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Introduction Today’s class examines narration and point of view looking at who is telling the story and the related question of from what point of view the story is being told. We’re going to be working with some key concepts including “narrator”, point of view”, first, second and third person narration, and focal characters. To begin, let’s briefly introduce these:NarratorThe term "narrator" refers to the teller of the story"Point of view"refers to the perspective from which the story is being told.First person narrationrefers to a story told using the pronoun “I’ or “We”Second person narrationuses the pronoun “You”Third person narrationuses the pronouns “She”, “He”, “They”Focal characters:these are characters who the narrative focuses on, as readers we may be encouraged to identify with or reject their point of view (for example, we are likely to identify with the heroine character of a story and have sympathy for her point of view)Our novels for today’s lectureIn today’s lecture we will be looking at narration and point of view in three novels that make important contributions to modern American and Chinese-American literature, engaging with themes that are important in contemporary literary and cultural theory and analysis. Paul Beatty’s novel The Sellout, is regarded by many as a satire on the ongoing racism of supposedly post-racist contemporary America. Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, is concerned with issues of class and wealth in America. Yan Geling’s novel The Flowers of War, a translation of the original novel 金陵十三钗? (13 Flowers of Nanking), focuses on gender.The Flowers of WarYan’s The Flowers of War is an historical fictional account of the Nanjing Massacre. The novel is set in the compound of Christian mission in Nankjng where the resident elderly priest Father Engleman and his American-Chinese assistant Fabio Adornato are responsible for the care of 16 young schoolgirls (the eldest being 14). As the Japanese advance and the city becomes increasingly unsafe a group of desperate young sell-song girls clamber over the mission walls and beg for sanctuary. The priest reluctantly lets them stay (there isn’t enough food to share), and relegates them to live in the cellar while the schoolgirls reside in the attic. This group is then joined by several wounded Chinese soldiers. Yan’s novel uses third person narration in a way that allows to closely observe the experiences and views of it wide range of characters; its focus moves back and from the privileged schoolgirls to the impoverished prostitutes, the foreigners and Chinese (including the soldiers, servants and one father), all of whom seeking to survive the extreme violence and deprivations of the rape of Nanjing. In fiction we could say that there have been three different categories of historical novels about the Nanjing massacre each of which contains a different point of view, and a different underlying set of values and historical assumptions. Chinese historical novelists have told the story from the patriotic point of view, with some narrating through focal characters like high level generals and politicians and others focusing on characters who suffer horrific experiences, like soldiers. Then again there is a genre of Japanese patriotic historical fiction about the Nanjing massacre, some of each seems to lay blame on Chinese protagonists while portraying Japanese soldiers as heroic.Yan’s novel has a partially western point of view. The novel is based in part on an incident recounted in the wartime diaries of Minnie Vautrin, one of the Westerners who experienced the Nanjing massacre. It focusses, in part on a western character – the priest – and his heroic attempt to save some of the Chinese, while also representing him as someone who looks down on Chinese culture and society from his European Christian perspective. The novel’s narrative emphasizes the Japanese soldier’s violent raping and murder of the women and girls of Nanjing, and we could say its point of view is both feminist and patriotic; where other war novels neglect violence against women, Yan makes it the central subject by focussing on the female characters, and the novel’s point of view clearly recognises Japanese responsible for their atrocities against women and girls, as well as those against men. The novel’s narrative focusses, in part, on the experience and class conflict of its Chinese women and girl characters. One focal character is the heroic prostitute Zhao Yumo. The narrative gives us access to her experiences, thoughts and feeling, as well as representing her in the eyes of other characters. Zhao, it turns out, started life in a family as wealthy and culturally accomplished and the mission’s schoolgirls (like the maid in the fairy tale who turns out to really have been a princess all along). Yet the novel’s heroic characters include those of genuinely low origins, like the young sell-song girl Cardomom. Some of you may have seen Zhang Yimou’s movie based on Yan’s novel. If so, have a think about the movie’s point of view, narrator, and focalising characters. Are they similar or different in the movie and the book? How and why are they different or similar?Paul Beatty’s The SelloutAlthough set in the contemporary period, Paul Beatty’s prize winning novel is also a kind of historical fiction, drawing heavily on the history of slavery and segregation in the United States. The novel’s narrator-protagonist in fact reflects on history, saying That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you (p. 115). So, one of the novel’s themes is the way that history ‘stays with you.’ The novel makes fun of the idea of a post-racist society in America (the idea that America has left its racist past behind). The novel’s key joke is that its narrating protagonist, a young black man named ‘Bon Bon/Me’, continues America’s racist legacies in ‘Dickens’, his hometown “agrarian ghetto’. Having the novel’s narrator and protagonist (a young black) men advocate slavery and white-excluding segregation (of his local middle school) challenges the readers’ assumptions about the shared values and history in which such acts should be unthinkable. The Sellout is written with an American audience in mind in as it is American history and values that it seems to challenge. It’s interesting therefore to see how other readers might understand the novel and its complex anti-racist point of view. Similarly, the novel’s style, often in the form of the narrator’s voice, is really funny. But does that humour translate outside of an American audience? Can we gain a good understanding of this novel without having a deep understanding of American history and culture, without fully sharing the narrator’s sense of humour? I think we can, and would suggest that The Sellout provide an education and opportunity to critically think about American history and culture, and most of all, its race relations.Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big CityAlthough not a historical novel, McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City is also engaged with the real world as many of the experiences the narrator recounts happened to the author and happened in the place, time (and social milieu New York in the 1980s) that the novel describes. We could say it is a close to being a memoir (an autobiographical account) as well as being a novel. McInerney’s witty novel is in part a tale of a young man’s difficult journey towards adulthood, told by an aspiring West to East coast immigrant. It is a tale of the appeal of youth, wealth and glamour, and the difference between superficial beauty and more grounded kinds of satisfaction. Bright Lights, Big City is famous for its use of a second person narrator, and the consistent use of the pro-noun “you” throughout the novel. The “you” in the novel’s narrative can be understood in different ways, including:A fictional character: the reader can laugh at his foibles and (maybe) empathise with his suffering, and reflect on the narrator’s discussion with himself;An autobiographical self, who we know to have had similar experiences, and who thus gives credibility to the narrative;Us (the readers). The second person narrative places us in the position of the protagonist (we are the “you”). Like Yan’s The Flowers of War, Bright Lights, Big City has been made into a movie, and we could think about whether the point of view and narration work differently or similarly in the novel and book, and on how and why that might be, as well as the effect of any difference for the reader and viewer. Next part of the lectureSo, with these three novels we have three different kinds of narrative, three distinct points of view, and the novels make different kinds of use of their focalising characters. Next of this lecture we’ll have a further look at why, how and to what effect they do so, first by looking at some key narrative concepts and then by reading and discussing an excerpt from each novel. ................
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