As a three-interrelated concept associated with the grammatical ‘verb’ form, ‘tense’, ‘aspect’, and ‘mood’ play important roles in narrative fiction in general, and in POV/focalization and speech and thought representation, in particular. If we take narrative as ‘the successive events that happen in time’, then what makes the events ‘happen in time’ is what but ‘tense’. In the English and Persian languages, tense can be divided into the three categories, given the present moment as deictic center: present, past, and future; the present time means co-temporality of the time of the situation and the present moment; the past time means the location of the situation prior to the present moment; and the future time means the location of the situation …show more content…
In English, as Comrie 1976) puts it, “finite verb forms have absolute tense and nonfinite verb forms have relative tense” (p. 2). Now, as one of the absolute verb, the past tense plays an important role in narrative fiction. In this sense, the narrative is viewed as taken place in the past time, and it is narrated at ‘here and now’ retrospectively by the past ‘tense’. Of course, it does not mean we have any narratives other than the past ones; otherwise, a narrative, as Rimmon-Kenan (2002) puts it, can be told either from the past tense, present tense, and /or simultaneously. The point, however, is that the events at ‘fabula’/story’ level have been experienced, by definition, in the past time, whether it occurred in some real world or a fictional one. In this respect, even those events that are supposed to take place in the future time in the science fiction novels, for example, are also narrated as if they had occurred in the past time. In fact, narrative as such is narrated through the past tense. However, there is a difference between a past tense which relates to a specific endpoint in the past time, and a past tense that relates to no specific past time; in fact, the difference is between ‘he went’, and ‘he was
D'hoker, Elke, and Gunther Martens, eds. Narrative unreliability in the twentieth-century first-person novel. Vol. 14. Walter de Gruyter, 2008.
Junot Diaz’s “Otravida, Otravez” postulates a perspective of life where one’s present and future always reflects their past in some way. Diaz incorporates symbolic figures to convey how a person’s past can be carried into the future. Diaz’s use of symbolic figures includes the dirty sheets washed by Yasmin, the letters sent by Virta to Ramon, and the young girl who begins working with Yasmin at the hospital. These symbolic figures and situations remind the readers that the past will always play a major role in one’s present. Additionally, Diaz’s word choice, where Spanish words appear in many different parts of the reading, suggests that indirectly, one’s past habits are not easily broken.
A traditional text is usually written in the sequence of happenings. As Aristotle mentioned, the order of a unified plot is a chronological happenings of beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is the main action that makes readers follow the story more interestedly; the middle presumes what has occurred in the past and requires something to end; and the end comes after all the occurrences to sum up and finish the story (Abrams 161). In in contradiction to modern texts, the story does not grow in the linear form mentioned. The action passes through a character`s awareness. It is the flow of tho...
The change of tense nourishes here a double function. First Ovid uses the perfect indicative active tense, ‘dixit’ , which anchors the reader in the present of the action, of the narration. Then he uses the imperfect indicative active tense, ‘dicebat’ , since the progressive aspect is meant to describe habitual or repeated action, it crystallises all of Daedalus’ emotions in a never-ending plaintive moaning. Secondly, because Icarus fell into the sea, ‘that forever bears his name’ and give as well his name to ‘that island’ where he is buried; the use of the imperfect indicative active, a tense generally used for description, is used here, to fix the aetiology in a distant past and yet at the same time in eternity. The name of the island and the sea ‘so named provides an endlessly repetitive commemoration of the death’ of Icarus.
In this essay we will consider a much more recent approach to time that came to the fore in the twentieth century. In 1908 James McTaggart published an article in Mind entitled 'The Unreality of Time', in which, as the title implies, he argued that there is in reality no such thing as time. Now although this claim was in itself startling, probably what was even more significant than McTaggart's arguments was his way of stating them. It was in this paper that McTaggart first drew his now standard distinction between two ways of saying when things happen. In this essay we shall outline these ways of describing events and then discuss the merits and demerits of each, and examine what has become known as the 'tensed versus tenseless' debate on temporal becoming.
