Monday, December 28, 2009
Point of view
I wrote in an earlier comment that I thought the first and last segments were stronger, and I realized that those also were told in third person, and the middle tales were in first person. I wonder why that would make a difference -- but the storytelling was a lot better in third. Like all the clumsy references to how the dialogue was spoken from the first-person storytelling suggested the author wasn't comfortable in that point of view. Or maybe it had to do with whose dream he was telling? From the first tale we know the middle three stories were in the mindset of the schoolgirls, and maybe the writing reflected a more amateurish line of thought. Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit for the inconsistencies.
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Wow, I didn't even notice that. I will have go back and look over these stories again. I feel I didn't read them thoughtfully enough the first time.
ReplyDeleteI noticed the point-of-view shift, but I wasn't sure what to think of it. It's strange in the first story especially because it's told from the point of view of the visiting doctor, not the girl whose dream it was. The other two dreams of the girls are recounted in first person by the girls/women themselves. Not sure what to make of that, except that maybe the asylum one just wouldn't work right told from the woman's point of view since she dies in the end!
ReplyDeleteI think first-person narration is tricky to do because you want your narrator to sound like what he or she is supposed to be, a doctor or drug addict or salesman or whatever, not a professional writer! You have to strike a balance between authentic and compelling. (There's a FANTASTIC example of first-person narration, by the way, from a streetwalker, in "Let the Great World Spin.")
There's also the matter of Miss Emily being an unwilling curmudgeon, so maybe that has something to do with her dream being related by a third person? And it says that Miss Emily was dreaming about "an old woman whose alarm clock is broken," so Miss Emily isn't dreaming about herself, like the girls did, but about another woman, whose name, we find out in the last story, is Miss Margaret.