Fiction and Its Worlding

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THE STORYTELLING IMPULSE

1 WHERE DO STORIES COME FROM?Lets start with the beginning of it all: Where did story come from? How did it come about?

In The Nature of Narrative , Scholes and Kellogg posit that narrative or loosely, story is as old aslanguage itself. It is almost impossible to locate the origin of story except in the invention of language.

Probably, as soon as man could utter sounds, story was born.Somewhere, sometime, someone had a great idea. He took it into his head to utter the words once upon atime. By doing so, he lit bonfires in the imaginations of his listeners.

Imagine, then, the first caveman who invented the first story of the world. In the day he saw somethingthat captured his fascination perhaps some beast with three horns and countless warts, or the most beautiful cavewoman in the world, naked, supple, slowly emerging from the seas foamy shores. Hisfascination, his terrific experience, impelled him to communicate the sight to his friends. That night, hewent home, gathered his friends round the bonfire, uttered some fairly comprehensible mumbles, and began the story of his encounter. And as soon as he began his story, his friends, open-mouthed, wantednothing else in the world but to find out the middle and end of his story.

2 WHAT IS STORY?Thus our hypothetical caveman gives us a lasting model for the story. Every story shares the commonfunction of someone telling something to someone about something . Schematically,

tellerrecipientof the tale

tale

(somethingtold about)

FICTION AND ITS W ORLDINGUNIT ONE


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In each story, there is (1) a teller who narrates the story, (2) a tale, the story material, something toldabout, (3) and a recipient of the tale, the listener, the reader.

3 SIGNIFICANCE OF STORYGiven this model, you then begin to appreciate the significance of story. Highly intersubjective, thismodel highlights the communicative impetus, the impulse to share, inherent in the act of storytelling.

Hesiod tells us how the founding myths ( mythos in Greek means story) were invented to explain howthe world came to be and how we came to be in it. Myths were stories people told themselves in order toexplain themselves to themselves and to others. But it was Aristotle who first developed this insight intoa philosophical position: the art of storytelling defined as the dramatic imitating and plotting of humanaction is what gives us a shareable world.

What applies in the level of the community also applies to the level of the individual. Everyday, at school,we gossip about others or tell stories about ourselves. In a way, gossip, too, is story, and gossip emanatesfrom a highly personal need to communicate. When someone asks you who you are, you tell your story.That is, you recount your present condition in the light of past memories and future anticipations. Youinterpret where you are now in terms of where you have come from and where you are going to. And sodoing you give a sense of yourself as a narrative identity that perdures and coheres over a lifetime. It isthis act, this act of storytelling, that gathers together an existence, which would otherwise be scatteredover time.

Lastly, we see in this act of storytelling an act of ordering experience. When we tell others of a particularincident, we dont tell every single minute detail that happened every second, every minute, every hourof the day. We usually organize, re-order, the details, skip parts, and highlight others to make arecognizable beginning, middle, and end. In this way, story emerges as a principle of ordering time andre-interpreting experience. Without story, time may simply be a random flow of chaos.

4 THE STORYWe will have another occasion to discuss the development of story in detail. For now, it is sufficient tosimplify:

The story, as soon as it was born of the first caveman, eventually proliferated and evolved into variousforms. In the ancient period, myths, legends, folktales, and epics were some of the primary stories. Theywere part of the total oral culture of the people. Come the medieval period, there were the romances,allegories, confessions, chronicles, etc. The modern period was a time for the novel and the short story. Itwas a period of great experimentation that explored and pushed the limits of imagination. Today, in thepostmodern period, a complication arises: some scholars posit the death of the story thesis.

6 THE DEATH OF STORY?Circa 1960s, commentators of the story came up with different pronouncements, all proclaiming the deathof the story:

Fiction, it seemed, had been overcome with the nausea of the end. Writers had become shrilland unconvincing obvious and dull.

Its readership was in terminal decline. Perhaps narrative will not continue much longer to be entrusted to print and bound between

hard covers. [And] there is always the screen, if the page proves no longer viable.

From these statements, we then gather two reasons for the supposed death of the story. First, after themodern period, the period of great experimentation, fiction loosely, story had gone exhausted. It


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seemed that there was no longer a new story to tell, or a new way to tell a story. Second, and asimportant, the great age of mass media arrived (television, film, computers, etc.), competing with story, aform conventionally in print.

7 THE STORY IN OUR AGE However, further investigation will prove this thesis misguided. As we have seen in our discussion inclass, most contemporary forms of media still subscribe to the principles of story. Films, advertisements,music videos, news articles to name a few of our contemporary forms remain permeated with stories,are stories in themselves. We are everywhere still surrounded by stories. In fact, [our] new technologies,far from eradicating story, may actually open up novel modes of storytelling quite inconceivable in ourformer cultures.

8 SOURCE Kearney, Richard. On Stories. New York: Routledge, 2002.

THE FICTIONAL DREAM

1 Debbie was a very stubborn and completelyindependent person and was always doing things herway despite her parents efforts to get her to conform.Her father was an executive in a dress manufacturing

company and was able to afford his family all theluxuries and comforts of life. But Debbie wascompletely indifferent to her familys affluence.

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to NarrativeCraft

2Debbie would wear a tank top to a tea party if she pleased, with fluorescent earrings and ankle-strapsandals.Oh, sweetheart, Mrs Chiddister would stand in the doorway wringing her hand. Its not nice.Not who? Debbie would say, and add a fringed belt.

Mr Chiddister was Artistic Director of the Boston branch of Cardin and had a high respect for what hecalled elegant textures, which ranged from handwoven tweed to gold filigree, and which he willinglyoffered his daughter. Debbie preferred her laminated wrist bangles.

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft

3 SHOWING VERSUS TELLINGFiction works mostly by showing rather than telling. It shows by using specific, definite, concrete,particular details. Details are definite and concrete when they appeal to the senses. That is, when they can


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be heard, smelled, tasted, touched, even felt. It is these details that constitute the lifeblood of fiction. Theyare the stuff of persuasiveness.