... of language and education is the most important in this story and society. The make use of two different languages in a narrative, provides a reader a perplexing yet fascinating image of characterization and customs. Multilingual story telling pushes the reader to decelerate and acquire supplemental focus on the expressions which are in the small fragments, however as soon as the reader has figured out the foreign words, he or she acquires a priceless picture of the theme of this story. The panorama of native words and phrases, cultural perceptions, and class dispute taken from the incorporation of two different languages are helpful for the reader to obtain significance that he or she couldn't gain if exclusively one language was employed in the story. Just as the power of language is applied to unveil a society, a better comprehension is provided to the reader.
All stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies. They are known collectively as The Hero’s Journey. Understanding these elements and their use in modern writing is the object of our quest. Used wisely, these ancient tools of the storytellers craft still have tremendous power to heal our people and make the world a better place (xxvii).
Growing up in a bilingual household, I have struggled with many things especially reading and writing. Reading and writing have never been my strongest points. The first struggle that I can recall, is when I was about six or seven years old. I was beginning my education at Edu-Prize Charter School. I was a cute little kid, in the first grade, just like everybody else. But in the middle of the school year, my mom told me that my great, great aunt, who lived in China, was getting really sick and old. So if I wanted to meet her, it had to be now. Being a little kid, I didn’t quite understand why she couldn’t just go see the doctor, take some medication, or let time heal her. Unfortunately, now I know it was my mom’s way of saying that she was dying. My parents made the decision that it was probably the best way for me to understand my Chinese culture, along with meeting my relatives on my mother’s side of the family. So for a month, I had to leave my dad, my brother, my school, and all my
Diction plays a critical role in the development of the tone in a story. The type of words the author uses directly leads to the tone of the entire literary work. If ...
The stories told in the Iliad and Odyssey are based on stories handed down over several generations, for they preserve (as we have seen) memories of an already quiet far distant past. The two pomes show clear connection in their language and style, in the manner in which their incidents presented, and in the combination of agreement with level, which distinguish their creation.
The story is being told from the narrative mode. This can be observed in instances such as “I have to confess that behind his father 's back Phalina joined in their fun” and “But, as I have said before, he loved him with a kind of condescension.”
In the simplest form, there is a basic structural pattern to narratives, as expressed through Tzvetan Todorov’s explanation of narrative movement between two equilibriums. A narrative begins in a stable position until something causes disequilibrium, however, by the end of the story, the equilibrium is re-established, though it is different than the beginning (O’Shaughnessy 1999: 268). Joseph Cam...
...res that make these books continue to live on for centuries. Due to the constraints of the essay not all aspects of the narrative perspective could be discussed and the role they play with the novellas.
The ‘Thank Goodness That’s Over’ argument by Arthur Prior (1959), illustrates that our language fundamentally uses tenses, and not ‘space-time’ tenseless talk. In this essay I shall explain prior’s argument, along with a potential critique for it.
The traditional short story is a genre of a prose. It is a fiction work that presents a world in the moment of an unexpected change. The traditional short story obeys some rules, such as the unexpected change and major events with detail. The modern short story is a revolution which is based on the traditional short story. In other words, if the traditional short story is in the first floor, the modern short story is in the second floor. Therefore, the modern short story still obeys some rules that the traditional short story obeys, and breaks some rules that the traditional short story obeys. One rule that the modern short story still uses is the unexpected change. The rules broken by the modern short story are that the major events are not detailed, and that the border between the real world and the fiction world. This paper first talks about the unexcepted change and uses the examples of “Eveline” and “The Open Window.” Then, this paper talks about major events with detail, and uses the examples of “Lottery,” “The Open Window” and “Hills Like White Elephants.” Finally, this paper talks about the meta-literary and the border between the real world and the fiction