5. There is an immensity of promenading on crutches and off, with sticks and without; and a great deal of conversation, and liveliness and pleasantry. (D.)
6. We sat down at the table. The jaws got to work around the table. (R.W.)
7. Babbitt stopped smoking at least once a month. He did everything in fact except stop smoking. (S.L.)
8. I'm interested in any number of things, enthusiastic about nothing. Everything is significant and nothing is finally important. (Jn.B.)
9. Lord Tompson owns 148 newspapers in England and Canada. He is the most influential Fleet-Street personality. His fortune amounts to 300 mln. He explains his new newspaper purchases so: "I buy newspapers to make money. I make money to buy more newspapers. I buy more newspapers to make more money, etc., etc. without end." (M.St.)
10. He illustrated these melodramatic morsels by handing the tankard to himself with great humility, receiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily, and smacking his lips fiercely. (D.)
11. The cigarette tastes rough, a noseful of straw. He puts it out. Never again. (U.)
12. The certain mercenary young person felt that she must not sell her sense of what was right and what was wrong, and what was true and what was false, and what was just and what was unjust, for any price that could be paid to her by any one alive. (J.F.)
13. A girl on a hilltop, credulous, plastic, young: drinking the air she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth. (S.L.)
14 I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted and appointed him. In my will. (D.)
15. This is what the telegram said: Has Cyril called yet? On no account introduce him into theatrical circles. Vitally important. Letter follows. (P.G.W.)
16. In November a cold unseen stranger whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony touching one here and one there with icy fingers. Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. (O'N.)
17. He came to us, you see, about three months ago. A skilled and experienced waiter. Has given complete satisfaction. He has been in England about five years. (Ch.)
18. If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life, talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by an accident. Our words - our lives - our pains - nothing! The taking of our lives -lives of a good shoe-maker and a poor fish-peddler - all! That last mo'ment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph! (H.R.)
19. The main thought uppermost in Fife's mind was that everything in the war was so organized, and handled with such matter-of-fact dispatch. Like a business. Like a regular business. And yet at the bottom of it was blood: blood, mutilation, death. It seemed weird, wacky to Fife. (J.)
20. Constance had said: "If ever I'm a widow, I won't wear them, positively," in the tone of youth; and Mrs. Baines had replied: "I hope you won't, my dear." That was over twenty years ago, but Constance perfectly remembered. And now, she was a widow! How strange and how impressive was life! And she had kept her word; not without hesitations; for though times were changed, Bursley was still Bursley; but she had kept it. (A.B.)
21. The reasons why John Harmon should not come to life: Because he has passively allowed these dear old faithful friends to pass into possession of the property. Because he sees them happy with it. Because they have virtually adopted Bella, and will provide for her. Because there is affection enough in her heart to develop into something enduringly good, under favourable conditions. Because her faults have been intensified by her place in my father's will and she is already growing better. Because her marriage with John Harmon, after what I have heard from her own lips, would be a shocking mockery. Because if John Harmon comes to life and does not marry her, the property falls into the very hands that hold it now. (D.)
22. In Arthur Calgary's fatigued brain the word seemed to dance on the wall. Money! Money! Money! Like a motif in an opera, he thought. Mrs. Argyle's money! Money put into trust! Money put into an annuity! Residual estate left to her husband! Money got from the bank! Money in the bureau drawer! Hester rushing out to her car with no money in her purse... Money found on Jacko, money that he swore his mother had given him. (Ch.)
23. Mr. Pickwick related, how he had first met Jingle; how he had eloped with Miss Wardle; how he had cheerfully resigned the fady for pecuniary considerations; how he had entrapped him into a lady's boarding school; and how he, Mr. Pickwick, now felt it his duty to expose his assumption for his present name and rank. (D.)
24. "And with a footman up behind, with a bar across, to keep his legs from being poled! And with a coachman up in front sinking down into a seat big enough for three of him, all covered with upholstery in green and white! And with two bay horses tossing their heads and stepping higher than they trot long-ways! And with you and me leaning back inside, as grand as ninepence!" (D.)