Consider, for instance, someone telling you he understands bird talk. I understand bird talk, you know.I can talk to birds. We are struck by the sheer absurdity of the lie. Now compare:

4When I first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. Sevenyears ago, the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands his house been empty eversince; a log house, with a plank roof just one big room, and no more; no ceiling nothing between therafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat,taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, andthinking of the home away yonder in the states, that I hadnt heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejaylit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, Hello, I reckon Ive struck something. When hespoke the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didnt care; hismind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side,shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced upwith his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings which signifies gratification, you understand and says, It looks like a hole, its located like a hole blamed if I dont believe it is a hole!

Mark Twain, Bakers Bluejay Yarn

5 THE ART OF LIESIn The Art of Fiction John Gardner argues that the first job of any piece of fiction is to convince us readersthat the events it recounts really happened, or to persuade us they might have happened given smallchanges in the laws of the universe. We know fiction is an artful lie, an artful invention; but we believethrough the willing suspension of disbelief. For the moment we hush our doubts, we silence ourreasonable skeptic side, and we simply believe. But if we suspend our disbelief, this is only because weare constantly presented with proofs in the form of closely observed details that what is said to behappening is really happening.

6 FICTION AS DREAMAn implication of this vividness, this suspension of disbelief, is the way we usually experience fiction asan illusion, a sort of a movie inside our heads. Of this reading experience, Gardner notes:

If we carefully inspect our experience as we read, we discover that the importance of physical detail isthat it creates for us a kind of dream, a rich and vivid play in the mind. We read a few words at the beginning of the book or the particular story, and suddenly we find ourselves seeing not words on a page but a train moving through Russia, an old Italian crying, or a farmhouse battered by rain. We read on dream on not passively but actively, worrying about the choices the characters have to make, listeningin panic for some sound behind the fictional door, exulting in characters successes, bemoaning theirfailures.

7One time during a thaw, moisture was trickling from the tree bark in the yard; the snow on the roofs ofthe buildings was melting. She stood on the threshold, then went to fetch her parasol and opened it. Thesun came through the dove-colored silk parasol, its rays moving over the white skin of her face. Shesmiled beneath it at the mild warmth of the season, and you could hear drops of water, one by one,falling on the taut-stretched silk.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

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The branches are bare, the sky tonight a milky violet. It is not quiet here, but it is peaceful. The windruffles the black water towards me.

There is no one about. The birds are still. The traffic slashes through Hyde Park. It comes to my ears aswhite noise.

I test the bench but do not sit down. As yesterday, as the day before, I stand until I have lost my thoughts.I look at the water of the Serpentine.

Vikram Seth, An Equal Music

9Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out ofthe truck, beat-up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling thedoor closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders,hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying son of a bitch, son of a bitch; then, and aseasily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jacks big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening andAlma looking out for a few seconds at Enniss straining shoulders and shutting the door again and stillthey clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each others toes untilthey pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses anddaughters, Little darlin.

Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain

10Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like atentShe slid further down, introducing herself to the rest of him. His neck. His nipples. His chocolatestomach. She sipped the last of the river from the hollow of his navel. She pressed the heat of his erectionagainst her eyelids. She tasted him, salty, in her mouth. He sat up and drew her back to him. She felt his belly tighten under her, hard as a board. She felt her wetness slipping on his skin. He took her nipple inhis mouth and cradled her stomach in his callused palm. Velvet gloved in sandpaper.

At the moment she guided him into her, she caught a passing glimpse of his youth, his youngness , thewonder in his eyes at the secret he had unearthed and she smiled down at him as though he was herchild.

Once he was inside her, fear was derailed and biology took over. The cost of living climbed tounaffordable heights; though later Baby Kochamma would say it was a Small Price to Pay.And a history lesson for future offenders.He held her against him, resting his back against the mangosteen tree, while she cried and laughed atonce. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, but was really no more than five minutes, she slept leaningagainst him, her back against his chestSlowly the terror seeped back into him. At what he had done. At what he knew he would do again. Andagain.An hour later Ammu disengaged herself gently.I have to go.He said nothing, didnt move. He watched her dress.Only one thing mattered now. They knew that it was all they could ask of each other. The only thing.Ever. They both knew that.


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Even later, on the thirteen nights that followed this one, instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. TheBig Things ever lurked inside. They knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had nothing. Nofuture. So they stuck to the small things.

They laughed at ant-bites on each others bottoms. At clumsy caterpillars sliding off the ends of leaves, atoverturned beetles that couldnt right themselves. At the pair of small fish that always sought Velutha outin the river and bit him. At a particularly devout praying mantis. At the minute spider who lived in acrack in the wall of the back of the verandahand camouflaged himself by covering his body with bits ofrubbish a silver of wasp wing[T]hey knew that they had to put their faith in fragility. Stick to Smallness. Each time they parted, theyextracted only one small promise from each other:Tomorrow?Tomorrow.

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

11But as already hinted at in [6], fiction not only seeks to convince us and therefore cast its illusion upon us.Perhaps, more importantly, fiction makes us feel.

The purpose of all the arts, including literature, is to quell boredom. People recognize that it feels good tofeel and that not to feel is unhealthy. Literature offers us feelings for which we do not have to pay. Itallows us to love, condemn, condone, hope, dread, and hate without any of the risks those feelingsordinarily involve. Fiction must contain ideas, which give significance to characters and events. If theideas are shallow or untrue, the fiction will be correspondingly shallow or untrue. But the ideas must beexperienced through or with the characters; they must be felt or the fiction will fail also.

Much nonfiction writing also tries to persuade us to feel one way rather than another, and some polemics and propaganda, for example exhort us to feel strongly. But nonfiction works largely bymeans of reason and reasoning in order to appeal to and produce emotion. Fiction tries to reproduce theemotional impact of experience. The job of fiction is to focus our attention not on the words, which areinert, or on the thought those words produce, but through these to felt experience, where the vitality ofunderstanding lies. As Gardner puts it:

In great fiction, the dream engages us heart and soul; we not only respond to imaginary things sights,sounds, smells as though they were real, we respond to fictional problems as though they were real: Wesympathize, think, and judge. We act out, vicariously, the trials of the characters and learn from thefailures and successes of particular modes of action, particular attitudes, opinions, assertions, and beliefsexactly as we learn from life. Thus the value of great fiction, we begin to suspect, is not just it entertainsus or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not justthat it broadens our knowledge of people and places, but also that it helps us to know what we believe,reinforces those qualities that are noblest in us, leads us to feel uneasy about our faults and limitations.

