THE NOVEL

Writers have pushed traditional literary boundaries so that the characteristics of many types of literature overlap, but
looking at certain differences between novels and other literary forms can give readers a basic guide to the novel’s
distinctive traits.

Like the short story, the novel tells a story, but unlike the short story, it presents more than an episode. In a novel, the
writer has the freedom to develop plot, characters, and theme slowly. The novelist can also surround the main plot with
subplots that flesh out the tale. Unlike short stories, most novels have numerous shifts in time, place, and focus of
interest.

Like epic poetry, the novel may celebrate grand designs or great events, but unlike epic poetry it also may pay
attention to details of everyday life, such as people's daily tasks and social obligations. For example, the epic the Iliad
by ancient Greek poet Homer depicts the Trojan War in grand terms but does not comment on the experience of the
common soldiers. By contrast, in his novel Madame Bovary (1857), French writer Gustave Flaubert shows the main
character shopping and worrying about household expenses.

Like a playwright, a novelist tells a story, but a novelist has more freedom than a playwright to portray events outside
the framework of the immediate story, such as historical events that happen at the same time as the story. The
playwright is more limited in this way because description in dramas is generally conveyed through dialogue between
characters. In a play, rarely does a narrator speak directly to the audience, as the narrator of a novel can. Novelists can
also make smoother changes in time and place than can playwrights, who must write their works so that they can be
performed on stage.

Like the people in the Bible, the novel’s characters may search for God and have their own particular dreams and
ideals, but unlike many biblical characters, the characters in novels are generally presented as people without spiritual
missions and destinies. For example, in the Bible, the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah call on the Hebrew people to live
more righteously. By contrast, although the character Levin in Anna Karenina (1875-1877) by Russian novelist Leo
Tolstoy is obsessed with the moral life, he is also a farmer, thinker, husband, and society man who must attend to the
needs of everyday life.

Unlike writers of allegories or parables, novelists do not use characters solely as emblems. The biblical parable of the
prodigal son, which tells of a man who forgives his son for the errors of his ways, explores ideas of Christian
forgiveness but does not investigate the characters of the family members in great detail. By contrast, the works of
Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which also explore themes of forgiveness, demonstrate the anguish of guilt-ridden
men and women. In Dostoyevsky’s Prestuplanie i nakazanie (1866; Crime and Punishment) a man commits a murder
and escapes punishment from authorities. However, he still suffers because his own conscience is burdened by the
knowledge of the wrong he has done.

Finally, the novel may adapt patterns of mythology, but the novelist does not simply retell the myth. Instead, the
novelist structures the story around the underlying themes of the myth while featuring unique characters and settings.
In Ulysses (1922) by Irish writer James Joyce, the experiences of the character Leopold Bloom have some similarity to
those of the hero Odysseus in the Odyssey by ancient Greek poet Homer. But Bloom’s experiences take place entirely
within his world—the Ireland of his time. Joyce thus uses the ancient material of Odysseus’s mythical experiences to
create a new interpretation of contemporary experience.

A Plot

The plot of a novel is the narrative and thematic development of the story—that is, what happens and what these
events mean. English novelist E. M. Forster, author of works such as A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End
(1910), referred to the plot as a “narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.” By this statement he meant that
plot is a series of events that depend on one another, not a sequence of unrelated episodes.

There are several types of plots. An episodic plot features distinct episodes that are related to one another but that can
also be read individually, almost as stories by themselves. Most novels involve more complex plots, in which the story
builds on itself so that each episode evolves out of a previous one and produces another one. Some plots are based
less on the physical action of events than on the emotional reactions of characters and their efforts to communicate
their feelings to others. And some novelists experiment with plot, interrupting the main story with subplots, moving back
and forth in time, or merging fact with fiction.

A1
Episodic Plots

Many of the earliest novels had episodic plots. One of the first was Lazarillo de Tormes (1554; Lazaro of Tormes), an
anonymous Spanish work that follows the adventures of a rogue. This novel and others with rogues as the main
characters are called picaresque novels.

Another Spanish novel with an episodic plot became one of the world’s best-known literary works. Don Quixote (Part I,
1605; Part II, 1615) by Miguel de Cervantes follows the travels of a Spanish nobleman who encounters adventures and
misfortunes after he strikes out to combat the world’s injustices. Although the novel has a plot, it is structured so that if
the reader skips an episode, he or she can still follow Don Quixote’s progress with little loss of understanding.

