fiction: understanding the text · life. •plots usually involve at least one conflict (a struggle...

THE NORTON INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE Tenth Edition

Allison Booth ● Kelly J. Mays

FICTION: Understanding

the Text

©2010 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

FICTION: Understanding the Text

• This section introduces you to the elements of

fiction and provides you with tips for analyzing

and interpreting them.


Plot

• Plot is the arrangement of the action, the series

of events recounted in the story.

• Plot concerns causes and effects as well as the

arrangement of moments in time. Plot creates a

meaningful pattern out of the presentation of

events, and it often relies on the rearrangement

of chronological order.


Plot

• In between the beginning and the end, stories

often reorder the time sequence within the

fictional world. Stories can make use of

flashbacks (the dramatization of a scene that

happened before the fictional present) or

flashforwards (projections into the future).

• Foreshadowing is when an author merely hints

at what is to come.


Plot

• Pacing refers to the duration of episodes in a

story relative both to other episodes in the story

and to the time they would have taken in real

life.

• Plots usually involve at least one conflict (a

struggle of some sort) and its resolution.

Conflicts can be external (one character’s

conflict with another character or with an outside

force) or internal (within a character).


Plot

• Generally, plot follows a five-part pattern:

exposition, rising action, turning point (or

climax), falling action, and conclusion.

• Exposition, which usually occurs at the

beginning of the story, introduces the characters,

their situation, and often a time and place.

Exposition usually reveals some sort of conflict.


Plot

• The rising action involves the narration of

inciting incidents, or destabilizing events, that

break the routine and intensify the conflict.

• The third part of a story is the turning point or

climax, when the incidents and the conflicts they

introduce converge on a decisive moment,

realization, or action.


Plot

• The final phases of a story present the outcome,

which is sometimes described in terms of falling

action and conclusion. At this point, all the

actions of the story are fulfilled, and the situation

that was destabilized at the beginning of a story

either becomes stable once more or is replaced by

a new, stable situation.


Narration and Point of View

• The narrator is the teller of a story or novel.

• The point of view of the story involves focus

(the perspective through which the characters,

events, and other details are viewed) and voice

( the words in which the story is narrated).



• The narration can focus on a central

consciousness, filtering descriptions of things,

people, and events through an individual

character’s perceptions and responses.

• A third-person narrator uses the pronouns he,

she, and they.·Third-person narrators can be

unlimited (omniscient) or limited.



• Omniscient, or unlimited, narrators have

unlimited access to the thoughts of more than

one character.

• Limited point of view refers to a story that

focuses on a single character’s voice or

thoughts.



• A first-person narrator describes the action

from his or her own perspective (using the

pronoun I).

• First-person narrators sometimes address an

auditor, an audience within the fiction whose

possible reaction is part of the story.



• Less frequently, events are narrated in the first

person plural (using the pronoun we) or in the

second person (using the pronoun you).

• When we as readers are skeptical of a narrator’s

point of view and judge his or her flaws or

misperceptions, we call that narrator unreliable.



• Stories are most often narrated in the past

tense, but the use of the present tense has

become more common in contemporary fiction.

• It is sometimes tempting to identify the narrator

with the author of the story, but it is generally

more productive to think in terms of the implied

author, the voice or figure of the author who

designs the story and creates the narrator who

tells it.


Character

• A character is someone who acts, appears, or

is referred to as playing a part in a literary work,

usually fiction or drama.

• The leading male character is sometimes called

the hero; his opponent is sometimes called the

villain; and the leading female character is

sometimes called the heroine. Heroes and

heroines tend to be portrayed as stronger or

better than the average human being.


Character

• A more neutral term for the leading character is

protagonist; a protagonist’s opponent is called

an antagonist.

• Most modern fiction focuses on characters who

are more like ordinary people. Such characters

are sometimes called antiheroes, not because

they oppose the hero but because they do not

manifest any outstanding strength or virtue.


