Analysis Of Alice Munro's Meneseteung

There is no singular method to tell a story. Whether any specific choice of descriptive language is used, what details are emphasized or omitted, or what emotional response is trying to be provoked, narrative falls victim to both humanity 's limited sensory traits and our own biases. While not necessarily ideal, it is inescapable. Alice Munro 's short story “Meneseteung” plays around with both how a story can be told, who can tell a story, and the process in which a story can be formed. Meneseteung is superficially a brief chronicle of the life of a writer named Almeda Roth. The first section of the story1 provides a brief overview of Almeda and her writing. The story has the limitations of a first person narrative. The narrator is not an

The narrator themselves doesn 't create the portrait, they simply give the reader the information to construe Roth 's character for themselves. After detailing the deaths of Roth 's siblings and mother, the narrator focuses first on the poems that manifestly relate to her family 's death. The descriptions of “Children at Their Games”, “The Gypsy Fair”, “A Visit to My Family” and “Angels in the Snow”, all present to the reader that Almeda Roth is a person who is haunted by their past. By doing so, the author trusts the reader in a way that a linear story couldn 't; by allowing background on our character before we “officially” meet them, we are analyzing their every move from the

One cannot help but color their story even a little bit. To digress from Munro, the apostle Luke was a physician, so does it not make sense that his Gospel gives greater focus to both Jesus as a healer, and the degree of physical punishment he received? Likewise, storytellers themselves take advantage of our own limited perspective, whether it be Holden Caulfield 's immaturity, or the contradictory explanations of the four characters in Rashomon. Munro is not guilty of any sort of literary faux pas by exploiting subjectivity, but rather illustrates it and its effects without condemning or praising it. We create versions of reality and people based on limited perceptions of them, the narrator or author is no guiltier than any of