American writer Mark Twain used an episodic plot in his classic novel Huckleberry Finn (1884), about Huck Finn, a boy
who runs away from his hometown and voyages down the Mississippi River on a raft with an escaped slave named
Jim. The episodes in Huckleberry Finn revolve around the points when Huck and Jim leave their raft and meet people
in the towns and villages that border the river. In between these episodes, they retreat to their raft and contemplate
their experiences as they drift south on the water.

A2
Complex Plots

Many novels have more complex plots that follow more than one major character or have more than one major story
line. A classic example of a novel with a complex plot is Voina i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace) by Russian writer Leo
Tolstoy. This book is concerned with the histories of five families from 1805 to 1814 and with the Russian military
campaign against the invading French army led by Napoleon I. The book features aristocrats and peasants, officers
and common soldiers, diplomats and courtiers, town life and country life, flirtations, galas, hunting, and harshly realistic
scenes of clashing armies.

The subject matter that novels with complex plot can cover is almost limitless. Some novels, like War and Peace, cover
all segments of society. Others, such as Pride and Prejudice (1813) by English author Jane Austen, cover narrower
subject matter. Austen’s novel is set in roughly the same time period as War and Peace. However, Pride and Prejudice
focuses on one upper-class family, the Bennets, and in particular on the Bennet daughters’ search for husbands.

Subject matter continues to vary widely in contemporary novels. One contemporary example of a complex plot is the
science-fiction novel Neuromancer (1984) by Canadian author William Gibson. This novel describes a world dominated
by technology in which the main characters struggle against a dehumanizing social system. A very different type of
novel is The God of Small Things (1997) by Indian author Arundhati Roy. This dreamlike saga set in the Indian state of
Kerala chronicles the downfall of a well-to-do family. Despite significant differences in genre and subject matter
between these two late-20th-century novels, they both can be classified as complex-plot novels.

A3
Plots Focusing on Character

Another kind of plot relies more on character than on action. Little action happens, but the subtle quality of the few
events and, more crucially, the characters' feelings about them, form the essence of the story. Madame Bovary (1857)
by French novelist Gustave Flaubert, for example, traces Emma Bovary’s problems in three relationships as her
marriage degenerates and her two lovers betray her. Everything in the novel arises from the conflict between her
romantic ideals about life and the realities of her middle-class existence.

American writer Henry James uses a very simple plot in The Ambassadors (1903), which also focuses on character.
Lambert Strether, a middle-aged New Englander, travels to Paris, France, to fetch a young man whose mother is
worried about what seems to her to be Europe's decadent influence. The “ambassador,” Strether, falls under the spell
of the city and becomes enchanted with the young man’s mistress. Instead of sending explanations back to the United
States, Strether spends his time exploring Europe; the book’s plot focuses on his development as an individual.

The Death of the Heart (1938) by Irish author Elizabeth Bowen concentrates on a young girl’s coming of age and her
encounter with the insensitivity of both a lover and her own relatives. The Bone People (1983) by New Zealand writer
Keri Hulme looks intensely at the relationship a woman forms with a boy and his adoptive father. The novel’s theme is
that the relationships among the three influence each one individually. Although several crucial events occur, the focus
remains on the three characters and their interaction.

B Characters

The characters of a book are the fictional figures who move through the plot. They are invented by the author and are
made of words rather than of flesh and blood. Therefore they cannot be expected to have all the attributes of real
human beings. Nevertheless, novelists do try to create fictional people whose situations affect the reader as the
situations of real people would.

Authors describe the more simple characters in novels with no more than a few phrases that identify the character’s
most important traits. These characters have little capacity for personal growth, and they appear in the novel as limited
but necessary elements of the plot. Despite their small parts, such characters are often vivid. The ingratiating,
hypocritically “[h]‘umble” Uriah Heep in David Copperfield (1849-1850) by English novelist Charles Dickens is
memorable in a way that more complex characters are not. Another simple Dickens character is Mr. Podsnap in Our
Mutual Friend (1864-1865), a conformist whose character Dickens captures completely by describing him as someone
who will say nothing that would “bring a blush into the cheek of [a] young person.” Although characters such as Heep
and Podsnap are severely limited and could not carry a narrative by themselves, they provide a mechanism for the
novelist to portray certain ideas or points of view.

