Совершенствуйте навыки работы с текстом. Готовимся к государственному экзамену. Brush up your text skills. Getting prepared for the state exam. Учебно

Block 4 ‘Point of View’

Don’t mix up! Author vs. narrator

The author is the person who wrote the story; the narrator is the person or voice telling the story. The narrator like all fictional characters is a product of the author’s imagination.

The narrator is not always the author’s mouthpiece.

“The choice of the point(s) of view from which the story is told is arguably the most important single decision that the novelist has to make, for it fundamentally affects the way readers will respond, emotionally and morally, to the fictional characters and their actions,” — writes the famous British novelist David Lodge in his book “The Art of Fiction”. He illustrates this idea with the story of an adultery, which is sure to affect us in different ways depending on the perspective from which it is presented: either from the point of view of the unfaithful person, or the injured spouse, or the lover, or as observed by some fourth party.

The writer has to decide between the “I” point of view (first-person narration) and the “he” point of view (third-person narration). A story told from the first-person point of view is presented by one of the characters, who refers to himself or herself as “I”. Thus, this character (=the narrator) speaks directly to the reader. We have the advantage of an immediate report by someone actually involved in the events of the story. If the writer decides on the “I” point of view, he / she has another decision to make — will the “I” be the main character, the protagonist, or will he be an observer, the one who is on the scene but is not the main character? The “I” as main character may seem most natural

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if the author can write with the tone of autobiography and convey a sense of immediacy and intimacy. The second possibility, the “I” incidental point of view, gives the same impressions, but does not enable the author to relate the private thoughts of the main character. You are limited to the thoughts of an incidental character and can only guess at the thoughts of the main character. This type of a narrator can be represented by Nick Carraway from the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. S. Fitzgerald. One possible disadvantage of the first-person narration is that he / she provides only a partial view of the story as the narrator cannot disclose thoughts and feelings of other characters.

If the writer wants to relate the thoughts of all the characters, he adopts the “he”, or third-person point of view. He can become the omniscient (omnipotent, or ‘all-knowing’) author — one who sees and can reveal the thoughts of any character. He moves freely in and out of people’s thoughts and wherever else he wishes to go and can interrupt his narrative to comment on the behaviour of the characters, or to present his opinion on moral or social issues. He is a conscious narrator, and the narrator’s personality does not interfere with the storytelling. The author is able to use a tone of objectivity, because this point of view is ‘outside’ the characters. At the same time, the very fact that the author can reveal the thoughts of characters other than the main character reduces a sense of intimacy.

If the author wishes to maintain a certain amount of objectivity and still give the sense of special identification with the main character, which is characteristic of the first-person point of view, the author may write in the third person but limit himself to the main character’s thoughts, this would be the limited third-person point of view. For example, in “Alice in Wonderland” we fall with Alice through the rabbit hole and eventually land in a strange new world the peculiarities of which we discover only as Alice discovers them.

Whatever point of view is chosen, the author can reveal the thoughts of at least one character. Or the author may wish to disregard the thoughts of any character and thus obtain greater distance and objectivity. The author is a reporter, relating only what an outside observer can see. The author does not identify himself with any character and does not reveal thoughts; this is the objective third-person point of view, where the narrator functions as a camera and microphone. A good example of this kind of writing is Ernest Hemingway’s short stories.

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One more technique, which is becoming more and more popular in modern fiction, is the mixed (shifting) point of view. It enables the author to cover all the possibilities and is an effective way of handling a large cast of characters. In the mixed point of view the narrator shifts from one point of view to another, as a result, the story is told in different voices. Many of such stories are experimental, concerned with ‘re-inventing the narrator’. A classical example of this kind of narration may be found in the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” written by Ambrose Bierce.

Types of Point of View

Follow-Up

I. What does the author gain and what does the author lose out when choosing a particular point of view? Consider advantages and disadvantages of each type and complete the table.

Advantages

Disadvantages

II.Write down the titles of the books (with the names of the authors!) which

a)are told from the point of view of the main character (protagonist) of the story

1)

2)

3)

b)are told by the omniscient narrator

1)

2)

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3)

*c) are told in different voices 1)

2)

*d) are told by an ‘unreliable’ narrator 1)

2)

III.Consider the texts in the Supplement with regard to their ‘point of view’ aspect. How does the choice of the particular perspective from which a story is narrated influence the choice of the lexical and syntactical material?