12 SOURCESBurroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft.New York: Longman, 2000.Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Trans. by Mildred Marmur. New York: Signet Classic,1964.Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Vintage Books,1985.Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: HarperPerennial, 1997.


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ELEMENTS OF FICTION

STORY FORM AND STRUCTURE: PLOT It all begins with desire. A story begins with a central character, andthis character lets call him or her the storys protagonist needs or desires something. Odysseus desiresto return to his home in the island of Ithaca. Cinderella desires to marry the prince. Romeo and Julietdesire to be with each other. In each case the characters desire is specific and concrete, not a desire of thegeneral abstract type, i.e. the need to survive and perhaps prosper, the need to love and be loved. Before acharacters need can stand as a metaphor for something abstract, it must first be something physical,specific and concrete. Thus:

A sailor/ his house A young maiden who has lost her fortune/ a prince who has her glass slipper Daughter of the rival family and son of the rival family/ son of the rival family and daughter of

the rival family

Imagine, then, the story as this: It is a story about a character and his desire; it is a story about thischaracters quest to achieve this desire.

2But in fiction: no conflict, no story.

Jan and Jo meet in college. Both are beautiful, intelligent, talented, popular, and well adjusted. Theyre ofthe same class, religion, and political persuasion. They are sexually compatible. Their parents become fastfriends. They marry on graduating; and both get rewarding work in the same city. They have threechildren, all of whom are healthy, happy, beautiful, and popular. All the children succeed in work andmarriage. Jon and Jo die peacefully, of natural causes, at the same moment, at the age of eighty-two, andare buried in the same grave.

No doubt this love story is interesting to Jan and Jo. But not to us readers: we might not even lift a fingerto turn the page. Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction, fundamental because in literature onlytrouble is interesting. Charles Baxter puts it best: Say what you will about it, Hell is story-friendly. If youwant a compelling story, put your protagonist among the damned. The mechanisms of hell are nicelyattuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. Itsabout what happens when stories are over.

Thus: desire and conflict.

3 DESIRE AND CONFLICTSo the central characters in question attempt to fulfill their desires, despite the best efforts of what wellcall antagonists other characters or situations that stand between protagonists and the satisfaction oftheir desires. A conflict has graced their lives. The sea god Poseidon, offended by Odysseus at the start ofHomers epic, places 10 years worth of obstacles in the Ithacans way to prevent him from reachinghome. The stepmother constantly counters Cinderellas efforts to marry the prince. The Montague andCapulet families, the feuding clans that they are, prevent Romeo and Juliet from being together.

A sailor/ his house/ the sea in between them A young maiden who has lost her fortune/ a prince who has her glass slipper/ the wicked

stepmother Daughter of the rival family and son of the rival family/ son of the rival family and daughter of

the rival family/ the lovers respective families in between them

Hence the story becomes: a story about a central character and his frustrated need (technically, conflict).A frequently used critical tool divides possible conflicts into several basic categories: (1) man againstman, (2) man against nature, (3) man against society, (4) man against machine, (4) man against God, and(5) man against himself.


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To summarize: A story consists of a characters need for something concrete and specific, not abstractand general and the characters attempts to resolve this need, in spite of the conflict. It is this dynamicthat compels us readers to turn the page: Will he achieve his desire or not? Will he succeed or not? We become interested, then, in the story: What happens next?

4 CINDERELLA AND THE INVERTED CHECKMARKOnce conflict is established and developed in a story, the conflict must come to a crisis and resolution.Schematically:

5 A GLADIATORIAL VIEW OF FICTIONThis diagram in [4] shows us that a story is [like] a war. It is sustained and immediate combat. (1) Thecharacters are fighters (2) who fight over something a stake thats worth their fighting over. (3) Theyhave their fight dive into a series of battles with the last battle the crisis the biggest and mostdangerous of all: the crisis makes the outcome inevitable. There can no longer be any doubt who wins. (4)So that, after the crisis, a definitive change occurs and there is a walking away from the fight.

6 SOME TERMS RELATED TO PLOT in medias res flashback flashforward foreshadowing organic plot

Stepmother

Cinderella

Invitation to theball

You cant go

Fairy Godmother

Be home bymidnight

Prince falls in lovewith C.

Clock strikes 12

Everyone must try theslipper

You may not

CLIMAX

The slipper fits

DENOUEMENT

Wedding

And they lived happily everafter

DEVELOPMENT

OPENING

ACTIVATINGINCIDENT


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episodic plot

THE NOTION OF CHARACTER IN FICTION Recall: the storytelling process begins with a character. It is theprotagonist, or main character, who sets the story in motion, who makes the story special, memorable,meaningful. When we talk to one another about the stories and novels that have meant most to us, wespeak about, more than what happened, who made it happen.

This is perhaps understandable since we can sympathize only with what is human. We may describe alandscape as tragic because nature has been devastated by industry, but the tragedy lies in the cupidityof those who wrought havoc, in the dreariness, poverty, or disease of those who must live there.A conservationist or ecologist (or a novelist) may care passionately about nature and dislike people because they pollute oceans and cut down trees. Then we say he or she identifies with nature (a whollyhuman capacity) or respects the natural unity (of which humanity is part) or wants to keep the earthhabitable (for whom?) or values nature for its own sake (using standards of value that nature does notshare).By all available evidence, the universe is indifferent to the destruction of trees, property, peoples, andplanets. Only people care.

2 OUR PRIMARY INTEREST IN FICTIONBecause we are endlessly and always fascinated with the human, it stands to reason then that character isalso our primary interest in fiction. We successfully engage with fiction only to the extent that we find itscharacters interesting, we find them believable, and we care about what happens to them.

3 AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS INTERESTPart of the fascination with the characters of fiction is that we come to know fictional characters so well,perhaps at times too well. In real life we come to know people for the most part only on the basis ofexternals on the basis of what they say and do; the essential complexity of their inner lives can beinferred only after years of close acquaintance, if at all.