A more complex type of character is the mythic figure, who corresponds to an individual from ancient myth or to a
shared human experience that is handed down in myths and stories. For example, in the novella The Bear (1942) by
American author William Faulkner, the main character, Ike McCaslin, is introduced to his family’s tradition of hunting.
His experiences represent the ancient theme of initiation into the hunt, which has been an aspect of human societies
for thousands of years. Some modern novelists reinterpret ancient myths and give new attention to characters. In
Grendel (1971), American author John Gardner retells the medieval Anglo-Saxon tale Beowulf, in which the hero
Beowulf slays the monster Grendel. Gardner’s novel tells the same story, but it is cast from the point of view of the
monster. Gardner’s version explores Grendel’s feelings, doubts, and longings.

To create complex, realistic characters, authors usually combine traits that do not correspond to any single real person,
but are aspects of several people. To give these characters motives for their actions, authors highlight the characters’
thoughts, feelings, conflicting impulses, and capacity for change. For example, in Anna Karenina (1875-1877) by
Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, the main character is torn between her stable yet dull marriage and a passionate yet
dangerous affair with a military officer. In the end, Anna suffers a tragic fate as her society denounces her affair and
turns its back on her.

Richly textured and detailed characters who are strongly affected by events in their lives, like Anna, exist in works
throughout the history of the novel, but they especially flourished in the 19th century. With specific tastes and traits,
these characters appear to the reader fully realized as true-to-life individuals. Famous 19th-century literary characters
include Emma Woodhouse, the willful, witty, and playful main character in Emma (1816) by English author Jane
Austen; Emma Bovary, an extravagant and sensual woman in Madame Bovary (1857) by French novelist Gustave
Flaubert; and Dorothea Brooke, who loses her idealism in Middlemarch (1871-1872) by English writer George Eliot.

In the 20th century, experiments with stream of consciousness, a literary technique in which authors represent the flow
of sensations and ideas, added to the depth of character portrayal. English novelist Virginia Woolf followed this
approach to explore the characters of an Englishwoman and a young former soldier in Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
Sometimes stream of consciousness challenges the reader. In To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf achieves a deliberately
disorienting effect by moving subtly from character to character, from past to present, and from external events to
internal thoughts.

The absence of firmly stamped characters is a feature of the nouveau roman (new novel), a type of novel that
developed in France in the 1950s. In the nouveau roman form, characters are only vaguely defined, because the “new
novelists” believed that there is no objective truth, only subjective impressions that change depending on viewpoint. An
example of a nouveau roman is La jalousie (1957; Jealousy, 1959) by Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Other novelists move in the opposite direction and place true-life people in their works, attempting to portray the people
in great detail. For his In Cold Blood (1966), Truman Capote researched the lives of two murderers and wrote their
story as a chilling study of personality and motive. Capote’s book traces its ancestry to A Journal of the Plague Year
(1722) by English novelist Daniel Defoe, a novel based on real accounts that involves both actual and imagined victims
of a real-life plague that occurred in 1665 in London, England.

Novels such as Defoe’s that use historical settings for fictional characters are distinguished from historical novels that
attempt to describe the inner lives of historical figures. In Voina i Mir (1865-1869; War and Peace), Russian writer Leo
Tolstoy not only grounds his story firmly in the era of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), but also portrays French
emperor Napoleon I directly, placing the reader in Napoleon’s mind by describing the emperor’s thoughts about the
glory of Moscow as he stands before the city.

Some novelists use historical figures not as main characters but as elements of a backdrop to a fictional story.
American writer E. L. Doctor takes this approach in Ragtime (1975), a book about three families in early-20th-century
America. The novel features appearances by public figures such as magician Harry Houdini and businessman J. P.
Morgan.

C Conflict

The plot of a novel unfolds as the novel’s characters deal with conflict. The conflict may be of various types. It may be
physical, as in Red Badge of Courage (1895) by American author Stephen Crane, in which a young man goes to battle
during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The conflict may be ethical and involve making decisions that affect other
people. In All the King’s Men (1946), American novelist Robert Penn Warren depicts this kind of conflict by focusing on
the effect an ambitious Southern politician named Willie Stark has upon his assistant, Jack Burden, and others. The
conflict in a novel may also be emotional. A Death in the Family (1957) by American writer James Agee is about a
family recovering from the death of a loved one.