IV. Think of a literary work you have recently read. Identify the point of view of the story answering the preliminary questions: Who tells the story? Can you trust the narrator? Consider the following questions: Why has the author chosen this particular point of view? How would the story change if it were told from each of the other points of view? What effect does the point of view have on the other elements of the story — theme, characterization, language? What perspective of the world does the author want us to have? If the point of view is first person, is the narrator telling the story to someone? If so, to whom and how do they react?

Notes on the Epistolary Novel

The epistolary novel — a novel written in the form of letters — is a peculiar type of first-person narrative. Unlike the story of an autobiography, which is known to the narrator before he starts, letters describe an ongoing process, providing a lively and animated style of writing. If a novel has more than one correspondent, the benefits become obvious since the same event can be shown from different points of view, with different interpretations. Besides, since a letter is always addressed to a specific addressee, it makes the process of interpretation of the epistolary text even more challenging as in some cases the reader can speculate on the anticipated emotional response of the receiver.

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Food for Thought

1.In his book “The Art of Fiction”, David Lodge claims that a fictional letter is undistinguishable from a real letter. Do you agree with this statement? Support your idea with arguments.

2.The epistolary novels were very popular in the 18th century. As David Lodge puts it, “The pseudo-documentary realism of the epistolary method gave the early novelists an unprecedented power over their audiences, comparable to the spell exerted on modern television audiences by certain soap operas.” How can you account for the decline of the popularity of the genre? Do you think it likely that the interest in this form of writing will revive? If yes, in what form?

Follow-Up

I.Write down the titles of the books written in the epistolary genre (this may be a book presented entirely in the form of letters, or a book where some elements of the correspondence between characters is reproduced)

1)

2)

3)

II.Find the foundation of the simile in the following context: Lined with lindens of medium size, the street rose at a barely perceptible angle, beginning with a post office and ending with a church, like an epistolary novel. (V. Nabokov)

III.Read texts 5 and 6 in the Supplement (part 2) and prove that they are specimens of the epistolary genre.

IV. Write down the titles of the books concerned with school life and teaching. Can you recall at least one book (except “Up the Down Stair Case” by Bel Kaufman), where the protagonist is a teacher? 1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

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Block 5 ‘Character and Characterization’

Lead-in

Make up your own list of most memorable literary characters (no less than ten). What may this list reveal about your personality? You may share these lists with your groupmates and discuss them in class.

In fiction character has been traditionally regarded as its most important component. We, readers, care about fictional characters — the imaginary people that writers create — and just as in real life, we experience all kinds of emotions towards them, from awe and admiration to indignation and disgust. Literary characters come alive for us, we approach them with the same concerns with which we approach people; we might even say that fictional characters possess their own kind of reality. Sometimes, as in science fiction or fantasy, the characters are not people: they may be robots and aliens, dragons and elves, but the writer endows them with human abilities and characteristics, they really are people in everything but outward form. So be a fictional character an animal or a fairy, we demand that he or she is credible. This does not mean that we want every character to resemble someone we know from the real world, but rather that we consider a character probable in the universe of the story. To be credible, characters must be consistent: their thoughts, feelings and actions must not contradict one another.

There are different types of characters and different ways of representing them. Characters in fiction may be classified as main (major) and minor, static and dynamic, round and flat; needless to say, all these characters perform specific functions.

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Language Focus

“Positive” and “negative” are not applied to literary characters by English people in the sense of “положительный / отрицательный”. There are no exact equivalents for these words as used in literary criticism, so to bring your idea home you will have to use such specific words as:

Characters: major / main and minor. A major character is an important figure at the centre of the story’s action or theme. Usually a character’s status as major or minor is clear. The major character is sometimes called the protagonist, and his or her opposite — the antagonist. Normally it is easy to see who the protagonist is, but sometimes it may be difficult to identify the antagonist because the antagonist may be either a person, something in the environment, or some part of the protagonist’s own personality. Supporting the major character are one or more secondary or minor characters whose function is partly to illuminate the major characters. Minor characters may have no specific function other than peopling the universe of the story (guests at a party, townspeople, etc.). Normally, however, the minor characters will serve one or more functions, for example, there may be a character that acts as a contrast or parallel to the protagonist, thereby clarifying the personality of the protagonist. A minor character may perform the function of a witness, telling us the protagonist’s story, in some cases giving us his or her private version of what happened; the protagonist can also reveal his or her intimate thoughts and feelings to some minor character making them in this way known to the reader.

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Characters: static and dynamic. Static characters, as the name suggests, are unchanging, they remain the same throughout the story. Dynamic characters, by contrast, exhibit some kind of change — of attitude, of behaviour, of purpose — as the story progresses. They change and develop, often because of something that happens to them in the course of the story; in fact, this very change can be the most important event in a literary work.