25. I looked at him. I know I smiled. His face looked as though it were plunging into water. I couldn't touch him. I wanted so to touch him I smiled again and my hands got wet on the telephone and then for the moment I couldn't see him at all and I shook my head and my face was wet and I said, "I'm glad. I'm glad. Don't you worry. I'm glad." (J.B.)
26. What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows.
No time to see when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see in broad day light,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
(W.H.D.)
Author's Narrative. Dialogue. Interior
Speech. Represented Speech. Compositional Forms
A work of creative prose is never homogeneous as to the form and essence of the information it carries. Both very much depend on the viewpoint of the addresser, as the author and his personages may offer different angles of perception of the same object. Naturally, it is the author who organizes this effect of polyphony, but we, the readers, while reading the text, identify various views with various personages, not attributing them directly to the writer. The latter's views and emotions are most explicitly expressed in the author's speech (orthe author's narrative).
The uhfoldinof me plot is mainly concentrated here, personages are given characteristics, the time and the pla'ce of action are also described here, as the author sees them. The author's narrative supplies the reader with direct information about the author's preferences and objections, beliefs and contradictions, i.e. serves the major source of shaping up the author's image.
In contemporary prose, in an effort to make his writing more plausible, to impress the reader with the effect of authenticity of the described events, the writer entrusts some fictitious character (who might also participate in the narrated events) with the task of story-telling. The writer himself thus hides behind the figure of the narrator, presents all the events of the story from the latter's viewpoint and only sporadically emerges in the narrative with his own considerations, which may reinforce or contradict those expressed by the narrator. This form of the author's speech is called entrusted narrative. The structure of the entrusted narrative is much more complicated than that of the author's narrative proper, because instead of one commanding, organizing image of the author, we have the hierarchy of the narrator's image seemingly arranging the pros and cons of the related problem and, looming above the narrator's image, there stands the image of the author, the true and actual creator of it all, responsible for all the views and evaluations of the text and serving the major and predominant force of textual cohesion and unity.
Entrusted narrative can be carried out in the 1st person singular, when the narrator proceeds with his story openly and explicitly, from his own name, as, e.g., in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, or The Great Gatsby by Sc. Fitzgerald, or All the King's Men by R.f.Warren. In the first book Holden Caulfield himself retells about the crisis in his own life which makes the focus of the novel. In the second book Nick Carraway tells about Jay Gatsby, whom he met only occasionally, so that to tell Gatsby's life-story he had to rely on the knowledge of other personages too. And in the third book Jack Burden renders the dramatic career of Willie Stark, himself being one of the closest associates of the man. In the first case the narration has fewer deviations from the main line, than in the other two in which the narrators have to supply the reader also with the information about themselves and their connection with the protagonist.
Entrusted narrative may also be anonymous. The narrator does not openly claim responsibility for the views and evaluations but the manner of presentation, the angle of description very strongly suggest that the story is told not by the author himself but by some of his factotums, which we see, e.g., in the prose of Fl. O'Connor, C. McCullers, E. Hemingway, E. Caldwell.
The narrative, both the author's and the entrusted, is not the only type of narration observed in creative prose. A very important place here is occupied by dialogue, where personages express their minds in the form of uttered speech. In their exchange of remarks the participants of the dialogue, while discussing other people and their actions, expose themselves too. So dialogue is one of the most significant forms of the personage's self-characterization, which allows the author to seemingly eliminate himself from the process.
Another form, which obtained a position of utmost significance in contemporary prose, is interior speech of the personage, which allows the author (and the readers) to peep into the inner world of the character, to observe his ideas and views in the. making. Interior speech is best known in the form of interior monologue, a rather lengthy piece of the text (half a page and over) dealing with one major topic of the character's thinking, offering causes for his past, present or future actions. Short insets of interior speech present immediate mental and emotional reactions of the personage to the remark or action of other characters.
