Analyzing Fiction I. 【T1】______【T1】______ — Arrangement of events to a)【T2】_____【T2】______ b)Raise the level of generality c)【T3

Analyzing Fiction
Good morning, everyone. Today, we will continue our discussion about fiction, particularly how to analyze a fiction. The analysis of fiction has many similarities to the analysis of poetry. As a rule a work of fiction is a narrative, with characters, with a setting, told by a narrator, with some claim to represent "the world" in some fashion. The topics in this lecture are plot, character, setting, the narrator, figurative language, the way reality is represented, and the world-view.
1.[1]Plot. As a narrative a work of fiction has a certain arrangement of events which are taken to have a relation to one another.[2]This arrangement of events to some end—for instance to create significance, raise the level of generality,[3]extend or complicate the meaning—is known as "plot". Narrative is integral to human experience; we use it constantly to make sense out of our experience, to remember and relate events and significance, and to establish the basic patterns of behaviour of our lives.[4]If there is no apparent relation of events in a story, our options are either to declare it to be poorly written or to assume that the lack of relation is thematic, meaning to represent the chaotic nature of human experience, a failure in a character’s experience or personality, or the lack of meaningful order in the universe. In order to establish significance in narrative, there will often be coincidence, parallel or contrasting episodes, repetitions of various sorts, including the repetition of challenges, crises, episodes, symbols, motifs. The relationship of events in order to create significance is known as the plot.
2. Character. Characters in a work of fiction are generally designed to open up or explore certain aspects of human experience.[5]Characters often depict particular traits of human nature; they may represent only one or two traits—a greedy old man who has forgotten how to care about others, for instance, or they may represent very complex conflicts, values and emotions. Usually there will be contrasting or parallel characters, and usually there will be significance to the selection of kinds of characters and to their relation to each other. As in the use of setting, in fact in almost any representation in art, the significance of a character can vary from the particular, the dramatization of a unique individual, to the most general and symbolic, for instance the representation of a "Christ figure".
3. Setting. Narrative requires a setting; this as in poetry may vary from the concrete to the general.[6]Often setting will have particular culturally coded significance—a sea-shore has a significance for us different from that of a dirty street corner, for instance, and different situations and significances can be constructed through its use.[7]Settings, like characters, can be used in contrasting and comparative ways to add significance, and can be repeated with variations, and so forth.
4. The Narrator. A narration requires a narrator, someone who tells the story. This person or persons will see things from a certain perspective, or point of view, in terms of their relation to the events and in terms of their attitudes towards the events and characters. A narrator may be external, outside the story, telling it with an ostensibly objective and omniscient voice;[9]or a narrator may be a character(or characters)within the story, telling the story in the first person. First-person characters may be reliable, telling the truth, seeing things right, or they may be unreliable, lacking perspective or self-knowledge.[10]If a narration by an omniscient external narrator carries us into the thoughts of a character in the story, that character is known as a reflector character. Such a character does not know he or she is a character, and is unaware of the narration or the narrator.[8]An omniscient, external narrator may achieve the narrative by telling or by showing, and he may keep the reader in a relation of suspense to the story or in a relation of irony. In any case, who tells the story, from what perspective, with what sense of distance or closeness, with what possibilities of knowledge, and with what interest, are key issues in the making of meaning in narrative.
5. Figurative language. As in poetry, there will be figurative language; as in drama,[11]this language tends to be used to characterize the sensibility and understanding of characters as well as to establish thematic and tonal continuities and significance.
6. Representation of reality. Fiction generally claims to represent "reality" in some way. However, because any narrative is presented through the symbols and codes of human meaning and communication systems, fiction cannot represent reality directly, and different narratives and forms of narrative represent different aspects of reality, and represent reality in different ways.[12]A narrative might be very concrete and adhere closely to time and place, representing every-day events; on the other hand[13]it may for instance represent psychological or moral or spiritual aspects through symbols, characters used representatively or symbolically, improbable events, and other devices.
7. World-view. As narrative represents experience in some way and as it uses cultural codes and language to do so,[14]it inevitably must be read for its structure of values, for its understanding of the world, or world-view, and for its ideological assumptions, what is assumed to be natural and proper. Every narrative communication makes claims, often implicitly, about the nature of the world as the narrator and his or her cultural traditions understand it to be. "Literature" tends to use cultural codes and to use the structuring devices of narrative with a high degree of intentionality in order to offer a complex understanding of the world. The astute reader of fiction will be aware of the shape of the world that the fiction projects, the structure of values that underlie the fiction. He will also be aware of the distances and similarities between the world of the fiction and the world that the reader inhabits;[15]and will be aware of the significances of the selections and exclusions of the narrative in representing human experience.
OK. I have outlined seven aspects of analyzing a fiction. I am sure you will have a better understanding as to how to analyze a fiction. Next time, we shall talk about how to analyze a poem.