Many conflicts in novels occur between two characters. For example, Les misérables (1862) by French novelist Victor
Hugo is about an obsessive policeman named Javert who pursues the character Valjean. Intruder in the Dust (1948) by
American novelist William Faulkner features a different sort of conflict, between a small group of characters and the
rest of local society. In the book, which is set in the American South, a black man, Lucas Beauchamp, is accused of
murder. A white boy, his black friend, and an elderly woman help Beauchamp prove his innocence.

Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615) by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes describes conflict between an
individual and society. The novel is the comic story of a nobleman who continually misinterprets his encounters with
other people and thus has a unique view of his society. Conflict in novels can also occur between social groups, as in
Germinal (1885) by French novelist Émil Zola, a work about a group of miners who try to have a better life.

Conflict can also occur within a character’s own mind, as that character struggles internally. La chute (1956; The Fall,
1957) by French writer Albert Camus is about a lawyer who lives without questioning his actions until a moment of
personal revelation sets him forever to doubting himself. Another novel that features a character with inner turmoil is
The Moviegoer (1961) by American author Walker Percy. The novel’s main character, Binx Bolling, is a stockbroker
searching for meaning in his life.

Most novelists draw the reader in by having the novel’s conflict develop over time. The reader sees the situation that
provokes the conflict, the development of the conflict from episode to episode, and then the climax and the resolution
of the conflict. As the tension builds toward the main conflict, the author may introduce subplots that create and resolve
other points of conflict. Some novelists reverse the reader’s expectations by describing the aftermath of the story, then
going back in time to reveal how the characters arrived at that point.

D Setting

The setting of a novel—the time and place of its action—is crucial to the creation of a complete work. Physical places
such as deserts and outer space, as well as cultural settings such as hospitals and universities, help determine
characters’ conflicts, aspirations, and destinies.
In the 19th century, writers such as Honoré de Balzac of France, Ivan Turgenev of Russia, and Charles Dickens of
England provided great amounts of detail when describing their novels’ settings, and they did so for specific reasons. In
Balzac’s Père Goriot (1834; Old Goriot), the main character arrives in Paris and finds lodging at a boarding house, the
Maison Vauquer. The house’s shabby furniture and stained linens represent the struggles of lower-middle-class life. In
Ottsy i deti (1862; Fathers and Sons), Turgenev distinguishes between two kinds of country families by contrasting the
elegance and the earthiness of their respective households. The ominousness of Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860-
1861) proceeds as much from the bleak marshes and the Gothic house owned by the character Miss Havisham as
from anything the characters say or do.

Some novelists pay less attention to specific physical objects. English writer Jane Austen, for example, is less
concerned with items in a room than Dickens is, but this does not mean she is not concerned with social environment.
In focusing, rather precisely, on details such as Mr. Bennet’s income in Pride and Prejudice (1813) or Mr. Eliot’s
background in Persuasion (1818), she creates an atmosphere in which a character’s background and home town—
whether London, the town of Meryton, or somewhere in northern England—becomes central to the story.

Sometimes novelists make time and place so essential to the narrative that they become as important as the
characters themselves. Often this occurs when novels are set in a single, distinctive location. For example, Wuthering
Heights (1847) by English novelist Emily Brontë, The Scarlet Letter (1850) by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne,
and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) by English novelist Thomas Hardy are inconceivable without their settings of
Stonehenge, colonial New England, and the Yorkshire moors, respectively.

The novel Jazz (1992) by American author Toni Morrison is set in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem during
the Harlem Renaissance. This cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s featured innovations in literature,
theater, art, and music. The setting Morrison creates is integral to the book, whose narrative voice echoes the loose,
unpredictable rhythms of the jazz music of the time.

E Theme

A novel’s theme is the main idea that the writer expresses. Theme can also be defined as the underlying meaning of
the story.

The theme of a novel is more than its subject matter, because an author’s technique can play as strong a role in
developing a theme as the actions of the characters do. For example, American novelist Wright Morris explores the
interaction of the past and present in his work The Field of Vision (1956), which is set at a bullfight in Mexico. Morris’s
technique is to use the bullfight’s action as a trigger that causes each of the five characters, all American spectators, to
remember events from the past.

