Aspects of Narritive - Reconnections

In this lesson we mainly focused on the form of the the novel, paying close attention to how the whole story is structured in a fragmented manner.
So we first looked at the principle stages through time periods set in the book from beginning to end.

• 2001, California/America - at the first chapter of the book we we see Amir to be reflective and critical to his past because of his guilt. A lack of information is brought up in this chapter, bringing the reader to question the book.


• 1960-1975, Kabul/Afghanistan - we are brought to Amir's retrospective childhood conveyed in a much more positive and descriptive way. As we reach the 1975 tension is built until we reach a significant climax in the story.


• 1981, Afghanistan - we have now jumped a few years and there is still and some tension due to the changes that have taken place in Afghanistan. However we do see some relief from Amir as he starts to leave his home.


• 1980+, America/California - all tension has calmed down and relaxes as we start to see some links to place changing the state of the narration eg. America represents a comfortable life and Amir's way to bury the past.


• 2001-2002, America/Afghanistan - as Amir is called back to Afghanistan to confront his past we see the narration pick up pace again bringing more tension and negative imagery, in contrast to America.

What we see from this is that Amir's narrative chronology is broken parts of his memory in different time frames. This is called Fragmentation.

We didn't only see this in the form of the story but we would also see this in the in the structure. In chapters like seven we would see the intrusion of memories that come flooding back at parts of the story; these memories are conditioned by Amir's adult perspective. In addition it also splits and interrupts the narrative which (like in chapters seven) can cause suspense and tension as it cuts us from the action momentarily.

The fragmentation of the story would show:

• The characterisation of Amir


• The impact of time passing


• The contrast of time periods


• The importance of his past

The common ways these fragmentation's are conveyed through:

• Italicised change of writing when referring to a memories or time jumps.


• Split the narrative instead of carrying on with story.


• Alternating tones, tending to contrast to the built narrative eg. would switch from tense dark imagery to scenes that are relaxed with positive imagery.

Eddie.