Annie Ernaux Writing Styles in Shame

This Study Guide consists of approximately 37 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Shame.
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Annie Ernaux Writing Styles in Shame

This Study Guide consists of approximately 37 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Shame.
This section contains 656 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Shame Study Guide

Point of View

Shame is written in the first-person point of view, which is a natural form for the memoir. The narrator is an adult, looking back to her childhood and attempting to understand through a re-creation of the summer of 1952 who she was and what she was feeling. Although Ernaux uses a first-person narrator, she insists that she is retelling the events with the cold objectivity of a reporter. She accomplishes this by offering no analysis of her feelings or the events that stirred them. Rather, she describes things, makes lists of things, and breaks down things into their most elementary parts. It is as if she is writing what she sees, not what she feels.

Journal Writing

Shame is written as if Ernaux were keeping a journal. It is a form of writing that Ernaux often uses, whether she is writing fiction or nonfiction. In this way...

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This section contains 656 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Shame Study Guide
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Shame from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.