Rarely can a novel’s theme be interpreted in only one way. Because of the length of novels, and the various
characters, conflicts, and scenes found within them, readers can look at different aspects of the work to uncover
different interpretations of the meaning of the tale. British novelist Lawrence Durrell demonstrated this in his series of
novels The Alexandria Quartet (1957-1960), which is intended to be experienced not as a series of individual novels
but as a single work. The collection looks at life in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during World War II (1939-1945). In
the four books, Durrell offers different perspectives on roughly the same actions.

A common theme in novels is the conflict between appearance and reality. For example, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
(1940) by American writer Carson McCullers concerns John Singer, a man who cannot speak or hear. Nevertheless,
he serves as a sort of confessor to a group of neighbors. These people idealize him as a listener—“Each man
described the mute as they wished him to be”—and unburden themselves by speaking to him. However, the reality is
that Singer cannot understand the people and that they do not understand him; they are bewildered when he commits
suicide.

Another common theme is the search for personal identity. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by American writer J. D.
Salinger convincingly depicts Holden Caulfield, a teenager who realizes that he is no longer a child, but who is not
quite ready for adulthood. Holden’s desperate search for identity has captured the imagination of generations of
adolescent readers.

The theme of an individual who strikes out alone to face the world is used in many works. One of the most famous
instances is in Huckleberry Finn (1884) by American novelist Mark Twain. The book, set before the American Civil War
(1861-1865), is about a boy, Huck, who cannot endure the restrictions of his life in a town along the Mississippi River.
He runs away and rafts down the river, along the way becoming friends with an escaped slave named Jim.

Some novels feature people who cannot break from their society’s conventions and instead become disillusioned with
the conflict between their aspirations and the reality of their lives. American novelist John Updike explored this theme in
Rabbit, Run (1960), about a former high school basketball star who is disappointed with his marriage, unsettled by the
birth of his first child, and unhappy with his job as a used-car salesman.

Throughout the history of the novel, a major theme has been whether people can change their situations in life or
whether they are in the grips of forces beyond their control. The literary school of naturalism, which emerged in the late
1800s in Europe and later spread to North America, explored the idea that people could not control their fates.
Novelists such as Émil Zola of France and Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser of the United States were major figures
in the naturalism movement. In his novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), American author John Steinbeck dramatizes a
similar theme of loss of personal control by writing about the Joads, a family forced by economic changes to leave their
land in Oklahoma to become migrant workers in California.
Other common themes in novels include how art and life are reflected in one another, the meaning of religion, and
whether technology helps people or whether it is a harmful aspect of society.

Techniques of a novel

There are several major techniques that novelists employ to make their novels rich in meaning and rewarding to the
reader, including point of view, style, and symbolism. Novelists also use a number of minor devices such as imagery
and irony.

The most important decision an author must make when writing a novel is what point of view to use. The point of view
determines the limitations and freedoms that the author has in presenting the plot and theme to the reader. Readers
will experience a book differently depending on whether they know everything that is occurring in the story and all the
characters’ thoughts, or whether they have a more limited perspective, such as knowing only what one particular
character knows.

A novelist’s style is the approach the writer takes in putting together words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. Style
can determine the pace at which the story is told and how directly the author relates the story to the reader.

Many novelists deepen the meaning of their stories by employing symbolism, the use of objects or ideas as symbols
that represent other, more abstract concepts. With symbols, authors can write scenes that deepen the reader’s
understanding of the theme of the novel. This occurs because the symbols have an unspoken meaning beyond their
immediate presence in the story. Symbolism thus allows the author to address controversial matters, such as political
or religious issues, without openly discussing these subjects.

Novelists also use many other literary devices, including imagery and irony. By using these devices, writers avoid the
need to state every piece of information they wish to convey. Instead, the literary devices give readers the opportunity
to discover themselves the layers of meaning in a novel.

F Point of View

The point of view of a literary work is the perspective from which the reader views the action and characters. The three
major types of point of view in novels are omniscient (all-knowing narrator outside the story itself), first-person
(observations of a character who narrates the story), and third-person-limited (outside narration focusing on one
character’s observations).

- Omniscient Point of View

In a novel written from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, the reader knows what each character does and
thinks. The reader maintains this knowledge as the plot moves from place to place or era to era. An omniscient narrator
can also provide the reader with direct assessment of action, character, and environment. For example, The Heart Is a
Lonely Hunter (1940) by American writer Carson McCullers opens with this description:

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early every morning they would come out from the
house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the street to work. The two friends were very different. The one who
always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out wearing a yellow or green
polo shirt stuffed sloppily into his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it was colder he wore over this a
shapeless gray sweater. His face was round and oily, with half closed eyelids and lips that curved in a gentle, stupid
smile. The other mute was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He was always immaculate and very
soberly dressed.

