As you were reminded last week, all stories have a plot (the order of events that happen) and all plots consist of five basic parts, and through paying attention to the way in which these events are ordered and where it is decided a story should begin and end, a story’s theme can begin to reveal itself.
This ordered series of events, the story’s plot, does not just magically appear in our brains; the story is always delivered through and mediated by language, and not just language in general (there’s no such thing), but a particular person’s words. That person is the narrator (as opposed to the writer.) The writer creates a narrator, who tells the story in a particular way and frames it from a particular POV. The choices a writer makes regarding the story’s narrator and how he/she tells the story is one way to get at a story’s theme.
The other element of fiction you read about this week is character. As Mays reminds us, characters can range from static, stock characters or caricatures all the way to round, dynamic, convincingly and affectingly human beings who stick in our minds for the rest of our lives. However, since writers deliberately develop their characters in these particular ways (characterization), “we thus need to consider…how the text shapes our interpretation of, and degree of sympathy or admiration for, the character; what function the character serves in the narrative; and what the character might represent” (193). Answering these questions about particular characters can help you to discover what some of the story’s larger themes may be.
For this week’s Original Post, choose any one of the assigned stories – “A&P,” “Puppy,” “Happy Endings,” “Good People,” “Araby,” or “Hills Like White Elephants” – and write two paragraphs according to the following requirements:
Paragraph 1 – As you summarize the plot of the story, also discuss how the plot is delivered by the story’s narrator. Who is the narrator? What is the POV?
Paragraph 2 – Develop an argument for the story’s theme based on an analysis of a particular character. (You may choose to analyze the character of the narrator him or herself if the narrator is internal to and part of the story).
