Writing Help 129 | - ☆ Freelance Writer
Apr 05, 2013 | #1
Terms You Need for Writing about the Novel
I have found that the more complex a given term sounds, the more difficult it is for students to understand what it means. Certain terms receive a reputation for being extremely difficult, and thus become more difficult to learn as a result. This self-fulfilling prophecy is nowhere more apparent than in the example, to leave literary studies for a moment, of Einstein's theory of relativity. On a conceptual level, it could be explained to and comprehended by the average high-school student, but it has gained such a reputation for being unattainable by all but the most intelligent minds that many do not even attempt to learn about it, feeling that it is simply out of reach.
Now, I will not claim that free indirect discourse has achieved the same level of prominence and dread that relativity has, but in literary circles, free indirect discourse, also known as free indirect style (and hereafter known as FID), is the bane of young college scholars and the reddest part of most essays and exams. I believe this is because students first have it explained to them in a cursory manner, and are then expected to understand and apply it without really understanding what it is. As a result, they constantly get it wrong, and are thus convinced that the term is just too difficult. I hope this little article goes some way toward ameliorating this situation.
FID is a narrative method that removes the clear delineation between the thoughts and reflections of the narrator, and those of a given character, resulting in an unstable point of view and an unseated perspective. When FID is employed, we are not sure whose views we are hearing, and so we get a conflation of the narrator and a character that is often unsettling. The following example illustrates the principle in action:
Billy usually sat still and tried to look tiny when the Sparks brothers approached him, but this time there was no damned way those puffed-up blow-hards were going to get away with terrorizing the whole restaurant. Who did they think they were, anyway, that they could just march in here and act like they owned the place? Billy was sick of it, and his clenched fist would make sure those cocky rich kids would never take their invulnerability for granted again.
As you can see, the point of view here is certainly third-person, and since we are immersed in Billy's thoughts, it looks limited as well. The first part of sentence one fits the third-person limited perspective well, since the person, tone, and diction are all formal and sufficiently distant. The second half of senence one departs from the diction and tone of the first, however, as we move from neutral observation and report to much stronger language. Damned, puffed-up, blow-hards, and even terrorizing are far from neutral or objective terms, and it is unusual to see a third-person narrator using this kind of informal language.
Sentence two is even more extreme in its condemnation of the Sparks, and is phrased in the form of an angry rhetorical question. Perhaps the most telling word of all in this sentence is here, since a third-person narrator who is not a character would properly use there instead. This sentence is what FID is all about. The sentence seems to be emanating directly from Billy, even though it is not in quotation marks. It sounds like something he is thinking and would probably like to say, even though the narrator is its official source. His perspective and that of the narrator have been combined, and this halfway point between traditional narration and stream of consciousness is FID.
Free Indirect Discourse
I have found that the more complex a given term sounds, the more difficult it is for students to understand what it means. Certain terms receive a reputation for being extremely difficult, and thus become more difficult to learn as a result. This self-fulfilling prophecy is nowhere more apparent than in the example, to leave literary studies for a moment, of Einstein's theory of relativity. On a conceptual level, it could be explained to and comprehended by the average high-school student, but it has gained such a reputation for being unattainable by all but the most intelligent minds that many do not even attempt to learn about it, feeling that it is simply out of reach.
Now, I will not claim that free indirect discourse has achieved the same level of prominence and dread that relativity has, but in literary circles, free indirect discourse, also known as free indirect style (and hereafter known as FID), is the bane of young college scholars and the reddest part of most essays and exams. I believe this is because students first have it explained to them in a cursory manner, and are then expected to understand and apply it without really understanding what it is. As a result, they constantly get it wrong, and are thus convinced that the term is just too difficult. I hope this little article goes some way toward ameliorating this situation.FID is a narrative method that removes the clear delineation between the thoughts and reflections of the narrator, and those of a given character, resulting in an unstable point of view and an unseated perspective. When FID is employed, we are not sure whose views we are hearing, and so we get a conflation of the narrator and a character that is often unsettling. The following example illustrates the principle in action:
Billy usually sat still and tried to look tiny when the Sparks brothers approached him, but this time there was no damned way those puffed-up blow-hards were going to get away with terrorizing the whole restaurant. Who did they think they were, anyway, that they could just march in here and act like they owned the place? Billy was sick of it, and his clenched fist would make sure those cocky rich kids would never take their invulnerability for granted again.
As you can see, the point of view here is certainly third-person, and since we are immersed in Billy's thoughts, it looks limited as well. The first part of sentence one fits the third-person limited perspective well, since the person, tone, and diction are all formal and sufficiently distant. The second half of senence one departs from the diction and tone of the first, however, as we move from neutral observation and report to much stronger language. Damned, puffed-up, blow-hards, and even terrorizing are far from neutral or objective terms, and it is unusual to see a third-person narrator using this kind of informal language.
Sentence two is even more extreme in its condemnation of the Sparks, and is phrased in the form of an angry rhetorical question. Perhaps the most telling word of all in this sentence is here, since a third-person narrator who is not a character would properly use there instead. This sentence is what FID is all about. The sentence seems to be emanating directly from Billy, even though it is not in quotation marks. It sounds like something he is thinking and would probably like to say, even though the narrator is its official source. His perspective and that of the narrator have been combined, and this halfway point between traditional narration and stream of consciousness is FID.