Fiction, on the other hand, often provides us with direct and immediate access to that inner life to theintellectual, emotional, and moral complexities of human personality that lie beneath the surface.

4 PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONISTThe term character applies to any individual in a literary work. The major or central character of the plotis the protagonist ; his opponent, the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends is theantagonist .

The protagonist is usually easy to identify: without him/her there is no story. For instance, withoutCinderella, there is no Cinderella; without Odysseus, there is no Odyssey.

The antagonist, on the other hand, is more difficult to identify, especially when he is not a human being

(i.e. a hostile environment). Or for instance, in A Day in the Country,can we so easily locate an antagonist?Is there an antagonist at all?

Note that the terms protagonist and antagonist do not imply judgment about the moral worth of either,for both embody a complex mixture of both positive and negative qualities.

5 FLAT AND ROUND CHARACTERSTo describe the relative degree to which fictional characters are developed by their creators, wedistinguish between flat and round characters.


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Flat characters embody or represent a single characteristic, trait, or idea, or at most a very limited numberof such qualities. The really flat character, E.M. Foster writes, can be expressed in one sentence.Round characters are just the opposite: they embody a number of qualities and traits, and are complexmultidimensional characters of considerable intellectual and emotional depth who have the capacity togrow and change.

6 DYNAMIC AND STATIC CHARACTERSDynamic characters exhibit the capacity to change. Static character s, on the other hand, leave the plot asthey entered it, largely untouched by the events that have taken place. An author sometimes creates staticcharacters as foils to emphasize and set off by contrast the development taking place in others. Look backto the characters in the past stories weve read in class. Who are dynamic? Static?

7 METHODS OF CHARACTER PRESENTATIONIn fiction, characters are often drawn via five methods: authorial interpretation, appearance, action,speech, and thought.

Authorial Interpretation : the author telling us the characters background, motives, values,virtues, and the like.

Appearance : beauty is only skin deep, one may argue, but people are embodied, and whatever beauty or ugliness there is in them must somehow surface in order for us to perceive it. In theworld of fiction, details of appearance (what a character wears and how he looks) often provideessential clues to character.

Action : as Henry James put it, What is character but the determination of incident? What isincident but the illustration of character? Behavior is a logical and necessary extension ofpsychology and personality. Inner reality can be measure through external event. In short, what agiven character is is revealed by what the character does.

Speech : characterizes in a way different from appearance, because speech represents an effort,mainly voluntary, to externalize the internal and to manifest deliberated thought.

Thought : in fiction, we have the privilege of entering a characters mind, sharing at its sourceinternal conflict, reflection, and the crucial processes of decision and discovery.

SETTING: TIME, PLACE, AND CONTEXT Some places we judge as mellow or harsh. And our judgment altersaccording to what happens to us. For instance, in some rooms you are always trapped; you enter themand escape them as soon as you can. Other rooms invite you in, to nestle or carouse. Some landscapes liftyour spirits; others depress you. Cold weather gives you energy and bounce, or else it clogs your headand makes you huddle, struggling. You describe yourself as a night person or a morning person. Thehouse you loved as a child now makes you, precisely because you were once happy there, think of lossand death.

The point is: Our relation to place, time, and weather is always charged with emotion. So that in fiction,

as in real life, setting can be used to dramatic effect.

2 SETTING AND DRAMATIC EFFECT IN FICTIONThe dramatic effects produced by setting in a piece of fiction are many and varied. They cannot beanticipated and enumerated as neat categories. One must carefully read and immerse oneself in the textitself in order to be able to evaluate the dramatic effect/function of setting in the larger design of thestory.


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Hence, the following functions of setting are not dogmatic, but mere suggestions, entry points, so tospeak, in analyzing setting:

Background: No dramatic effect. Setting exists solely to lend the fiction verisimilitude, a sense ofreality, as if to merely show this story is happening in some place and at some time. Setting bears no clear relationship to action or characters, or at best a relationship that is slight ortangential.

Harmony: Is there harmony between character and setting? In this story, or at least at thisparticular point in the story, why must there be harmony between character and setting? Whatdramatic effect results?

Conflict: Is there conflict between character and setting? In this story, or at least at this particularpoint in the story, why must there be conflict between character and setting? What dramaticeffect results?

Suggestive/Symbolic: Does the setting suggest the characters state of mind, her feelings andemotions, or any aspect of her character? Does it suggest the influence of the macrocosm(universe/nature) on the microcosm (locale/a particular characters life)? Does it symbolize someother thing beyond what is seen or read in the surface? In this story, or at least at this particularpoint in the story, why must there be conflict between character and setting? What dramaticeffect results?

POINT OF VIEW A story must have a plot, characters, and a setting. It must also have a storyteller: anarrative voice, real or implied, that presents the story to the reader . When we talk about narrativevoice, we talk about point of view , the method of narration that determines the position, or angle ofvision, from which the story is told. The relationship between narrator and story, teller and tale, governsthe readers access to the story and determines just how much he can know at any given moment aboutwhat is taking place. In point of view, we are concerned primarily with the question: who speaks?

2 WHO SPEAKS?Who speaks? Who is telling the story? A story can be told in the third person (she walked out into theresplendent moonlight), second person (you walked out into the resplendent moonlight), and firstperson (I walked out into the resplendent moonlight).

3 THIRD PERSON: OMNISCIENT AUTHORa. The omniscient author has total knowledge. In his capacities, he is God. He can: b. Objectively report what is happening;c. Go into the mind of any characterd. Interpret for the reader that characters appearance, speech, actions, and thoughts, even if the

character cannot do so;

e.