Characters: round and flat. Depending on how much information is given to us about them, characters can be either flat or round. Flat characters seem very simple; they do not normally develop or change. They are one dimensional and have no depth or complexity, as if they could be summed up with one or two personal traits. On the contrary, round characters have many sides or many dimensions; they may possess contradictory personality traits. Being complex, round characters are capable of doing and saying surprising things. More effort is required to understand round characters since their various conflicts and motives give them complexity and depth — just as in real life.

In life no one tells you what emotion you should feel under certain circumstances, the same happens in good fiction. Certainly, there are stories where the author tells you exactly what you are to think about each character and what emotional response you should have. But in most cases literary works are more challenging to understand. It is not that the authors want to hide their purposes and confuse the reader, just like in real life you must pay attention to what people say and how they say it in order to understand what they really mean, in fiction you must also perceive what the characters say, how they say it and why. The difference between life and fiction is that in fiction everything is purposefully arranged; and the means by which writers present and reveal character are selected very carefully to produce the desired effect. These means or, rather, the art of creating literary characters, is called characterization.

Character can be handled in several ways in a literary work. The simplest way to introduce a character, common in classical fiction, is to give a physical description and biographical summary. When the author directly states facts about a character’s personality, the method employed is called direct, or explicit, characterization.

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Example 1

The door opens anyway and his colleague, Roberta, enters. Though young, in her thirties, her back is hunched, her chin pressed to her chest as though she is decades older. Her eyes, mostly cast downward, occasionally flicker upwards to meet his before falling again. She is apologetic for everything, as always, constantly saying sorry to the world, as though her very presence offends. She tries to manoeuver her way through the obstacle course that is his cluttered office to reach his desk. This she does the same way as she does through her life, as quietly and invisibly as possible…

(C. Ahern “Thanks for the Memories”)

One more variant of direct characterization, more complex, represents implicit characterization of a literary personage as seen through the eyes of another character, which, in some cases, should not be trusted unconditionally. After all, the narrator may present his or her highly subjective version of events, and it is up to the reader to decide whether to trust the narrator’s judgement or not. And we should not forget that what Character A says about Character B reveals something about both of them.

Example 2

He was impressed. Mr. Goldfinger was one of the most relaxed men Bond had ever met. It showed in the economy of his movement, of his speech, of his expressions. Mr. Goldfinger wasted no effort, yet there was something coiled, compressed, in the immobility of the man. When Goldfinger had stood up, the first thing that had struck Bond was that everything was out of proportion. Goldfinger was short, not more than five feet tall, and on top of the thick body and blunt, peasant legs, was set almost directly into the shoulders, a huge and it seemed exactly round head. It was as if Goldfinger had been put together with bits of other people’s bodies. Nothing seemed to belong. Perhaps, Bond thought, it was to conceal his ugliness that Goldfinger made such a fetish of sunburn. Without the red-brown camouflage the pale body would be grotesque. The face, under the cliff of crew-cut carroty hair, was as startling, without being as ugly, as the body. It was moon-shaped without being moonlike.

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The forehead was fine and high and the thin sandy brows were level above the large light blue eyes fringed with pale lashes. The nose was fleshily aquiline between high cheekbones and cheeks that were more muscular than fat. The mouth was thin and dead straight, but beautifully drawn. The chin and jaws were firm and glinted with health. To sum up, thought Bond, it was the face of a thinker, perhaps a scientist, who was ruthless, sensual, stoical and tough. An odd combination.

What else could he guess? Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big — bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world. And what about a misshapen short man with red hair and a bizarre face? That might add up to a really formidable misfit. One could certainly feel the repressions. There was a powerhouse of vitality humming in the man that suggested that if one stuck an electric bulb into Goldfinger’s mouth it would light up. Bond smiled at the thought.

(I. Fleming “Goldfinger”)

Direct statement is the easiest way to reveal the personality of a character since the author tells you exactly what a character is like, but it is often the least interesting technique. Modern novelists usually prefer the facts about their characters emerge gradually, or be conveyed by action and speech, which is called indirect, or implicit, characterization. Here the most frequent methods the author may use to reveal character are: characters’ actions, characters’ speech and characters’ thoughts and feelings. The author can show you what a character is like by reporting the character’s actions, describing what a person does and what happens to him, as a result, we can judge for ourselves what a character is like. Seeing a character act in a cruel way is definitely more interesting and effective than just being told “He is cruel”.

Example 3

…way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The

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