The omniscient narrator can assume a familiar tone with the reader, because the narrator is not bound by the scope of
the story. Many of the earliest novels used the omniscient narrator in such a fashion. In Tom Jones (1749), English
novelist Henry Fielding provides brief overviews at the beginning of each major section. Most simply set forth the time
frame of the section (“Containing a portion of time somewhat longer than half a year”), but others give a more detailed
overview:

Containing the most memorable transactions which passed in the family of Mr. Allworth, from the time when Tommy
Jones arrived at the age of fourteen, till he attained the age of nineteen. In this book the reader may pick up some hints
concerning the education of children.

The omniscient point of view has advantages and disadvantages. Using an omniscient narrator allows a writer to be
extremely clear about plot developments. This point of view also exposes the reader to the actions and thoughts of
many characters and deepens the reader’s understanding of the various aspects of the story. However, using an
omniscient narrator can make a novel seem too authoritarian and artificial, because in their own lives people do not
have this all-knowing power. If clumsily executed, providing thick detail may cause the reader to lose sight of the
central plot within a mass of scenes, settings, and characters.

- First-Person Point of View

With the first-person point of view, one of the novel’s characters narrates the story. For example, a sentence in a novel
in the first person might read, “As I waited on the corner, I remembered the last time I had seen her.”

The first person provides total subjectivity and all the immediacy, intimacy, and urgency of a single individual’s
conflicts. The first person also shows a character’s awareness at telling a story. David Copperfield (1849-1850) by
English novelist Charles Dickens is narrated by the title character and opens, “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of
my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

The first person allows the author to write in the voice of a particular character. In his novel Huckleberry Finn (1884),
which is narrated by the character Huck, American author Mark Twain not only wrote from Huck’s point of view, but he
wrote in the voice that Huck would use if he were a real person. This approach gives Huck authenticity as a real
character. Twain began chapter one of the book:

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t
no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched,
but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt
Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all
told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Some novelists use the first person in more complex ways. In The Sound and the Fury (1929), American novelist
William Faulkner tells the story of the Compson family from four points of view, three of which are first person. The
narrative begins from the point of view of a developmentally disabled man, Benjy. It then moves to the point of view of
his intellectual brother, Quentin, and then to the point of view of another brother, Jason. The final section is told by an
omniscient narrator.

The novel ¡Yo! (1997) by Dominican-born writer Julia Alvarez also uses a series of first-person narrators. The book is a
portrait of a single character, Yolanda, told from the point of view of various people who know her from different stages
of her life. Never does the reader hear from Yolanda directly, but by piecing together the observations of her friends
and family, many of which are told in the first person, the reader gains a sense of Yolanda.

- Third-Person-Limited Point of View

The third-person-limited point of view tells the story from the third person (“he” or “she”), with a knowledge of what the
main character thinks. For example, a sentence from a story in the third person limited might read, “As she waited on
the corner, she remembered the last time she had seen him.”

Like the omniscient and first-person narrators, the third-person-limited narrator allows the reader access to the
thoughts of the main character. Unlike the omniscient narrator, however, the third-person-limited narrator can only relay
one character’s perspective to the reader. In this way the third-person-limited narrator is like the first-person narrator:
The viewpoint recreates how an individual experiences the world.

American author Henry James employed the third-person-limited point of view to great effect in books such as Daisy
Miller (1879) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), with the central character acting as a person who can evaluate the
significance of events and in turn convey that evaluation to the reader. In Daisy Miller, the character Winterbourne
serves this purpose. Early in the novel, Winterbourne relates his first impressions of Daisy:

She was bareheaded, but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was
strikingly, admirably pretty. “How pretty [Daisy and her parasol] are!” thought Winterbourne, straightening himself in his
seat, as if he were prepared to rise.

When using a character as a voice of limited omniscience, the author may describe the character’s experiences only in
terms that the character would use, or the author may take a more authoritative approach and describe the character’s
life as an outside observer would. In Ulysses (1922), Irish novelist James Joyce uses the first approach when
describing the character Gerty MacDowell. Gerty, a sentimental girl of limited understanding, expresses her narrow
range of perceptions within her own limitations, and the reader sees the world very much through her eyes. By
contrast, in the sections of Madame Bovary (1857) that Emma Bovary narrates, French novelist Gustave Flaubert
adopts a broader perspective when he explains Emma’s thirst for romance, excitement, and grandeur in terms that
Emma herself would not be able to express.

