Reconnaissance of Voices: The Narrative Voices in a Short Story and a Prose Poem

Abstract

A story reaches the readers through the voice of the narrator. Either be it a piece of literature, a movie or a play, the techniques a narrator adopts plays a crucial role in driving home the narrated part in the right sense. The reader should be able to feel the same as the author, provided the author uses the right tone of the narration. The narration may be from different perspectives. The narration may be in the first –person or the third person; the tense may be either present or past; the usage of foundational devices like similes and metaphors may be used; with a goal of attaining fulfilment in telling a story, the narrator may shift the responsibility of imagination from his or her own shoulders to the shoulders of the readers, so that the readers visualize the story with hues of their own imagination, immersed in scenes of their flair. To an extent, dialogues also play a vital role in allowing the reader to experience the words of the characters in the storyline. The present paper analyses two pieces of literature – a short story and a prose poem. The common thread that connects both the literary pieces is that they project images of a mother-daughter relationship. The paper compares Alice Munro’s “Voices” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”.