Character

• Major or main characters are those whose

qualities are described and developed most

thoroughly over the course of the plot. Minor

characters are secondary figures who round out

the story.

• A foil is a character who serves as a contrast to

the protagonist.


Character

• Round characters are characters who or act

from conflicting or changing motives. Their

complexity often makes them seem more

“realistic” than flat characters, who behave in

unchanging or unsurprising ways.

• Dynamic characters are those that change

over the course of a story; those that don’t are

called static characters.


Character

• The terms round versus flat and dynamic versus

static should not be used as value judgments.

Flat characters may be less complex than round

ones, but their characterization is not necessarily

artistically or aesthetically inferior.

• Flat characters who represent a familiar,

frequently recurring type are called stock

characters.


Character

• Types of characters that appear in literature

across ages and cultures are called archetypes.

• It is necessary to recognize that fictional

characters are not real people, but keep in mind

that the representation of people in fiction can

provide insight into—and provoke debate

about—fundamental qualities of human nature.


Character

• Characterization is the art and technique of

representing fictional personages.

• The two main methods for presenting character

are direct characterization and indirect

characterization. Using direct characterization,

the narrator explicitly tells the reader what a

character is like; with indirect characterization,

readers must infer what a character is like from

his or her actions and dialogue.


Setting

• The setting of a story includes the temporal

setting, or plot time (when the story takes

place), and the spatial setting (where the story

takes place).

• General setting is the time period and the rough

location in which the story is set. Particular

settings include specific dates and times or

locations for events in the story.

• Setting can provide historical or cultural context

for the action, set an emotional tone, and evoke

certain associations in readers’ minds.


Symbol

• A symbol is something that stands for

something else.

• In literature, the association between a symbol

and what it symbolizes is usually subtle and

many-layered. A symbol usually conveys an

abstraction or a cluster of abstractions.


Symbol

• A traditional symbol is a familiar one that has been

used by many writers over a long time. Archetypes

are pervasive literary elements (for example plots,

characters, objects, or settings) that recur in stories

across cultures and over long periods of time.

• Writers can also invent fresh symbols. If a symbol

does not have a familiar association with what it

represents, the work must provide clues to its

significance. The context of an entire work can

guide you in how far to push your sense of whether

a metaphor has the deeper significance of a symbol.


Symbol

• A single item in a story becomes a symbol only

when its potentially symbolic meaning is

confirmed by something else in the story.

• An allegory is an extended series of symbols

that encompasses a whole work.


Symbol

• When an entire story is allegorical or symbolic, it

is sometimes called a myth. This term originally

referred to stories of communal origin that

provided a religious explanation of an event or

situation, but today we often employ it to imply

that a story expresses experiences or truths that

are shared by a community or that extend beyond

any one culture and time.

• Like other figures of speech, symbols are most

effective when they cannot be neatly translated

into an abstract phrase, when their meaning

remains elusive or difficult to articulate.


Symbol

• Figures of speech (or figurative language)

create imaginative connections between our

ideas and our senses or reveal striking

similarities between things we do not normally

associate with one another.

• A simile is an explicit comparison, often

signaled by like or as.


Symbol

• A metaphor is an implicit comparison or

identification of one thing with another, without a

verbal signal such as like or as.

• An extended metaphor is a detailed and

complex metaphor that stretches through most

of a work and underscores its themes.


Theme

• A story’s theme is its central idea, thesis, or

message.

• Themes are not always clear or unified.

Different readers may have different—and

entirely reasonable and compelling—

interpretations of a story’s theme.

• The word theme is sometimes used loosely to

refer to a story’s topic or subject, but it more

specifically refers to what the story has to say

about that topic.


Theme

• Deciphering your own interpretation of a theme

can require multiple readings and always

requires careful attention to all the elements of

literature (plot, point of view, character, symbols,

and language).

• To locate a theme is not to close off further

analysis or interpretation of a story. Rather, it

should trigger deeper investigation into the

details that make a story vivid and unique.

fiction: understanding the text · life. •plots usually involve at least one conflict (a struggle...

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