G Style

Style is the novelist’s choice of words and phrases, and how the novelist arranges these words and phrases in
sentences and paragraphs. Style allows the author to shape how the reader experiences the work. For example, one
writer may use simple words and straightforward sentences, while another may use difficult vocabulary and elaborate
sentence structures. Even if the themes of both works are similar, the differences in the authors’ styles make the
experiences of reading the two works distinct.

Style can be broken down into three types: simple, complex, and mid-style. Sometimes authors carry a single style
throughout an entire work. Other times, the style may vary within a novel. For example, if the novelist tells a story
through the eyes of several different characters, the use of different styles may give each character a distinctive voice.

A simple style uses common words and simple sentences, even if the situation described is complex. The effect of the
simple style can be to present facts to the reader without appealing to the reader’s emotions directly. Instead, the writer
relies on the facts themselves to affect the reader. American author Ernest Hemingway is widely known for a spare,
economical style that nevertheless provokes an emotional reaction. His novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) opens with a
simple yet powerful description:

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the
mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear
and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised
powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw
the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers
marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

A complex style uses long, elaborate sentences that contain many ideas and descriptions. The writer uses lyrical
passages to create the desired mood in the reader, whether it be one of joy, sadness, confusion, or any other emotion.
American author Henry James uses a complex style to great effect in novels such as The Wings of the Dove (1902):

The two ladies who, in advance of the Swiss season, had been warned that their design was unconsidered, that the
passes would not be clear, nor the air mild, nor the inns open—the two ladies who, characteristically had braved a
good deal of possibly interested remonstrance were finding themselves, as their adventure turned out, wonderfully
sustained.

A mid-style is a combination of the simple and complex styles. It can give a neutral tone to the book, or it can provide
two different effects by contrast. American writer Carson McCullers uses the mid-style in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
(1940):

And then sometimes when he was alone and his thoughts were with his friend his hands would begin to shape the
words before he knew about it. Then when he realized he was like a man caught talking aloud to himself. It was almost
as though he had done some moral wrong. The shame and sorrow mixed together and he doubled his hands and put
them behind him. But they would not let him rest.

Some authors use more than one style within a novel. This approach allows the author flexibility in choosing which
style is appropriate at different points in the work, depending on the situation and on the character or characters being
portrayed. Novelists who have mixed styles include Herman Melville of the United States, in Moby Dick (1851); James
Joyce of Ireland, in Ulysses (1922); and Robert Penn Warren of the United States, in All the King’s Men (1946).

H Symbolism

Many novels have two layers of meaning. The first is in the literal plot, the second in a symbolic layer in which images
and objects represent abstract ideas and feelings. Using symbols allows authors to express themselves indirectly on
delicate or controversial matters.

Novelists have created symbolic patterns of imagery since the beginning of the genre. One famous example of
symbolism is the letter A in The Scarlet Letter (1850) by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the novel, the
character Hester Prynne wears a scarlet-colored A on her dress to symbolize adultery, of which she was found guilty
by judges in her community.

Another famous use of symbolism occurs in The Great Gatsby (1925), in which American author F. Scott Fitzgerald
uses a green light at the end of a dock to symbolize the difficult-to-obtain American dream of success and happiness:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s
no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … and one fine morning— So we beat on, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

English novelist Joseph Conrad felt that the novelist must search for the “image,” meaning “the outward sign of inward
feelings.” His short novel Heart of Darkness (1902) uses symbols extensively. The story is about a seaman, Marlow,
who travels from England to Africa to work as a trader. While there he encounters another European, Kurtz, who has
withdrawn from society and is living in a remote area up the Congo River. The following passage from the book
suggests the jungle’s decay. Symbolically, Marlow’s voyage into the wilderness represents his spiritual exploration of
his own soul:

Going up the river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth
and the big trees were kings. … The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish … The long stretches of the waterway ran
on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks, hippos and alligators sunned
themselves side by side. … I turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good
as buried. And for the moment it seemed to me as if I was buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an
intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the
darkness of an impenetrable night.

