AP English Literature and Composition by George Ehrenhaft

Author:George Ehrenhaft
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Different Voices

Conrad’s Lord Jim, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved use another narrative technique for relating the story. Events are recounted by multiple voices that move forward and backward in time. Because the voices change repeatedly, we are told of the same events again and again, but each time from a different perspective. In Beloved, for example, we hear of Paul D’s arrival in Cincinnati related first from Denver’s point of view, then later by Sethe and then by Paul D. Some readers react negatively to this kind of storytelling, claiming that it’s too repetitious and confusing, or that the author’s virtuosity as an artist seems to overshadow the point of the book itself. To a point, such responses may be valid. (Certainly they’re valid for those readers.) On the other hand, life is often like a Gordion knot: disorderly, chaotic, and too complex to unravel easily, and in order to be faithful to reality, stories should not oversimplify human experience.

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