Move freely in time or space to give us a panoramic, telescopic, microscopic, or historical view;tell us what has happened elsewhere or in the past or what will happen in the future, andf. Provide general reflections, judgments, and truths

4 THE SHE-WOLF, Giovanni Verga(a) She was tall and slim, and though no longer young, had the strong firm breasts of the dark-hairedwoman. (e) In the village they called her The Wolf because she could never be sated. (d-e) It was a goodthing the Wolf never came to church, even at Easter or Christmas, either for mass or for confession. (d-e) Father Angiolino of the Church of Saint Mary of Jesus, a true servant of the Lord, had lost his soul on her


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account. (b-d) Poor Maricchia, a good and decent girl, cried secretly, because she was the Wolfsdaughter

5 THIRD PERSON: LIMITED OMNISCIENT AUTHORThe limited omniscient author tells you the story with only some, and not all , of the omniscient authorscapacities. Most commonly, he can see events objectively and also grants himself access to the mind ofone character, but not to the minds of others, nor to any explicit powers of judgments.

6 EVELINE, James JoyceShe sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the windowcurtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tiredOne time there used to be afield there in which they used to play every evening with other peoples childrenEverything changes.Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.

7 THIRD PERSON: OBJECTIVE AUTHORThe objective authors knowledge is restricted only to external facts that might be observed by a human being; to the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

8 HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS, Ernest HemingwayThe American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building.What should we drink? the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.Its pretty hot, the man said.Lets drink beer.Dos cervezas, the man said into the curtain.Big ones? a woman asked from the doorway.Yes. Two big ones.The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses onthe table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of the hills. They werewhite in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

9 SECOND PERSONFirst and third persons are most common in literature; the second person remains an idiosyncratic andexperimental form. But it is worth mentioning in class because several contemporary authors have beenattracted to its possibilities.

The second person is the point of view of the story only when a character is referred to as you. Only whenyou become an actor in the drama, so designated by the author, is the story or novel written in secondperson.

10 HOW TO BECOME A WRITER, Lorrie MooreFirst, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A moviestar/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haikusentences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wingleaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom.

11 FIRST PERSONA story is told in the first person when it is a character who speaks. The term narrator is sometimesloosely used to refer to any teller of a tale, but strictly speaking a story has a narrator only when it is toldin the first person by one of the characters.


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This character may be the protagonist, the I telling my story, in which case the narrator is a centralnarrator . Or, the character may be telling a story about someone else, in which case he or she is aperipheral narrator .

IRONY Generally, irony makes visible a disparity between appearance and reality. More fully andspecifically:

between what is and what seems to be between what is and what ought to be between what is and what one wishes to be between what is and what one expects to be

Incongruity is the method of irony; opposites come suddenly together so that the disparity is obvious todiscriminating readers. There are many kinds of irony; here are common ones:

2 VERBAL IRONYIn verbal irony, perhaps the most common form of irony, people say the opposite of what they mean. Forexample, if the day has been terrible, you might say, Boy, this has been a great day! The hearer knowsthat this statement is ironic because of the speakers tone of voice or bodily expressions or because thehearer is familiar with the situation and immediately sees the discrepancy between statement andactuality.

Understatement minimizes the nature of something. It was a pretty good game, one might sayafter seeing a no-hitter.

Overstatement exaggerates the nature of something. After standing in a long line, you might say,There were about a million people in that line!

Sarcasm is irony in its most bitter and destructive form.

3 SITUATIONAL IRONYIn situational irony, the situation is different from what common sense indicates it is, will be, or ought to be. It is ironic, for example, that an old man turned 98, won the lottery, died next day. Its like a death rowpardon ten minutes too late. Its like rain on your wedding day, a free ride when youve already paid, agood advice that you just didnt take.

4 DRAMATIC IRONYDramatic irony occurs when characters state something that they believe to be true but that the audienceknows to be false. An example is Oedipus Rex. Like all Greek tragedies, the Oedipus Rexdramatizes a myththat its audiences knew. Thus when Oedipus at the beginning boasts that he will personally find andpunish the killer of King Laius, the audience recognizes this boast as ironic. Oedipus does not know, butthe audience knows, that he himself is the unwitting murderer of Laius. The key is the readers

foreknowledge of coming events.

THEME How does a fiction mean? In a manner of speaking, every piece of fiction beats around the bush. Itdoes not tell you directly what it wants to say. It is unlike an essay or an advertisement which tells you


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directly and explicitly what it wants to say. In fiction, everything is simply suggested, rendered, hinted at,and it is up to us to surmise its meaning. In fact, we cant even know what its author originally intendedto say. Further, fiction possesses an excess of meaning: It can mean a lot of things at the same time. And,at other times too, it can become an existential joke and mean nothing at all. It is this that perhaps makesreading fiction sometimes difficult and frustrating.

But this should not be an unwelcome nuisance. One of the many pleasures of fiction is its rendition of anexperience. Fiction does not tell you anything directly, does not explain, does not argue, does not preach,in the way, say, an argument, a textbook, or a priest does. Fiction does not tell you anything directly because it wants you to experience things directly. Fiction brings you the full impact of experience.Fiction brings you the full experience of life. It allows you to see for yourself the fictional sights, hear foryourself the fictional sounds, move and walk around the fictional ground, and feel for yourself itsemotions. This is in the first place why we say we simply do not read a story: we experience it.

2 THEME IN FICTION Most literature textbooks discuss theme by way of a warning: theme is not the message, not the moral, ofthe story, and the meaning of a piece cannot be paraphrased. Theme contains an idea but cannot be statedas an idea. Theme suggests a morality but offers no moral. What is theme then?

First of all, theme is what a story is about. But that is not enough, because a story may be about a motherwho seduces her daughters husband or a young girl yearning to escape her father or a man who has notheard his own laughter, and those would not be the themes of those stories.

Second, a story is also about an abstraction, and if the story is significant, that abstraction may be verylarge. ONCE UPON A TIME is about society and racism, MARIA DOS PRAZERES about love,WILDERNESS TIPS betrayal and deceit, but these abstractions say little about the themes of any of thestories.

A more useful way of approaching theme, then, is to ask the question: What about what its about? Whatdoes the story say about the idea or abstraction that seems to be contained in it? What attitudes or judgments does it imply? Above all, how do the elements particular to fiction contribute to ourexperience of those ideas and attitudes in the story?

3 HOW FICTIONAL ELEMENTS CONTRIBUTE TO THEMEWhat follows is as short a story as youre likely to encounter in print. It is spare in the extreme almost,as its title suggests, an outline. Yet the author has contrived in this miniscule compass to direct everyfictional element toward the exploration of several larger themes.

