英语

Narration

Outline

I. What is narration?

II. Guidelines of narration.

III. Assignments

I. What is narration?

Narration is different from other writing types in that:

--it has a plot: a progressive line of energy and tension, anticipations and resolutions,

ultimately delivering meaning.

--the story is dramatized using dialogue and action.

Sample 1

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows.

Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.

Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. "For God's sake hurry up, Francis," he said irritably. "The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?"

Sample 2

The investment of money in securities is unique among business operations in that it is almost always based in some degree on advice received from others. The great bulk of investors are amateurs. Naturally they feel that in choosing their securities they can profit by professional guidance. Yet there are peculiarities in the very concept of investment advice.

If the reason people invest is to make money, then in seeking advice they are asking others to tell them how to make money. That idea has some element of naiveté. Businessmen seek

professional advice on various elements of their business, but they do not expect to be told how to make a profit. That is their won bailiwick. When they, or non-business people, rely upon others to make investment profits for them. They are expecting a kind of result for which there is no counterpart in ordinary business affairs.

Question: Compare these two samples, which one contains plots, dialogues and action? What are they?

II. Guidelines of narration.

1.Time order

1.1 Chronological order:

Narration can be organized according to chronological order. The story is told from the beginning to the end. Times and the event occurred in sequence are the reference to the organization of the narration.

Sample 3

Peter Romano comes from a little town in Sicily. For years he kept a large and prosperous fruit store under the Second Avenue elevated at the corner of Twenty-ninth Street. A few years ago, however, he got something the matter with his chest and wasn’t able to wok any more. He sold his business and put the money into Wall Street.

When the Wall Street crash came, Peter Romano lost almost everything. And by the time that Mrs. Romano had had a baby five months ago and had after wards come down with pneumonia, he found he had only a few dollars left.

By June, he owed his landlord two months’ rent, $52. The landlord, Antonio Copace, live only a few blocks away on Lexinton Avenue, in a house with a Brownstone front and coarse whit-lace curtains in the windows. The Romanos live above the fruit store, on the same floor with a cheap dentist’s office, in a little flat to which they had access up a dirty oilcloth-covered staircase and through a door with dirty-margined panes. The Romanos regarded Mr. Copace as a very rich man, but he, too, no doubt, had been having his losses.

At any rate, he was insistent about the rent. Peter Romano had a married daughter, and her husband offered to help hime out. He went to Mr. Copace with $26-one month’s rent. But the old man refused it with fury and said that unless he got the whole sum right away, he would have the Romanos evicted . on June 11, he came himself to the Romanos and demanded the money again. He threatened to have the marshal in and put them out that very afternoon. Peter Romano tried to argue with him, and Mrs. Romano went out in a final desperate effort to get together $52.

When she came back empty-handed, she found a lot of people outside the house and, upstairs, the police in her flat. Peter had shot Mr. Copace and killed him, and was just being taken off to jail.

Edmund Wilson Question:

Look at the bony structure of Wilson’s little story, can you find the time references?

1.2 Non-chronological order:

A short narrative can often follow chronological order with good result. But strict adherence to chronological order in an extended narrative can lead to a boring, meaningless string of “and thens” to clarify the meaning of a sequence of events. The writer may need to depart from chronological order, moving backward to explain the cause of a particular event or jumping forward to identify its ultimate effect.

Sample 4

Each old cast-off came as a total surprise. Before long we were in hysterics, so much so that we could barely pull the strings on the next pack age. But where had these “presents” come from? It was my brother, Morris. For several months, he had been hiding away old things that he knew we wouldn’t miss. Then on Christmas Eve, after the rest of us had gone to bed, he had quietly wrapped up the presents and placed them under the tree.

Question: Where is the time moved? What purpose does the movement serve?

2.Point of view and tone in narrative

Writers always exist in the stories they tell. But they can choose which point of view they tell their stories. The first-person view point and the third-person viewpoint are the two that are most adopted in narrative.

In the first-person view point, “I” will constantly appear in the narrative. “I” may be an observer or a central character (Annie, the Diary of a Young Girl). Is “I” in a narrative identical to the author himself/herself? Not necessarily. The “I” in a narrative may be wiser or braver than the author. “I” is only a persona, more or less distinct from the author.

