| 520 |
|
|
|b Narration is a relation between the author/storyteller from one side and the audience/readers from the other. This paper aims to clarify the elements and techniques applied in the context of the novel, which is telling the story of the protagonist’s “Nada” life through 3 chapters. Each of these chapters explores specific details of a certain period in the life of the protagonist, or the circumstances surrounding her. The criticism is fixed on these main points: 1) Narrator/Storyteller: The reader becomes aware of more than one narrator which is exponent through the author’s commingling usage of different narrator pronouns: “I”, “SHE”, or “YOU”. The second person pronoun “YOU” is part of the soliloquy technique abundantly applied in the context of the novel. This is explicit when Nada talks to herself or when the narrator suddenly tabs into Safa’a’s; who happen to be the obverse of the same coin or person. 2) Timeframe: The narration in the novel commingles between past and present events. You can find past evens resurfacing and like history repeats itself sometimes. 3) Also, the author/storyteller - deliberately - recorded childhood’s psychological and social effects and their sturdy influence on human’s characteristics and future. The narration in here was distinguished by the Stream of consciousness technique; the context swings from the past to the future and again to the past or even the future! All of that without setting a traditional time sequence or further explaining the occurrences. The narration depends on the astute reader to comprehend events succession. Sometimes, Nada refers to The Moon, The Father, and The Lover - in the same paragraph - using the pronoun “HE”. The paragraph could begin with the narrator’s voice -Nada - as a child, then the voice becomes that of a teen and sometimes in the voice of “I” or she could be talking to herself using the voice “YOU”. 4) Characters: The novel reflects several aspects of Nada’s list of relationships with her family members; The Father (his compassion and her affection is in somewhat adulterated by a similar complex to Electra’s); The Mother- where hatred, aversion, and pain prevails. There are also The Brother, three grandmothers, and several other male and female colleagues to added historical and social perspective in addition to the psychological and lingual critical approaches in the novel. 5) Symbols: Motifs usage is one of the most significant narration techniques; as the novel is swarmed with characters, whether friends, celebrities, or relatives; whether general events like the 1967 war, or Jamal Abed Al-Nasser, political parties, liberal movements, communism, central security, student’s demonstration slogans. You can also find an entire world of animals like rabbits, cats, dogs, mice, butterflies, and birds; each and every of these animals adds a certain quality to the narration process. Tahawy applies symbolic rhetorical portraits which, in spite of which, are manifested in: wounds, scars, chasms and blood, shut doors, railed windows, wires and labyrinths. 5) Narration techniques or instrumentality varies: 6) Using narration in addition to portrays. 7) Conversation and Soliloquy. 8) Letters, quotes, and analects. (The Revival of Religious Sciences by Al-Ghazali) 9) Songs and proverbs. 10) Traditional and novel poetry.. (Dove Ring by Iben- Hazem)
|