A MAN TOLD ME THE STORY OF HIS LIFEGrace Paley

Vicente said : I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor with my whole heart.

I learned every bone, every organ in the body. What is it for? Why does it work?

The school said to me: Vicente, be an engineer. That would be good. You understandmathematics.

I said to the school: I want to be a doctor. I already know how the organs connect. When something goes wrong, Ill understand how to make repairs.

The school said: Vicente, you will really be an excellent engineer. You show on all thetests what a good engineer you will be. It doesnt show whether youll be a gooddoctor.

I said: Oh, I long to be a doctor. I nearly cried. I was seventeen. I said: Perhaps youreright. Youre the teacher. Youre the principal. I know Im young.


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The school said: And besides, youre going into the army.

And then I was made a cook. I prepared food for two thousand men.

Now you see me. I have a good job. I have three children. This is my wife, Consuela. Did you know I saved her life?

Look, she suffered pain. The doctor said: What is this? Are you tired? Have you had too

much company? How many children? Rest overnight, then tomorrow well make tests.The next morning I called the doctor. I said: She must be operated on immediately. Ihave looked in the book. I see where her pain is. I understand what the pressure is,

where it comes from. I see clearly the organ that is making trouble.

The doctor made a test. He said: She must be operated at once. He said to me: Vicente,how did you know?

It may be said this is a story is about the waste of Vicentes talent through the bad guidance of authority.Lets start then by saying waste and power are its central themes. How are the elements of fictionarranged in the story to present them?

The conflict is between Vicente and the figures of authority he encounters: teacher, principal, army,doctor. His desire at the beginning of the story is to become a doctor (in itself a figure of authority), andthis desire is thwarted by persons of increasing power. In the crisis action what is at stake is his wifes life.In this last battle he succeeds as a doctor, so that the denouement reveals the irony of his having beendenied in the first place.

The story seems told from the point of view of a first-person central narrator, but with an importantqualification. The title, A Man Told Me the Story of His Life, and the first two words, Vicente said ,posit a first-person peripheral narrator reporting what Vicente said. If the story was titled My Life and began I wanted to be a doctor, Vicente might be making a public appeal, a boast of how wronged hehas been. As it is, he told his story privately to the barely sketched author who now wants it known, andthis leaves Vicentes modesty intact.

The modesty is underscored by the simplicity of his speech, a rhythm and word choice that suggest

educational limitations (perhaps that English is a second language). At the same time, the simplicity helpsus identify with Vicente morally. Clearly, if he has educational limitations, it is not for want of trying toget an education. His credibility is augmented by understatement, both as youth But perhaps youreright. Youre the teacher. and as a man I have a good job. I have three children. This apparentacceptance makes us trust him at the same time as it makes us angry on his behalf.

Its consistent with the spareness of the language that we do not have an accumulation of minute or vividdetails, but the degree of specificity is nevertheless a clue to where to direct our sympathy. In the titleVicente is just A Man. As soon as he speaks he becomes an individual with a name. The school,collective and impersonal, speaks to him, but when he speaks it is to single individuals, the teacher,the principal, and when he speaks of his wife she is personalized as Consuela.

Moreover, the sensory details are so arranged that they relate to each other in ways that give themmetaphoric and symbolic significance. Notice, for example, how Vicentes desire to become a doctor

with my whole heart is immediately followed by, I learned every bone, every organ in the body.Here the factual anatomical study refers us back to the heart that is one of those organs, suggesting byimplication that Vicente is somebody who knows what a heart is. He knows how things connect.

An engineer, of course, has to know how things connect and how to make repairs. But so does a doctor,and the authority figures of the school havent the imagination to see the connection. The army, byputting him to work in a way that involves both connections and anatomical parts, takes advantage of his by-now clear ability to order and organize things he feeds two thousand men but it is too late to repairthe misdirection of such talents. We dont know what his job is now; it doesnt matter, its the wrong one.


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As a young man Vicente asked, What is it for? Why does it work?, revealing a natural fascination withthe sort of question that would be asked on an anatomy test. But no such test is given, and the tests thatare given are irrelevant. His wifes doctor will make tests, but like the school authorities he knows lessthan Vicente does. In fact one could say all the authorities of the story fail the test.

This analysis, twice as long as the story, doesnt begin to exhaust the possibilities for interpretation, andyou may disagree with any of the suggested ones. But it does indicate how fictional elements all reinforcethe themes of waste and power.

SOURCESBurroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Chua, Jonathan. Enjoying Fiction.Griffith, Kelly. Writing Essays about Literature.Sexton, Adam. Master Class in Fiction Writing: Techniques from Austen, Hemingway, and Other Greats.


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THE SHE-WOLFGiovanni Verga (Italy, 1883)

Verga, Giovanni (18401922) novelist, dramatist. Giovanni Verga wasborn in Catania, Sicily. He intended initially to pursue a career in law; heabandoned his studies to concentrate on writing novels. His early workswere romantic in tone, but his later and, subsequently, better-receivednovels beginning with The Malavogolia Family (1881) were written in theemerging Italian realist style known as verismoHis attention to detail inhis faithful depictions of late 19th-century life in both Sicily and southernItaly gained him much praise.

Although Verga began his career writing novels, he is best known for hisdramatic works. His first play was an adaptation of his short story RusticChivalry (1884). A tale of lust, love, and murder, the play, set in his nativeSicily, gained popularity when it was further adapted as an opera by the

composer Mascagni. Cavalleria Rusticana continues to be performedthroughout the world.Vergas second dramatic work, In Porters Lodge (1885), again treats the themes of love and violence.This time, he moves the setting to the city of Milan, thusexemplifying the universality of his themes.In fact, the major criticism againstVergas dramas has been that heindulges in the violent nature ofreality, focusing on murder, lust,adultery, suicide, and other crimes of passion at the expense of the poetry andhumor of Sicily. This is equally true in

several of his later plays including TheShe-Wolf (1896) and The Wolf Hunt(1902). However, it is his unsentimentaldepiction of reality that makes his playssuccessfulThe remainder of his life,during which many translations of hisworks were produced internationally, passed quietly. He died in 1922, wellremembered for his contributions to Italianrealistic literature.

he was dark-haired, tall and lean, with firm, well-rounded breasts, though she wasno longer young, and she had a pale complexion, like someone forever in the gripof malaria. The pallor was relieved by a pair of huge eyes and fresh red lips that

looked as though they would eat you.S

Gabriele Lavias 1996 filmadaptation.