Sample 5

The family finances had really been suffering. My father’s business was in trouble, jobs were almost non-existent, and the country’s economy was in a mess. We had a tree for Christmas that year but no presents. We simply couldn’t afford them. Like many families, on Christmas Eve we all went to bed in a bad mood.

Question: What view point does the above paragraph adopt? What are the signs to show that?

The third-person viewpoint avoids the “I”. This kind of story is told in terms of “he”, “she”, “they”. Here the author appears to disappear, hidden completely behind his characters. We know an author exists because a story implies a story-teller. But that presence must be guessed; one never actually observes it(to Kill a Mocking Bird, the Westing Game).

Sample 6

Everybody sniffed when they came to that part; Jo wasn’t ashamed of the great tear that dropped off the end of her nose, and Amy never minded the rumpling of her curls as she hid her face on her mother’s shoulder and sobbed out.

Question: What view point does the above paragraph adopt? What are the signs to show that?

Sample 7

My church recently staged a “Sensitivity Sunday” to make our congregation more aware of the problems faced by people with physical handicaps. We were asked to “adopt a handicap” for several hours one Sunday morning. Some members, like me, chose to be confined to wheelchairs; others wore sound-blocking earplugs, hobbled around on crutches, or wore blindfolds.

Just sitting in the wheelchair was instructive, I had never considered before how awkward it would be to use one. As soon as I sat down, my weight made the chair begin to roll. Its wheels were not locked, and fumbled clumsily to correct that. Another awkward moment occurred when I realized I had no place to put my feet. I fumbled some more to turn the metal footrest into place. I felt psychologically awkward as well, as I took my first uneasy look at what was to be my only means of transportation for several hours. I realized that for many people, “adopting a wheelchair” is not a temporary experiment. That was a sobering thought as I sank back into my seat.

Once I sat down, I had to learn how to cope with the wheelchair. I shifted around, trying to find a comfortable position. I thought it might be restful, even kind of nice, to be pushed around for a while. I glance around to see who would be pushing and then realized I would have to navigate the contraption by myself! My palms reddened and my wrist and forearm muscles started to ache as I tugged at the heavy metal wheels. I realized, as I veered this way and that, that steering and turning were not going to be easy tasks. Trying to make a right-angle turn from one aisle to another, I steered straight into a pew. I felt as though everyone was staring at me and commenting on my clumsiness.

When the service started, more problems cropped up to frustrate me even further. Every time the congregation stood up, my view was blocked. I could not see the minister, the choir, or the altar. Also, as the church’s aisles were narrow, I seemed to be i n the way no matter where I parked myself. For instance, the ushers had to step around me in order to pass the collection plate. This made me feel like a nuisance. Thanks to a new building program, however, our church will soon have the wide aisles and well-spaced pews that will make life easier for the handicapped. Finally, if people stopped to talk to me, I had to strain my neck to look up at them. This made me feel like a little child being talked down to and added to my sense of helplessness. My wheel chair experiment was soon over. It’s true that it made an impression on me. I no longer resent large tax expenditures for ramp-equipped buses, and I wouldn’t dream of parking my car in a space marked “Handicapped Only.” But I also realize how little I know about the daily life of a truly disabled person. A few hours of voluntary “disability” gave me only a hint of the challenges, both physical and emotional, that wheel-chair-bound must overcome.

Questions:

1. Which sentence in paragraph 4 should be omitted in the interest of paragraph unity?

2. How many examples support the topic sentence of paragraph 4, “When the service started,

other problems cropped up to frustrate me further”?

3. The first stage of the writer’s experience in “adopting a Handicap” might be called “sitting

down in the wheelchair”. What are the other two stages of the experience?

Why I decided to come to college

I come to college to better realize my dream. College is the transition from our students to our society. We will learn more practical skills here. And, of course, the most important thing is to learn how to innovate here. At the same time, we meet all kinds of people in college and we will deal with them and learn how to interact with others. In the process, we can learn the advantages of people around us. Communication is the bridge between others and us and is a sign of social integration. And innovation is the gateway to success. When we graduate from college, what we learn in college can be of great help to our success.