Prose: narrative technique

Literature in English · WAEC and JAMB · SS2 and SS3

Prose questions nearly always ask how, not what: how the story is told, how a character is built, how the setting presses on the people in it. Knowing the techniques by name is what lets you answer how instead of drifting into summary.

What you need to know

Point of view is who tells the story. First person narration uses I, which gives intimacy and immediacy but limits the reader to one consciousness. Third person limited follows one character closely without using I. Third person omniscient moves freely between minds and can comment on everyone.
Each point of view has a cost, and the cost is what you analyse. A first person narrator cannot tell you what others think, so the reader must infer it, which is why first person novels can surprise us with the narrator's own blindness.
An unreliable narrator is one whose account the reader learns to distrust, because he is a child, is self-interested, is deceived, or does not understand what he reports. The technique forces the reader to read against the narrator and work out the truth.
Story is the events in the order they happened; plot is those events arranged and connected by cause. The king died and then the queen died is story; the queen died because of grief is plot. Examiners reward candidates who discuss arrangement and causation rather than sequence.
A subplot is a secondary line of action. It usually either mirrors the main plot, reinforcing its theme in a lower key, or contrasts with it, throwing the main plot into relief. Say which of the two it does; that single judgement is worth several descriptive sentences.
Characterisation is direct when the narrator tells you what someone is like, and indirect when you must deduce it from speech, action, thought, appearance, or the reactions of other characters. Indirect characterisation is the richer material for an essay because it requires interpretation.
A round character has several traits and can surprise us convincingly; a flat character is built on one or two and stays the same. A dynamic character changes over the course of the work; a static one does not. Flat and static are not criticisms, since minor characters often need to be both.
Setting is place, time and social conditions together. Treat it as a force, not a backdrop: a village under colonial administration, a city in the years after a civil war, or a household governed by strict custom each limit what the characters can choose, and that limitation is often the real subject.
A theme is a statement the work makes about life, not a one-word topic. Corruption is a topic; the claim that corruption destroys the very people it enriches is a theme. Write themes as sentences and your essays immediately stop being lists.
Flashback interrupts the present narrative to show an earlier event. Writers use it to withhold information until it will have maximum impact, to explain a character's present behaviour, or to set past against present. Always ask why the writer placed it where he did rather than telling the story in order.
Foreshadowing plants a detail early that gains significance later, such as an object, a dream, a warning or a chance remark. The pleasure for the reader is recognition on rereading, and the effect in the moment is unease.
Narrative pace is controlled by the balance of scene and summary. Dialogue and detailed scene slow time down and are used at moments of crisis; summary compresses months into a sentence and is used to cover the uneventful. A sudden switch from summary to scene is a signal that something important is about to happen.
Style and diction matter in African prose especially: proverbs, praise names, untranslated words, pidgin and the rhythms of speech do cultural work. Code-switching between English and a local language can mark distance between generations or between the village and the city, and that is a point worth making.
Irony and satire operate in prose through the gap between what the narrator reports and what the reader understands. When a narrator praises a character the reader can see is ridiculous, the writer is using irony to pass judgement without stating it.

Key terms

Point of view: The position from which a story is told, determining whose knowledge and perceptions the reader is given.
Omniscient narrator: A narrator who knows everything about all characters and events, including their inner thoughts.
Unreliable narrator: A narrator whose version of events the reader comes to distrust, so that the truth must be inferred.
Flashback: A passage that interrupts the present action to present an event from an earlier time.
Foreshadowing: The planting of hints early in a narrative about something that will happen later.
Theme: The central idea a work explores, best expressed as a statement about life rather than a single word.
Setting: The place, period and social conditions in which the action of a narrative occurs.

Worked examples

A novel is narrated by a boy of nine who reports what the adults around him do without understanding it. Identify the technique and state three effects of this choice.

Name the technique precisely: first person narration using a child narrator, which makes the narrator unreliable because of limited understanding rather than dishonesty.
Work out the first effect: the reader is placed above the narrator and must interpret events the boy only describes, which creates sustained dramatic irony in prose.
Work out the second effect: the plain, uncomprehending voice makes brutal events land harder, since there is no adult commentary to soften them.
Work out the third effect: sympathy. The reader fears for a narrator who cannot see what the reader can, so tension comes from his innocence rather than from suspense about plot.
Add the limitation, because a complete answer names the cost: the reader never gets direct access to the adults' motives, so characterisation of them must be assembled indirectly.

Answer: The technique is first person narration through a limited, unreliable child narrator. It generates dramatic irony as the reader understands more than the narrator; it increases the force of disturbing events by reporting them flatly; and it creates sympathy and tension because the narrator cannot see the danger the reader can.

Plan an answer to: examine how the writer uses setting to shape the conflict in a prose work you have studied.

Split setting into its three parts and decide which carry weight in your text: physical place, historical period, social conditions.
State the central conflict in one sentence, for example tradition against a new order, so that every paragraph can be tied to it.
Plan one paragraph for each element of setting that presses on that conflict, with a specific incident attached to each rather than general description.
For each paragraph, write the topic sentence so that it answers the question directly, for instance that the writer uses the shrinking of communal land to make the generational quarrel inevitable rather than personal.
Include one paragraph where setting works symbolically, such as a place that changes meaning over the course of the narrative.
Close by stating what would change if the work were set elsewhere, which proves the setting is structural and not decorative.

Answer: A plan with the conflict stated in one sentence, three paragraphs linking place, period and social conditions to that conflict through specific incidents, one paragraph on symbolic use of place, and a conclusion testing the setting by asking what would be lost if it were changed.

The mistake to avoid

Narrating the novel instead of analysing it. If a sentence you have written could appear in a plot summary on the back cover, it is not earning marks. The other common error is writing a one-word theme such as love or poverty and then describing scenes about it, instead of stating what the writer argues about love or poverty and proving it.

In the exam

Keep the writer in the sentence: the novelist withholds the letter until chapter nine so that the reader shares the family's ignorance. That construction makes analysis almost automatic, because it forces you to explain a choice. Refer to incidents precisely by what happens and where it falls in the book, and use short, embedded quotations rather than long ones.