the point where he says “Miss Mandible wants to make love to me but she hesitates because I am officially a child.” Then we have Sue Anne Brownlee, a fellow classmate of the narrator who happens to sit next to him in class. She is a very innocent and naïve girl who is also attracted to the narrator. And our last character in the story is the narrator himself. The Author 's writing style depicts the narrator as both 35 and 11 years old but in reality he is actually 35 years old and has been in the army. His wife recently had an affair with another man and he is trying to find himself. He is split between wanting a relationship with a better physical connection or a better emotional
In the beginning, the narrator talks about her surroundings, and why she is in her current situation. Her state of mind is clear, as she describes what is going on prior to her being set in this room. As the narrator writes about her husband she alludes to the fact that she suffers from an illness that her husband, who happens to be a well known physician, does no...
The narrator also feels intimidated by his wife?s relationship with the blind man. When he is telling of her friendship with Robert h...
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
By stating how other people behave or interact, the author offers a great chance for readers to interpret fairly for themselves what the reason for any conflict may be, or the nature of any essential contrast between the narrator and other adults in the story. In the story, there are many self-righteous opinions from people, which seem to be ironic to the readers; For example, her mother’s aggressive attitude of showing off her daughter, her piano teacher’s self-praise claiming him as “Beethoven.” All of the narrations including conversation clearly depict a different characteristic between the narrator and other people. For instance, a conversation occurs between the narrator and her mother when the mother criticizing a girl who seems similar to the author on TV which reveals dissimilar understanding for both of them to each other’s behavior. At first, the daughter speaks out for the girl by questioning her mother by saying “why picking on her […] She’s pretty good. Maybe she’s not the best, but she’s trying hard.” The daughter actually is defending for herself and reflecting that she feels uncomfortable with her mother’s disregard of her hard work. She wants to get her mother’s compliments instead of her criticisms. However, her mother response of, “just like you,” and, “not the best. Because you not trying.” Here, her mother doesn’t really answer her question, instead wants her put more effort on trying, neglecting how much she has tried before. However, in her mother’s perspective, she has never tried hard enough. By narratively stating the conversations she has encountered, readers perceive a strong implication of the reason for a future conflict between her and her mother.
In this mode the narrator is someone outside the story being omniscient (Abrams, p.301). Nevertheless, the author as the narrator in this story gives the reader virtually no access to the couple’s thoughts and does not even interpret the emotional quality of their words or movements by using adverbs; he simply records. Hemingway termed his own literary writing style The Iceberg Theory, a method in which he held back key details of his stories. He carefully detected and omitted all the words that did not work, keeping only the words that were of highest importance to his story, and leaving readers to sift through the remaining dialogue and bits of narrative on their own (Yanling, p 109). There are no descriptions of the couple’s real names, their occupations or any physical attributes. He further omits dialogue tags (she/he said) and skips any internal monologues. The story has a documentary style with sparse wording which makes the language restraint, intensified and precise. The author seems to be indifferent both to the characters and to the reader; he pretends to be merely an objective observer content to report without comment the words and actions of the protagonists (Yanling, p 108). The reader is on the basis of her or his own interpretations forced to piece together the facts of the difficulties in the couples disjointed conversation (Yanling, p
While the story was told, there were many pauses while the storyteller tried to remember details of the haunting. She made few gestures; the majority of the story involves separate actions performed by the ghost without a constant plot. This fragmented tale left little in the form of suspense and presented the tale as a factual occurrence and not merely a performance being put on by the teller.
. This story embodies how the author saw her experiences that she had lived through.
The author brings readers into the story and lets readers decide and infer what is going to be said. Patrick Maloney has to tell his wife, Mary Maloney something very important, but the author doesn’t tell readers what Patrick says. On page twelve it explains the missing context and when readers have to use their minds to infer what is going to be said “And he told her. It didn’t take long,
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.
Ken Saro-Wiwa's short story "Robert and the Dog" tells about a steward and his master and mistress, the main character is the steward: Robert.