See: Elements of Fiction, Characterization Tools and Satire, Plot, Structure, and Suspense, and Narrative Voice and Perspective
Prose Essay Assignment: See link
Characterization: Analyze or "Pass Judgment" on a Character
To a large extent, the prose passages ask you to analyze a character:
- Sometimes, this is the exposition of story, where you are first introduced to the character, his or her personal strengths and weaknesses, and his or her challenge. (See Emma, or The Shipping News) Here, you analyze the positive and negative aspects of a character as his or her journey begins.
- Sometimes, the character is experiencing an arc, or step in the plot where he or she is challenged with making a particular choice, or seeing things in a different way. (See A White Heron, To the Lighthouse, The Crossing) Here, you analyze the changes the character experiences.
- Sometimes, characters encounter each other, and you are asked to critically assess their relationships.(See The Pupil, To the Lighthouse, Middlemarch)
In all of these cases, you can make judgments about characters by examining what they say, what they think, what they do, how they look, what other characters say or think about them, and how other characters treat them. When you are considering literary tools, these are tools of character analysis.
Don't hesitate to make bold, direct, judgmental statements about a character's persona, and then prove it with text, including what happens and what actions they take, in the passage. Realistic character, like real people, will have strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes within a passage, exhibit both.
Be wary of characters who are satirical, or stereotypical -- they usually have only one side. (See Hard Times.)
In the end, how do these characters represent human nature, and human challenges, as a whole?
Setting: The Time, The Place
Sometime, the prose passages also ask you to consider other literary devices, such as setting, plot and plot structure, or perspective. Often, the setting acts as a backdrop to the drama, and includes symbolic elements that intensify thematic elements of what is happening to the character, such as in the passage we read from The Crossing or The Street. Setting also includes time and place, and this was an important element to understanding Estrella's circumstances in Under the Feet of Jesus. Both time, place, and location -- as well as perspective and other literary devices -- factor in the analysis of the passage from The Rainbow, Kiss of the Fur Queen, and A White Heron.
Plot and Suspense: How Actions Unfold
Plot includes suspense, and author's can shape the level of suspense in many ways, even in a short text. Consider the passage from Kiss of the Fur Queen or A White Heron. How do the writers use syntax (sentence structure), punctuation, description of action, imagery, and shifting back and forth in perspective -- to create excitement in the moment? Which passage seems to speed up the action? Which passage stretches out the danger? How do the authors achieve this?
Perspective: Attitude of the Narration
Perspective means point-of-view, and this is not only narrative voice, although it includes narrative voice. Note the passage Cherry Bomb, which is told from a future perspective of the character, much the way The Great Gatsby, or To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated. This particular story frame is a plot device as well, but the shift in perspective is important because effectively, you are in a place to look back and judge the actions of the younger narrator from a place of experience. While the naive character in the story might be taking things in stride, the older narrator allows you to cast judgement on the events and actions of the past.
Also, check out the fascinating story, Birthday Party. Noting the obvious bias of the narrator, could you effectively argue from the husband's perspective? This story is a neat illustration of how a narrator's bias might create unreliable observations. A story told from a third person perspective, is NOT necessarily omniscient, nor impartial! And, what would the unnamed listener in this story be thinking?
Narrative Voice: Who is Speaking?
Sometimes stories are first person accounts. In those cases, you always need to question the validity of the narrator, such as Holden in The Catcher in the Rye. Or, for that matter, Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, the various narrators of Frankenstein, and the very curious arrangement of Mr. Lockwood retelling Nelly Dean's story in Wuthering Heights. Note, as a literary device, first person and third person limited offer us insight into a character's mindset, and allow us to get close to him or her in a human way. This allows insight into the weaknesses or strengths a character has, and gives us compassion and psychological understanding for what happens. (See the interesting story, Birthday Party. Is this a reliable narrator?)
In the 20th century, often the narrator is voiced from a third person omniscient and impartial perspective, basically like a drone observing humans at play. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is a good example.
Sometimes, especially in 18th and 19th century literature, the supposedly-omniscient narrator intrudes (intrusive narrative voice), and offers a perspective on the scene as a whole, which is shaped by this invisible narrator's perspective. (See Shirley)
Many times, this third person perspective is credited with wisdom, insight, indeed, omniscience -- but not always. In fact, in the social realism novels of the late-Romantic, or Victorian Era, the third person omniscient narrator is decidedly subjective, and biased. Consider Victor Hugo, Emil Zola, and of course, Charles Dickens.
Other Literary Devices
Imagery, symbolism, figurative language, syntax, tone, diction and even meter can play a strong role in prose narrative fiction, as well as in poetry. Be wary of satirical touches such as hyperbole, understatement, and irony, and elements of comedy, as in the passage from Dickens' Hard Times. A lot of writers use a lot of literary flourishes for prose, and you could see this in passages from The Shipping News, and The Crossing, for example, as well as in Under the Feet of Jesus.
