I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something of the renowned curator about this sentence. It’s probably the rather awkward adverbial “in a friendly way” – surely Ms. Meyer could have thought of a more fitting expression here. After all, she’s about to launch her readers (all girls) into a breathless vampire adventure, so a little more colourful prose might have been called for.
That’s not why I am posting, though. Right now, I am in the once-in-a-lifetime situation of teaching English to just six 11th-grade girls, so I thought it would be a brilliant idea to read Twilight. We started today and had a discussion about whether first-person narrators ever died, or, whether, on reading an opening sentence like this:
I’d never given much thought to how I would die – though I’d had reason enough in the last few months – but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.*
the reader automatically thinks “Who are you trying to fool, lady? You are a first-person narrator, you don’t get to die anyway.”
Thus my appeal to my gentle readers: if you happen to know of a novel in which the first-person narrator dies, preferably in mid-sentence, please do let me know.
* too bad the girls are actually quite good at conditionals. There goes a magic teaching opportunity.
I could offer a book where the first-person narrator dies at the very end, and rather unexpectedly at that. In mid-sentence, too, but this doesn’t count as it’s really the end of the story. I can’t give you the name here, it would spoil the book.
Come to think of it, there are probably quite a few stories where the first-person narrator dies at the end. I’d start with H.P. Lovecraft. Famous last words and such: “I’ll just see where that funny noise outside the window is coming from before I finish this letter.”
I can think of books where the first-person narrator appears only in mid-book. That’s unusual too. There probably are science fiction or fantasy novels where characters die (maybe in mid-sentence) and are reborn, possibly in another body and century. Variations on Groundhog Day? Do you want me to look into it?
I think I remember a ghost story by Lord Dunsany, where the first-person narrator in the tale is in a hopeless situation – and actually does die. Turns out the first-person narrator is a ghost.
Still, they all seem imperfect examples. Now, a first person narrator being born in mid-sentence…
Comment by Herr Rau — April 9, 2008 @ 9:28 pm |
>I could offer a book where the first-person narrator dies at the very end, and rather unexpectedly at that. In mid-sentence, too, but this doesn’t count as it’s really the end of the story. I can’t give you the name here, it would spoil the book.
Oh, that’s too mean. Send me an e-mail, at the very least. Pretty please!
The narrator turning out to be a ghost, or the “found document” stories don’t count, of course. Doesn’t The Handmaid’s Tale end in mid-sentence, too? But then you get all the happy academics at the conference.
Comment by mrs. h. — April 9, 2008 @ 9:39 pm |
[...] haben Vokabeln auf Quizlet gesammelt, über Erzählperspektive gesprochen (spekulative Frage dazu hier), Szenen aus einer anderen Perspektive geschrieben (sehr beliebt) und vor allem gelesen, gelesen [...]
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