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2. In the village they called her the She-Wolf because, no matter what she had, she wasnever satisfied. The women crossed themselves whenever they saw her coming, lone asa stray bitch, with the restless and wary appearance of a starving wolf. She wouldgobble up their sons and their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with those red lips ofhers, and draw them to the tail of her skirt and transfix them with those devilish eyes, asthough they were standing before the altar at St Agrippina's. Luckily the She-Wolf

herself never set foot inside the church, either at Easter or at Christmas or to hear Massor to go to confession. Father Angiolino of St Mary of Jesus, a true servant of God, hadlost his soul on her account. Maricchia, poor girl, a good and worthy soul, shed tears insecret because she was the She-Wolf's daughter and nobody would ever want to marryher, even though she too had a fine trousseau tucked away in a chest and a patch ofdecent land in the sun, like any other girl in the village.

3. Then it happened that the She-Wolf fell in love with a handsome young fellow backfrom the army, when the two of them were hay-making on the notary's farm. She'dfallen for him lock, stock and barrel, her flesh burning beneath her thick cotton bodice,and, staring into his eyes, she was overcome with the kind of thirst you wouldexperience down in the valley on a hot midsummer day. But he just kept scythingcalmly away, head down over the hay, saying "What's the matter, Pina?" In the vast

expansive fields, where all you could hear was the chirping of the crickets as they leapt,with the sun beating straight down, the She-Wolf tied up sheaf after sheaf, bundle after bundle, showing no sign of fatigue, never looking up for an instant, never putting herlips to the flask, just so long as she could be there behind Nanni, while he scythed away,asking her every so often, "What is it you want, Pina?"

4. One evening she told him, while the men, exhausted from their day's labours, werenodding off to sleep in the barn, and the dogs were filling the dark air of the countrysidewith their howling, "It's you I want! You that are beautiful as the sun, and sweet as thehoney! I want you!"

5. "It's the unmarried daughter of yours that I want," Nanni replied, laughing. The She-Wolf thrust her hands into her hair, tearing at the sides of her head without uttering aword, then strode off and stayed away from the barn. But then the olive-crushing seasoncame round in October, she set her eyes on Nanni again because he was working nextdoor to were she lived, and the creaking of the press kept her awake the whole nightlong.

6. "Pick up that sack of olives," she said to her daughter, "and come with me." Nanni waspushing the olives under the mill wheel with his shovel, and shouting "Get up there!" tothe mule to keep it moving.

7. "Do you want my daughter Maricchia?" Pina asked.8. "What are you going to give her?" Nanni replied.9. "She's got the things her father left, and she can have my house into the bargain. All you

need to leave me is the corner of the kitchen to spread out my palliasse."

10. "In that case we can talk it over at Christmas," said Nanni.11. Nanni was covered in grease sweat from the oil and the fermenting olives, and

Maricchia wanted nothing whatever to do with him, but when they got home hermother grabbed her by the hair and said to her through clenched teeth: "If you don't takehim, I'll kill you!" You would have thought the She-Wolf was ill, and people were sayingthat when the Devil grows old he goes into hiding. She never wandered about thevillage any more, she didn't stand on the doorstep flashing those crazy eyes of hers. Herson-in-law, whenever she fixed those eyes on him, began to laugh, and pulled out hisscapular to bless himself with. Maracchia stayed at home, breastfeeding the children,


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while her mother went off to the fields to work alongside the men; just like a man, infact, digging, hoeing, rounding up the cattle, and pruning the vines in all weather, in January with an icy wind from the east, or August with the sirocco from the south, whenat the end of the day the mules would be drooping their heads and the men would besitting asleep, propped against the wall with their mouths hanging open. 'In hours thatrun from dusk till dawn goes no good woman ever born,' and Pina was the only living

soul you could see out and about, picking her way over the boundless fields thatstretched into the heat haze of the far distance towards Etna, shrouded in mist, wherethe sky bore down on the horizon. "Wake up!" said the She-Wolf to Nanni, who waslying asleep in the ditch under the dust-laden hedgerow, resting his head between hisarms. "Wake up, I've brought you some wine to wet your throat."

12. Nanni opened his eyes wide, stupefied, still half-asleep, to find her standing over him,white-faced, thrusting her breast towards him and fixing him with her coal-black eyes,and he stretched out his hands, groping the air.

13. "No! No good woman's abroad from dusk till dawn!" bewailed Nanni, pressing his facedown again into the dry grass of the ditch as hard as he could, with his fingernailstearing at his hair. "Go away! Go away! Keep away from the barn!"

14. She did go away, did the She-Wolf, tying up her splendid tresses as she went, staringahead of her toward the hot fields of stubble with her coal-black eyes.15. But she kept going back to the barn, and Nanni said nothing. In fact, whenever she was

late arriving, in the hours that run from dusk till dawn, he would go and wait for her atthe top of the ashen-white, deserted lane, with beads of sweat standing out on hisforehead. And afterwards he would thrust his hands through his hair and repeat everytime, "Go away! Go away! Don't come back to the barn!"

16. Maricchia wept day and night, and stared at her mother with tear-filled eyes aflamewith jealousy, looking like a wolf-cub herself, every time she saw her returning pale andsilent from the fields.

17. "You wicked slut!" she cried. "You wicked slut of a mother!"

