This section contains 937 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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Narratological Categories in Nabokov's Short Story "Beneficence"
Summary: Essay describes the narrative point of view and the concept of narrative distance in Nabokov's short story "Beneficence". Also touches upon the role of narrator reliability and to what extent a reader either more fully belives the story being told or does not, based on the narrative style.
In Nabokov's short story "Beneficence" ("The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov", New York: Vintage 1997, p. 74-78), two kinds of point of view can be discovered: the predominant limited first-person point of view and, in several passages, also a second-person point of view employed always when the narrator refers to his lover and serving to point out their (former) close relationship. As the narrator is a person whose attitudes, feelings, emotions and recognitions influence the way the story is told, he is dramatised and, in the first part of the story (until p. 75, 5th paragraph), also a narrator-agent, while in the remaining part he has no influence on the action any more and is thus only an observer.
The narrator in "Beneficence" is not necessarily reliable, for some of his statements and recognitions are not completely true or too idealistic.
The conception of distance also plays an important role in...
This section contains 937 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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