The workings of our brain are not intended for communication and are, correspondingly, structured in their own unique way. The imaginative reflection of mental processes, presented in the form of interior speech, being a part of the text, one of the major functions of which is communicative, necessarily undergoes some linguistic structuring to make it understandable to the readers. In extreme cases, though, this desire to be understood by others is outshadowed by the author's effort to portray the disjointed, purely associative manner of thinking, which makes interior speech almost or completely incomprenensible. These cases exercise the so-called stream-of-consciousness technique which is especially popular with representatives of modernism in contemporary literature.
So the personage's viewpoint can be realized in the uttered (dialogue) and inner (interior) speech forms. Both are introduced into the text by the author's remarks containing indication of the personage (his name or the name-substitute) and of the act of speaking (thinking) expressed by such verbs as "to say", "to think" and their numerous synonyms.
To separate and individualize the sphere of the personage, language means employed in the dialogue and interior speech differ from those used in the author's narrative and, in their unity and combination, they constitute the personage's speech characteristic which is indispensable in the creation of his image in the novel.
The last - the fourth - type of narration observed in artistic prose is a peculiar blend of the viewpoints and language spheres of both the author and the character. It was first observed and analysed almost a hundred years ago, with the term represented (reported) speech- attached to it. Represented speech serves to show either the mental reproduction of a once uttered remark, or the character's thinking. The first case is known as represented uttered speech, the second one as represented inner speech. The latter is close to the personage's interior speech in essence, but differs from it in form: it is rendered in the third person singular and may have the author's qualitative words, i.e. it reflects the presence of the author's viewpoint alongside that of the character, while interior speech belongs to the personage completely, formally too, which is materialized through the first-person pronouns and the language idiosyncrasies of the character.
The four types of narration briefly described above are singled out on the basis of the viewpoint commanding the organization of each one. If it is semantics of the text that is taken as the foundation of the classification then we shall deal with the three narrative compositionalforms traditionally singled out in poetics and stylistics. They are: narrative proper where the unfolding of the plot is concentrated. This is the most dynamic compositional form of the text. Two other forms - description and argumentation - are static. The former supplies the details of the appearance of people and things "populating" the book, of the place and time of action, the latter offers causes and effects of the personage's behaviour, his (or the author's) considerations about moral, ethical, ideological and other issues. It is rather seldom that any of these compositional forms is used in a "pure", uninterrupted way. As a rule they intermingle even within the boundaries of a paragraph.
All the compositional forms can be found in each of the types of narration but with strongly varying frequences.
Exercise I. Find examples of various types of narration and narrative compositional forms. Pay attention to language means used in each one. State their functions. Discuss correlations existing between the type of narration, compositional form and the language of the discourse:
1. Novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement; as skilled furniture-makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy's back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator: a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. (J.F.)
2. He refused a taxi. Exercise, he thought, and no drinking at least a month. That's what does it. The drinking. Beer, martinis, have another. And the way your head felt in the morning. (I.Sh.)
3. Now she come my room, he thought. "What you want?" he demanded.
"May I come in?"
"This house," he said slowly, "she yours."
"Tell me your name," she said. "You," he burst out. "This long time and no know my name - and no ask! What my name? Who me? You no care." (R.W.)
4. His mind gathered itself out of the wreckage of little things: out of all that the world had shown or taught him he could remember now only the great star above the town, and the light that had swung over the hill, and the fresh sod upon Ben's grave and the wind, and the far sounds and music, and Mrs. Pert.
Wind pressed the boughs, the withered leaves were shaking. A star was shaking. A light was waking. Wind was quaking. The star was far. The night, the light. The light was bright. A chant, a song, the slow dance of the little things within him. The star over the town, the light over the hill, the sod over Ben, night all over. His mind fumbled with little things. Over us all is some thing. Star night, earth, light... light... О lost!... a stone... a leaf... a door... О ghost!... a light... a song... a light... a light... a light awnings over the hill... over us all... a star shines over the town... over us all... a light.