The Storm: An Inner Reflection
Memories are all we have sometimes, but what if memories bring out unwelcome feelings? In Romesh Gunesekera's short story "Ranvali," a young lady goes back to her father's old holiday bungalow and begins to discover new feelings toward her beloved Communist father. The story is set in an idyllic bungalow in Ranvali, by the coast of India. Theorists such as Roland Barthes would argue that setting in modern narratives "no longer need meaning: they simply are: that is their meaning." (qtd in Chatman 145). However, in "Ranvali," the storm that besieges the bungalow while the young lady is there clearly mimics her thoughts and gives the reader a greater sense of the inner turmoil that she must be going through. It can thus be shown that the storm is an essential part of the setting that Gunesekera uses to evoke certain feelings in the readers of "Ranvali."
In the story, the storm mimics the narrator's inner turmoil at discovering new feelings about her father. But is the storm part of setting? Chatman makes a distinction between existents - characters and setting. For Chatman, "setting 'sets the character off'; it is the place and collection of objects 'against which' his actions and passions appropriately emerge" (Chatman 134). The storm is part of the description of the 'place' where the story unfolds. The memories of the narrator's father, which may be considered the 'actions and passions' within the story, emerge before and after the occurrence of the storm. The storm is thus part of the background to which the events in "Ranvali" occur. Chatman also gives three criteria for being a character - presence, being named and importance (Chatman 139). The storm in "Ranvali" is clearly not explicitly...
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...der is given a definite analogy to how she might be feeling. Gunesekera's use of this narrative device as opposed to using the narrator to describe her emotions makes the reader sympathetic to the narrator's plight in an almost unconscious way. Although the storm is part of the setting, it subconsciously draws a connection to the narrator's inner thoughts. The reader thus can imagine that a storm rages within her mind, with thoughts about her father's idealism conflicting with her love for him. Without this narrative device of the storm, the story would have been much impoverished, as the final effect of "Ranvali" would have been much reduced.
Works Cited
Chatman, Seymour, "Existents" Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978. 131-145.
Gunesekera, Romesh. "Ranvali." Monkfish Moon. London: Granta, 1992: 89-102.
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Kennedy, X J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Sixth ed. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1995. Print.
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