English

SCHOOL OF ENGLISH, FILM, THEATRE & MEDIA STUDIES

ENGL 117 HOW TO READ STORIES 2011

Third Critical Exercise – Voice and Focalization (15%)

Due: Friday 18th May (5pm) Word limit: 600 words

Write a brief commentary on each of the following three extracts from Atonement.

Begin each commentary by identifying through whose perspective each passage is focalized. Then identify who is speaking or thinking in each passage, and the techniques that have been used to represent their speech and/or thought.

You should re-read Abbott chapter six to re-familiarise yourself with the critical terms for voice and focalization.

Example A

In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. There was nothing personal about it, for he would have hated anyone who came in. There were drinks in the drawing room or on the terrace, and that was where Briony was supposed to be – with her mother, and the brother she adored, and the little cousins. There was no good reason to why she should be in the library, except to find him and deny him what was his. (p. 139)

Example B

She hesitated. ‘Tallis.’

‘Tallis. That’s very pretty.’ The way he pronounced it, it was.

He looked away from her face and gazed at the ward, turning his head slowly, quietly amazed. Then he closed his eyes and began to ramble, speaking softly under his breath. Her vocabulary was not good enough to follow him easily. She caught, ‘You count them slowly in your hand, on your fingers…my mother’s scarf…you choose the colour and you have to live with it.’

He fell silent for some minutes. His hand tightened its grip on hers. When he spoke again, his eyes were still closed. (p. 306)

Example C

[H]ow can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to,...