18. "Shut up!"19. "You thief! Thief!"20. "Shut up!"21. "'I'll tell the police sergeant, that's what I'll do!"22. "Go ahead and tell him!"23. She did go ahead, with her children clinging round her neck, totally unafraid, and

without shedding a tear. She was like a mad woman, because now she too loved thehusband they had forced upon her, all greasy and covered in sweat from the fermentingolives. The sergeant had Nanni called in, and threatened him with prison and thegallows. Nanni stood there sobbing and tearing his hair. He denied nothing, and didn't

even try to make excuses. "I was tempted!" he cried. "I was tempted by the Devil!"24. He threw himself at the sergeant's feet, pleading with him to send him to prison.25. "For pity's sake, sergeant, take me out of this hell on earth! Have me killed, send me to

prison, never let me set eyes on her again, ever!"26. But when the sergeant spoke to the She-Wolf, she replied, "No! I kept a corner of the

kitchen to sleep in, when I gave him my house as a dowry. The house is mine. I don'tintend to leave it." Shortly after that, Nanni was kicked in the chest by a mule, and wasat death's door. But the parish priest refused to bring him the bread of Christ until the


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She-Wolf left the house. The She-Wolf went away, and her son-in-law could thenprepare to take his leave of the world as a good Christian. He confessed and madecommunion with such an obvious show of repentance and contrition that all theneighbours and onlookers were in tears at the bed of the dying man. And it would have been better if he had died then and there, before the Devil returned to tempt him and totake him over body and soul as soon as he recovered.

27. "Leave me alone!" he said to the She-Wolf. "For God's sake, leave me in peace! I stareddeath in the face! The poor Maricchia is in despair! The whole village knows all about it!It's better for both of us if I don't see you . . ."

28. He would have liked to tear out his eyes so as not to see the eyes of the She-Wolf, whomade him surrender body and soul when she fixed them upon him. He no longer knewwhat to do to release himself from her spell. He paid for Masses for the souls inPurgatory, and asked the parish priest and the sergeant to help him. At Easter he wentto confession, and did penance in public by crawling on his belly for six feet over thecobblestones in front of the church. After all that, when the She-Wolf returned totorment him, he said to her:

29. "Listen! Just you stay away from the barn, because if you come looking for me again, I

swear to God I'll kill you!"30. "Go ahead and kill me," replied the She-Wolf. "It doesn't worry me. I can't live without

you."31. When he saw her coming in the distance, through the sown fields, he stopped digging at

the vine with his mattock, and went and wrenched the axe from the elm. The She-Wolfsaw him coming, pale with frenzy, the axe glittering in the sun, but she never stoppedfor a moment or lowered her gaze as she carried on walking towards him, with herhands full of bunches of red poppies, devouring him with her coal-black eyes. Ah!Nanni stammered. May your soul roast in Hell!

Trans. Alfred Alexander


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THE LOVE OF A DEADLY WOMANA Study Guide to The She-Wolf

1REVIEWING CHARACTER

Physical appearance is one of the most obvious ways by which to build a character. Thatis, physical appearance can reveal something about ones character. In this story, isphysical appearance significant to the build-up of the character of the She-Wolf?

Another means of revealing character is through what other characters say about him/her.What does this method reveal about the character of the She-Wolf?

A more important method by which character is revealed is through the charactersactions themselves. Actions speak louder than words, goes the old saying. Or: Youare what you do. What action/s committed by the She-Wolf strike you most, and whatdo these reveal about her character?

Make conclusive remarks about the She-Wolfs character. Compare/contrast her withher daughter Maricchia. How similar of different are they?

2DESIRE + CONFLICT = PLOTEvery story begins with desirethe strong, burning desire of a character. What is the concretedesire of Pina? What antagonistic force/s impede the achievement of this desire? How does theinterplay between these forces set into motion the story:

Pina falls in love with NanniOPENING

But Pina has the law on her side too: according to their

agreement shell keep part of the house, so she stays

But Nanni likes thedaughter instead

Nanni, on the brink of death, must beanointed by the priest, so Pina mustleave

Nanni gets well and TheWolf returns to seduce himagain

Nanni threatens to kill her ifshe comes again

How does the story begin? By way of an immediateaction/event? Or merely exposition/description?

So Pina forces their marriage, liveswith them, seduces Nanni again andagain; Nanni gives in

So Pina forces their

marriage, while keeping a

What is the storys climax?

If there is one, what is the storys resolution?

NOTES:

1. The inverted checkmark isa convenient way ofvisualizing a storys plot andmapping out its movement.

2. On the right side are theevents that favor theprotagonists desire. On the

left, the antagonistic forces.

3. Fill in the event in themissing boxes.

4. Encircle the activatingincident.

5. Given the diagram, what doyou think is the relationshipbetween character and plot?


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3SETTING: PLACE, TIME, AND MILIEU After this review of plot and character, our judgments of the characters are already set in place:the protagonist of the story is on the side of what we usually label as evil, and the rest are buther helpless victims (though this might be contestable in the case of Nanni). The next questionnow is: how might an analysis of the setting against which this domestic drama is set affect our

judgments so far? Close read details pertinent to setting and flesh out the settings economic, religious, and

social/cultural life:

ASPECT OFSETTING

DESCRIPTION SUPPORTING PASSAGES(Cite key words or paragraph

number)GEOGRAPHIC

ECONOMICRich or poor?Occupations? Etc.

RELIGIOUSReligion?Beliefs? Etc.

SOCIO-CULTURALMores andtraditions?Practices?Taboos? Etc.

Would you say that the setting is a relatively civilized and orderly society?

Review the following details below:

(a) staring into his eyes, she was overcome with the kind of thirst you wouldexperience down in the valley on a hot midsummer day . But he just kept scythingcalmly away, head down over the hay, saying "What's the matter, Pina?". In the vastexpansive fields, where all you could hear was the chirping of the crickets as theyleapt, with the sun beating straight down

(b) One evening she told him, while the men, exhausted from their day's labours, werenodding off to sleep in the barn, and the dogs were filling the dark air of thecountryside with their howling

(c) Maricchia stayed at home, breastfeeding the children, while her mother went off tothe fields to work alongside the men; just like a man, in fact, digging, hoeing,rounding up the cattle, and pruning the vines in all weather, in January with an icywind from the east, or August with the sirocco from the south , when at the end ofthe day the mules would be drooping their heads and the men would be sittingasleep, propped against the wall with their mouths hanging open.

(d) 'In hours that run from dusk till dawn goes no good woman ever born,' and Pinawas the only living soul you could see out and about, picking her way over the


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Documents

Fiction and Its Worlding