VOICE AND STYLE
There can be significant differences in the way authors handle third person narration. Chinua Achebe uses limited-omniscient narration in “Civil Peace” (p. 27), confining himself to revealing the thoughts of only one charac ter, his protagonist Jonathan lwegbu. Achebe is making an effort to engage our sympathies for this character. Ernest Hemingway uses objective third person narration in “Hills Like White Elephants” (p. 209), relying almost entirely on the dialogue between the two characters to tell the reader about the crisis in their relationship. The author doesn’t take sides in the battle between the two lovers over the important decision they face. Hemingway attempts to create a totally detached point of view. Setting and action appear on the page without the narrator’s comments or the characters’ reflections, heightening the emotion of the desperate struggle going on between the lines of the story.
Narration can be classified further into subcategories (for example, first and third-person stream-of-consciousness narration), but a writer’s handling of different points of view, if successful, always appears to be more flexible than the rigid categories imply. For example, Kafka begins “The Metamorphosis” (p. 241) with a septence of third-person omniscient narration, but in the sec ond sentence he changes his focus to present his protagonist Gregor Samsa’s point of view. Kafka maintains this limited-omniscient narration until Gre gor’s death. Then, to heighten our sense of Gregor’s alienation, Kafka reverts back to his more distant, objective omniscient voice to finish the story.
VOICE AND STYLE
Style is the characteristic way an author uses language to create litera ture. Style is the result of the writer’s habitual use of certain rhetorical patterns, including sentence length and complexity, word choice and placement, and punctuation. Paley’s style in “Samuel” is informal, even colloquial in her choice of language. In her story she uses mostly one-syllable words, even slang
16 The Elements of Fiction: A Storyteller’s Means
