a) Room: using 3rd-person focused (often called "limited omniscient") narration
| The library looked as she had pictured it. The green-shaded lamps made tranquil circles of light in the gathering dusk, a little fire flickered on the hearth, and Selden's easy-chair, which stood near it, had been pushed aside when he rose to admit her . . . She recognized the row of shelves from which he had taken down his La Bruyere, and the worn arm of the chair he had leaned against while she examined the precious volume. But then the wide September light had filled the room, making it seem a part of the outer world: now the shaded lamps and the warm hearth, detaching it from the gathering darkness of the street, gave it a sweeter touch of intimacy. |
| She could not understand why a doctor--with as much money as they made charging five dollars a day to just stick their head in the hospital door and look at you--couldn't afford a decent-sized waiting room. This one was hardly bigger than a garage. The table was cluttered with limp-looking magazines and at one end of it there was a big green glass ash tray full of cigarette butts and cotton wads with little blood spots on them. If she had had anything to do with the running of the place, that would have been emptied every so often. There were no chairs against the wall at the head of the room. It had a rectangular-shaped panel in it that permitted a view of the office where the nurse came and went and the secretary listened to the radio. A plastic fern in a gold pot sat in the opening and trailed its fronds down almost to the floor. The radio was softly playing gospel music. |
b) Landscape: using 1st person (reliable) narration
| It was already dark by the time I glided up to the Mants' dock. Even by day the river was quiet, most of the summer people preferring Sunapee or one of the other nearby lakes, and at night it was a solitude difficult to believe, a corridor of hidden life that ran between banks like a tunnel. Even the stars were part of it. They weren't as sharp anywhere else; they seemed to have chosen the river as a guide on their slow wheel toward morning, and in the course of the summer's fishing, I had learned all their names. |
| Where Glen Baxter took us was out onto the high flat prairie that was disked for wheat and had high, high mountains out to the east, with lower heartbreak hills in between. It was, I remember, a day for blues in the sky, and down in the distance we could see the small town of Floweree and the state highway running past it toward Fort Benton and the high line. We drove out on top of the prairie on a muddy dirt road fenced on both sides, until we had gone about three miles, which is where Glen stopped. |
| Katie wasn't like other people: Danner wasn't sure why. Katie was thin and willowy and she moved quietly; she wore her dark blond hair in the same pageboy she'd worn in her high school graduation picture, and she wore no makeup. Her face was so fair that the freckles on her cheeks each looked singular and precise, as though someone had painted them on. Her hazel eyes had tiny lines beneath them and in the creases, as if she had to strain slightly to see. Her sweater and sketchbook lay in the empty swing; Danner touched the sweater, a red woolen one. Just touching it made Danner feel too warm, but Katie carried a sweater everywhere, even in the middle of summer. |
| She was a pale girl, not slim, for her frame was generous, but her figure could pass as good. Her straight yellow hair was parted on one side in a way that struck him as gauche. He did not notice what she wore. But her eyes were all right, he remembered: large, and solidly green, square-looking because of some trick of the flesh at their corners. Emeraldlike eyes in the face of a schoolgirl, or young schoolmistress who was watching her lover flirt and would later sulk about it. Her name sometimes cropped up in the papers. She was a stage decorator, a designer, something on those lines. |
| It was hard to imagine George letting work take over. Work, like other things, seemed hardly to touch him. He rarely talked about it. He treated it as something unconnected to his real life, something apart from him. One of the things Bonnie had liked about George when she first met him was exactly that: he was not overly concerned with his career. It made Bonnie feel all the more important to him. He was, simply, a person. |
b) Mistrustful orientation: using 1st-person (unreliable) narration
| There's Ricky down in the washed river gravel of my driveway. I had my yardman out raking it before 7 a. m.--the driveway. It looks nearly perfect. Ricky also looks nearly perfect down there. He looks extremely got up and cleaned up, as though he had been carefully raked over and smoothed out. He is wearing a three-piece linen suit, which my other son, you may be sure, wouldn't be seen wearing on any occasion. And he has on an expensive striped shirt, open at the collar. No tie, of course. His thick head of hair, parted and slicked down, is just the same tan color as the gravel. Hair and gravel seem equally clean and in order. The fact is, Ricky looks this morning as though he belongs nowhere else in the world but out there in that smooth spread of washed river gravel (which will be mussed up again before noon, of course--I'm resigned to it), looks as though he feels perfectly at home in that driveway of mine that was so expensive to install and that requires so much upkeep. |
| My wife is a big woman. She is one of the five daughters of Colonel Boysen, a Georgia politician, who was a friend of Calvin Coolidge. He went to the White House seven times, and my wife has a heart-shaped pillow embroidered with the word LOVE that was either the work of Mrs. Coolidge or was at one time in her possession. My wife and I are terribly unhappy together, but we have three beautiful children, and we try to keep things going. I do what I have to do, like everyone else, and one of the things I have to do is serve my wife breakfast in bed. |
| Then late one night as he was undressing for bed she had tapped at his door, timidly. She wanted to relight her candle at his for hers had been blown out by a gust. It was her bath night. She wore a loose open combing-jacket of printed flannel. Her white instep shone in the opening of her furry slippers and the blood glowed warmly behind her perfumed skin. From her hands and wrists too as she lit and steadied her candle a faint perfume arose. |
| She settled down in the seat and opened the book.
Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine; Oh, God, this is good, she thought. She sat up straighter, wanting to kiss the book. Oh, God, this is really good. She turned the book over to look at the picture of the author. It was a photograph of a small bright face in full profile staring off into the mysterious brightly lit world of a poet's life. |
b) Not so subtle: using 1st-person (reliable or unreliable; the reader should be able to tell the difference)
| The gong rang and we pushed him out. He went out slow. Walcott came right out after him. Jack put the left in his face and Walcott took it, came in under it and started working on Jack's body. Jack tried to tie him up and it was just like trying to hold on to a buzz-saw. Jack broke away from it and missed with the right. Walcott clipped him with a left-hook and Jack went down. He went down on his hands and knees and looked at us. The referee started counting. Jack was watching us and shaking his head. At eight John motioned to him. You couldn't hear on account of the crowd. Jack got up. The referee had been holding Walcott back with one arm while he counted. |
| She look at him like he's some kind of a servant. So he moves into the room and takes hold of her legs and starts dragging her. Owen, he stands up and says, stop dragging her like that, but Mr. Manny, he keeps on doing it. Miss Crystal, she's too surprised to do a thing. All I'm thinking about is the dress. Brussels lace. He's going to ruin the dress. |
| "Somebody just called here," she said. She twisted the telephone cord. "He said it was about Scotty," she cried. "Scotty's fine," Howard told her. "I mean he's still sleeping. There's been no change. The nurse has been in twice since you've been gone. A nurse or else a doctor. He's all right." "This man called. He said it was about Scotty," she told him. "Honey, you rest for a little while, you need the rest. It must be that same caller I had. Just forget it. Come back down here after you've rested. Then we'll have breakfast or something." "Breakfast," she said. "I don't want any breakfast." "You know what I mean," he said. "Juice, something. I don't know. I don't know anything, Ann. Jesus, I'm not hungry, either. Ann, it's hard to talk now. I'm standing here at the desk. Dr. Francis is coming again at eight o'clock this morning. He's going to have something to tell us then, something more definite. That's what one of the nurses said. She didn't know any more than that. Ann? Honey, maybe we'll know something more then. At eight o'clock. Come back here before eight. Meanwhile, I'm right here and Scotty's all right. He's still the same," he added. |
Writers quoted: Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, Flannery O'Connor, "Revelation"; W. D. Weatherell, "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant"; Richard Ford, "Communist"; Jayne Anne Phillips, Machine Dreams; Doris Lessing, "One off the Short List"; Susan Minot, "While It Lasts"; Peter Taylor, "The Gift of the Prodigal"; John Cheever, "The Chimera"; James Joyce, "The Boarding House"; Ellen Gilchrist, "Music"; Ernest Hemingway, "Fifty Grand"; Ellen Gilchrist, "Miss Crystal's Maid Name Traceleen, She's Talking, She's Telling Everything She Knows"; Raymond Carver, "A Small, Good Thing"