Czech writer Franz Kafka used symbols in unexpected ways when he portrayed the legal battles of a man named
Joseph K. in the novel Der Prozess (1925; The Trial, 1937). In the book the legal process represents not order and
logic but confusion, because throughout the novel K. remains ignorant about its true workings.

Sometimes symbols have a straightforward meaning. American author Mary McCarthy used the term natural
symbolism to refer to an author's use of images that require no elaborate interpretation. In Anna Karenina (1875-1877)
by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, for example, the death of the nobleman Count Vronsky’s horse, which suffers an
accident while racing, foreshadows the fate of the book’s heroine, Anna. William Faulkner used a straightforward
symbol in his novella The Bear (1842), about a family’s traditional hunting trip. In this work the bear represents the idea
of a noble, free animal in unspoiled wilderness.

Even when symbols appear to have a clear meaning in one part of a novel, they can have another meaning in another
part of the book. One example is the prison in La chartreuse de Parme (1839; The Charterhouse of Parma) by French
author Stendhal. This jailhouse represents confinement, but that is not its only symbolic meaning. At one point the main
character, Fabrizio, seems destined to be executed in prison, and yet it is only from prison that he can see his beloved
Clelia (from the window of his cell). It is his occasional view of her from his enforced distance that makes their romance
flourish, and because of this the prison is at this moment a place of hope. In Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Charles
Dickens uses the image of a train to express two kinds of modern upheaval. In the early sections of the book, the train
is connected with reordering and positive change in people's lives. Later the train becomes an instrument of
destruction.

Symbols are not necessarily limited to one or two easy-to-identify meanings. For example, in A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man (1916), Irish author James Joyce uses birds symbolically. One interpretation is that the birds represent
the concept of escape, but this interpretation oversimplifies Joyce’s intentions. The symbol of the birds is also
connected to the Greek mythological figure Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun wearing his artificial wings; the wings
fall apart, and Icarus is plunged into the ocean. In addition, the birds are connected with the ideas of beauty,
imagination, religion, and sexual desire.

Many novelists are wary of readers who search out symbols in works and try to identify their meanings. One symbol
that has attracted a great deal of attention from readers is the white whale who gives his name to the title of the novel
Moby Dick (1851), by American author Herman Melville. The book concerns Captain Ahab, a sailor obsessed with
hunting down and killing Moby Dick, who, in a previous encounter, caused Ahab to lose one leg. Ahab and his ship, the
Pequod, eventually track down Moby Dick, but the whale then destroys Ahab and his boat and escapes. English writer
D. H. Lawrence once commented on the figure of the whale, “Of course he is a symbol. Of what? I doubt if even
Melville knew exactly. That's the best of it.”

I Imagery and Irony

In addition to point of view, style, and symbolism, novelists use many other specific techniques in their works. Two of
the most important are imagery, the collection of descriptive details that appeal to the senses and emotions of the
reader by creating a sense of real experience, and irony, the reader’s recognition that what is expected from a
statement, situation, or action is different from what actually happens.

Through imagery the writer attempts to embody in images all abstractions and generalizations about character and
meaning. Japanese author Kawabata Yasunari is known for the startling images in his work. In Yukiguni (1948; Snow
Country, 1956) the hero on the train sees a girl’s face reflected in the window as the mountain landscape flows by
outside:

The difference between imagery and symbolism is that the purpose of imagery is not to embody meaning but to create
an illusion of reality by stimulating the reader’s senses. Nevertheless, an image may also serve as a symbol when it
has special meaning and represents another idea, either to the reader or to the novel’s characters. In The Scarlet
Letter (1850) by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, the letter A that Hester Prynne wears is an image in the novel
that makes her character more vivid to the reader. Within the novel, in the town in which she lives, the letter symbolizes
her adultery.

Irony can take several forms, and the novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by American writer Carson McCullers
provides examples of each type. Irony can be dramatic (acting without knowing that the effect of one’s actions is the
opposite of what one expected). In the novel, four different characters talk to John Singer, who cannot hear them or
speak to them, because they think that he will understand their conflicts with other people. Irony can also be situational.
When all four characters happen to visit Singer at the same time, each is ignorant of the fact that they have many
problems in common and could perhaps help one another. And irony can be verbal (saying one thing when the
opposite is true). Singer says to a friend of his who lives in a mental asylum, “I write to you because I think you will
understand.”