The Narrative Structure And Its Role In Highlighting The Central Theme In A Land Without Jasmine

Abstract

This paper intends to trace the narrative structure of A Land Without Jasmine and find out the correlation between it and the central theme of the novel. A Land Without Jasmine is a novel by the Yemeni novelist Wajdi Alahdal. The book runs into ninety pages and is divided into six chapters. Each chapter is narrated by a different narrator resulting in six different points of view which enriches the narrative. These different views make the narrative of the work complicated and consequently complicated narrative structure. Narrative techniques and strategies are traced and analyzed with the help of the modern structuralist approach. G. Genette, T. Todorov, M. Bakhtin are among those whose views and critical writings are used as guidelines in scrutinizing the text.
 Key Words
 Analepsis: flashback
 Narrative: "a telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events recounted by a narrator to a naratee". (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms)
 Paradox: "a statement or expression so surprisingly self-contradictory". (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms)
 Theme: "a salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work's treatment of its subject-matter". (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms)