First-person Narrator Research Articles

“One of Those Guys in the Movies”: Juvenile Rebellion and Carnal Subjectivity in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger’s classical initiation novel The Catcher in the Rye starts out with a scene of blatant rejection of traditional Hollywood movies. “If there’s one thing I hate,” the first-person narrator Holden Caulfield tells us in the book’s opening passage, “it’s the movies.” Despite – or maybe because of – this harsh initial claim, the novel continues to nourish the impression that the narrative voice is, in fact, enthralled by the world of cinema. In my essay, I will argue that the love-hate-relationship between the protagonist and the cinema is vital to an understanding of the literary aesthetics of The Catcher in the Rye. Furthermore, I want to show to what extent the paradoxical notion of resistance to / love of movie images is connected to the concept of juvenile rebellion cultivated throughout the novel. Interestingly enough, Catcher not only mimics its protagonist’s tentative acceptance of a “movie-made” environment. It also, quite literally, absorbs and reconstructs the aesthetic patterns attributed to cinema via its vivid re-enactment of the character’s personality. Cinematic texts, film scholar Vivian Sobchack holds, are capable of producing sensations in the audience that go far beyond the level of visualization. In The Catcher in the Rye, I argue, a “cinematic” process of involvement of the recipient is set in motion. The act of reading here becomes an act of passionate interaction with the novel which unleashes not only the figurative potential of the text but also the creative abilities of our own imagination. While perusing the novel, we are led to believe that we are actually there when Holden undertakes his odyssey through the city. By deploying sophisticated strategies of spontaneous activation and visceral involvement – techniques also used in film to achieve an effect of reality – the novel thus literally operates as a film.

Shame and Disavowing Queer Reality

Stigma has been defined as a spoiled identity, a branding that sets a person outside the norm, with potential to elicit feelings of shame. The authors recount firsthand experiences of having felt shame in connection with their queer identities and the disavowal this provoked, until such time as they met serendipitously as researchers with related interests and began sharing memories of being queer in a cis-heteronormative society. Two stories, illustrated in comic form and told in first-person narrative, are centrepieces for analysis in which the authors write against themselves, their past assumptions, and interpretations. Applying insights from queer and feminist decolonial theory, and from arts pedagogy, this autotheoretical analysis demonstrates that, despite the injurious nature of shame, revisiting and recodifying its roots can help one avow queer reality and come to terms with feelings of inadequacy induced by the politics of purity infecting many fledgling efforts at self-expression.

The ‘Confessional’ Voice in Food Journalism: Decentring Narratives in the Whetstone Radio Collective

This article discusses the use of personal narratives in food media and journalism with a particular focus on podcasting. It situates the research amongst the abundance of lived experiences both in food content and in podcasting, two spaces that have been regarded as providers of the intimacy required to challenge impartiality practices in journalism. Given that the growth of podcasting has arguably failedto include enough non-mainstream voices, our primary research is based on four series of the Whetstone Radio Collective, a media organisation that aims to tell the stories of marginalised communities. Using content and thematic analysis, it establishes that the innovative use of first-person narratives of the hosts—who are overwhelming people of colour and embody stories of migration and displacement that mirror the food stories—is accompanied by conventional journalistic sourcing of experts who are already established voices based in the Global North. A recentring agenda is most obvious when it reclaims histories such as that of black farmers in the US, when it situates the consumption of foods as part of the global trade that drove the colonial project, or when it delves into and criticises foodways such as the social architecture of kitchens.

Transfer patterns in the Swedish football clubs – a gift economy of loyalties and emotions

ABSTRACT This article explores how football players and scouts in Sweden narrate their stories of transfers within the Swedish football system. This article presents first-person narrations as male players as well as scouts from elite clubs were interviewed in connection to transfer patters to, from and within Sweden. The aim is to analyse how the transfer system takes shape in stories presented by scouts and players, and what it can tell about the football transfer market. The interviewed persons present story logic while constructing a narrative of transfer patterns. Theoretically, the study is framed using Marcel Mauss concept of gift economy.

Harnessing Patient Life Stories to Engage Medical Trainees in Strengthening Veteran-Provider Relationships.

Medical trainees do not have many opportunities to develop communication skills with patients. We established the voluntary "My Life, My Story" (MLMS) program at the Clement J. Zablocki VAMC in Milwaukee, WI, to determine if this pilot narrative medicine program enhanced trainee interpersonal skills and improved patient-centered care. Trainees at the Medical College of Wisconsin conducted in-person or virtual interviews of Veterans receiving care at the Milwaukee VAMC about their meaningful life experiences. Post-interview, trainees wrote a short first-person narrative in the Veteran's voice, which, after the Veteran's approval, was added to the electronic medical record and made available to the patient's care team. Trainees, Veterans, and health professionals completed post-interview surveys, from which we conducted descriptive statistics and qualitatively analyzed the text-based feedback. Between 2020 and 2021, 24 medical trainees participated in our pilot implementation of the MLMS program, conducting a total of 32 interviews. All trainees reported a meaningful personal impact and found the pilot to be "valuable" and "rewarding." Both trainees and health professionals believed that the MLMS program improved "rapport building" with Veterans. Nearly all Veterans (n = 25, 93%) believed that their medical care team would be able to provide better care after reading their life story. Narrative medicine initiatives like the MLMS program may enable value-added education for trainees. Future research will allow us to better understand and maximize specific educational gains, while further enhancing patient care. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01854-4.

Gin, Tonic, and Other Delicious Combinations

Abstract In her 1927 diary, Simone de Beauvoir documents her intent to mix literary style with philosophical content. However, in Anglophone research environments, her works are formally classified as either literature or philosophy. This article questions the legitimacy of this classification by arguing that The Ethics of Ambiguity’s stylistic use of first-person plural narration, metaphor, conversational style, and parable help us understand ambiguity and freedom as necessarily embodied by invoking experiences of both phenomena.

A Journey Along the Frontier: My Attempts to Bring Accountability to Shadow Education in Australia and Beyond

Highlights This article provides insights into stakeholders’ challenges while bringing educational accountability to private tutoring providers through a self-regulation model. There is no participant involved in this narrative inquiry study. Policymakers may be ambivalent about bringing accountability as their families may benefit from private tutoring. This account is written from the perspective of a teacher-trained tutor who has worked with policymakers to address some of the challenges. This first-person narrative describes the experience of establishing a national peak body to bring greater accountability to private tutoring providers. This peak body is unique because it positions the educational interests of students as at least equal to providers’ commercial interests. The author believes that greater accountability for tutoring businesses is required in all markets and that issues will not resolve through self-regulation alone.

Vocational Rehabilitation for Seasonal and Migrant Farmworkers in California: A Personal Narrative

Background:Little is known in the rehabilitation counseling profession regarding the needs and rehabilitation approaches used with seasonal and migrant farmworkers in the United States.Objectives:The purpose of this article is to provide rehabilitation counselors with awareness of the vocational needs of seasonal and migrant farmworkers. The article also provides best practice approaches to effectively provide vocational rehabilitation (VR) services to this population.Method:The article presents a first-person narrative by a recently retired rehabilitation counselor with more than 30 years of practice experience with the California Department of Rehabilitation. The bulk of this career focused on meeting the VR needs of migrant and seasonal farmworkers.Findings:The first-person narrative conveys best practice approaches with outreach, vocational assessment, partnerships, and job placement found helpful with seasonal and migrant farmworkers.Conclusions:To date, the rehabilitation counseling profession has largely ignored seasonal and migrant farmworkers. We hope the readers of this article will place greater professional attention on meeting the VR needs of this population in funding, program development, and training.

Самоконцепция героя и авторский замысел (на примере рассказа В. Пелевина «Ника»)

The aim of the study is to identify and describe the ways of self-presentation and the type of self-concept of the protagonist in a postmodern literary work. Attaining the aim made it possible to draw a line between the artistic context of the author and the artistic context of the protagonist in texts with first-person narration. The obtained results showed that such a distinction is very important, since it allows examining the features of the interaction of the specified contexts and the mechanisms of formation of the aesthetic-semantic context of the reader stimulating artistic activity and causing the emergence of an aesthetic reaction. The reasoning and arguments presented in the paper are illustrated by examples from V. Pelevin’s short story “Nika”. The study is novel in that it is the first to conduct a comprehensive linguostylistic analysis of the protagonist’s inner speech and propose ways of explication of the author’s intention hidden in the subtext. This analysis showed that there is an obvious semantic heterogeneity and inconsistency in the short story, which is necessary for the author to mislead the reader by controlling the process of perception of the artistic meaning and to cause an unexpected emotional reaction by the ending of the short story.

Acid feminism: Gender, psychonautics and the politics of consciousness

Psychedelic substances have undergone a transformation in the public consciousness over the last 15 years. However, the most influential first-person narratives of psychonauts and ‘scientist-shamans’ navigating the frontiers of consciousness have tended to entirely exclude women’s experiences and voices. Psychedelic feminism, has emerged to signify the role consciousness expansion and experimentation might play in rejuvenating feminism’s collective imagination, and undoing the historical silencing of women’s voices in psychedelic culture and research. Drawing on Mark Fisher’s work on acid communism, the feminist psychedelic humanities, narcofeminism and autobiographical life-writing by women on experimental psychedelic substance use, this article investigates the promise of acid feminism for the wider narcofeminist movement, and its implications for undoing some key precepts endemic in psychedelic culture and research.

토니 모리슨의 『사랑』에 나타난 사랑의 여성윤리

This study focuses on the dual narrative structure of Toni Morrison’s Love. While the narrative unfolds the characters’ internal monologues and omnipotent voice through a third-person perspective, it is framed by the spectral voice of the first-person narrator, L. L’s subtle, humming voice interjects into the main narrative, providing analytical insights into events and characters. Her sensory, fragmented narration is intimately tied to Julia Kristeva’s concept of “herethics”—a transgressive ethics of love rooted in maternal relationships that embraces self/other ambiguity and challenges hierarchical patriarchal order. L manipulates Cosey’s will and weaves characters’ stories into a therapeutic quilt, thereby revealing patriarchal narrative, maintained through female hostility, while also creating a space for the reconciliation of the shattered relationship between Heed and Christine, potentially extended to Junior and the readers. This study elucidates how L’s narration challenges patriarchal language, disrupts social hierarchies, and extends a hand of invitation to others into an intersubjective relationship grounded in the heretic ethics of love.

Duality, Paradox and Confusion in Joseph Conrad’s “Freya of the Seven Isles”

This paper examines Conrad’s use of duality in “Freya of the Seven Isles” in relation to fundamental aspects of the text such as setting, narrative voice, characterisation and themes, and it explores the way in which the play on opposites creates a tension from the beginning between comedy and tragedy. The exotic setting in the Dutch East Indies, far from the rules of ordered society, in shallow waters between land and sea where sudden tropical storms are common, makes this account of diabolic revenge seem credible. The first-person narrator, whose ironic tone serves to free him from responsibility, as well as to distance him emotionally from the catastrophe, reassures us and alarms us in turn, revealing the contradiction between his original light-hearted view of events and his knowledge of their terrible outcome. Main characters form interchanging pairs, and all characters are paradoxical, so that they often misjudge each other and themselves. Although “Freya” is a love story, love and pride are inseparable, and pride perhaps has a greater role in the unfolding drama than love. There is also a close connection between pride and humour, with constant references to smiles and laughter, but little genuine mirth. Laughter has multiple functions, being used as a weapon or a defence mechanism reflecting ignorance, shame, fear and embarrassment. At the end nobody is laughing, except conceivably the scorned lover who precipitates the tragedy, and the reader is left ruminating causes and consequences in a tangle of possibilities.

On a Melting Ice Floe – Polish Jewish Wartime Refugees in Central Asia

ABSTRACT During World War II, tens of thousands of Polish Jewish refugees spent several years in Soviet Central Asia. Yet, little of the intriguing character of the Silk Road remains in their memories. Rather, these convey the years of exile as a desperate attempt to survive in conditions where refugees’ lives depended on the confusingly numerous and varied power actors in the region. Drawing on first-person narratives, the article describes how navigating between these actors affected the postwar identities of Polish Jews. Their refugee history ran the gamut from criminalization (by the Germans and Soviets) to discrimination (by the Polish state in exile). It turns out that the experience of Polish antisemitism and civic exclusion that caught up with them in this remote region was one of the strongest affects in their memory. By analyzing eastern destinations (Central Asia) as a space of refugee accommodation, we can appreciate the significance of this geography for the postwar disidentification of Jewish survivors with Poland. It was not only the attitude of fellow Poles in the German-occupied country during the war, but also their treatment of the citizenship of Polish Jewish refugees in Central Asia as significantly inferior that cast a lasting shadow over the emotions of surviving Jews toward their country of origin.

«СУМАСШЕДШЕЕ» РАССКАЗЫВАНИЕ (Ф. М. ДОСТОЕВСКИЙ, В. М. ГАРШИН, А. П. ЧЕХОВ)

Not only the general theme of madness, but also the features of the narrative allow us to compare the Garshin’s "A Red Flower" with "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" by Dostoevsky and "Ward No. 6" by Chekhov. It turns out that the storytelling process creates similar problems, the solution of which each writer provides in his own way: see personalisation, dual narrative and apparent objectivity. Motifs along with metaphorical constructions (f.e. dream, luminaries, illness) are also have common features. In Dostoevsky's story, the concept of the "fantastic" becomes a form of path to the personal narrative of the subject of the text, who analyzes the story, develops new linguistic and semantic means for the presentation of history, in which laughter-madness is becoming the generative principle. Consequently, both the parable character and the transformation of the short story into a short novel by Dostoevsky are realized, despite the fact that there is a first-person narrator. In "A Red Flower" there is also the mission of saving the world as a "crazy man", but the narrator in the third person and the narrative does not turn into a story-parable. The story seems to reproduce an anecdote about the adventures of the hero. At the same time, the uniqueness of Garshin's work lies in the way the world is renamed "illy", i. e. metaphorical language. In Chekhov's short novel, the metaphorical plan unfolds the comprehension of the hero, giving the corpus of "crazy narratives" a new touch thanks to completely non-random details – reminiscent of Garshin's. As a result of the analysis, it becomes clear that "Ward No. 6" implements the parable beginning, even if it does not unfold into a personal narrative similar to "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man".

Along and Against the Grain: Close reading The History of Mary Prince

Due to the highly mediated conditions of its production, The History of Mary Prince presents a challenge to New Critical methods of reading that are frequently taught in undergraduate literature classrooms. Without questioning the British abolitionists’ textual representation of Prince’s experiences, readers unfamiliar with the historical conditions for slave narratives may attribute the publication’s sentimentalism and representations of violence as direct expressions of Prince. This essay mobilizes close reading towards contrary ends: I throw the editor’s (Thomas Pringle’s) paratextual material, particularly the Preface, under scrutiny by close reading its insistence on transparency and symmetry between the first-person narrative and Prince as the narrative's univocal source. Using the Preface as an apparatus for close reading The History, I emphasize the dissonance between, on the one hand, the British abolitionists’ textual representation of freedom and, on the other, Prince’s speech as a practice of freedom. Drawing on the methods developed by Marisa Fuentes and Ann Laura Stoler, I offer historical and geographical contexts that can be layered onto close readings exercises for The History – particularly around repeated tropes of salt and allusions to sugar – that destabilize Thomas Pringle’s, and by extension the London Antislavery Society’s, representation of Prince’s public image. I argue how the paratextual materials of The History can help instructors foreground the contradictions and asymmetries of power embedded in subaltern representations.

J. L. Barnes’s The Inheritance Games and the Rejuvenation of Proverbs

The present article analyzes the use of proverbs in The Inheritance Games (2020), the first book of the novel trilogy of the same name, currently enjoying great popularity and commercial success among young readers. In the first half of the book, proverbs are a central theme in the development of the action, continuing to be used frequently by various characters throughout the rest of the book, especially by Avery Grambs, the protagonist and first-person narrator. This use of proverbs in a novel targeted at young adults is remarkable inasmuch as they are a discourse device most commonly associated with older generations and traditions. Furthermore, proverbs contribute to the portrayal of various characters, illustrating their paremiological competence and the different ways in which they may be employed as established by proverb scholarship. As a result, the relevance of proverbs for the plot and their frequency of appearance challenges the widespread belief that they are old-fashioned uses of languages most frequently employed by older adults, potentially promoting an interest in them among teenagers and young adults reading the series.

Fact of Feeling: Memory in the Victorian Ghost Story

ABSTRACT: This paper examines how the Victorian ghost-story genre troubles realist visions of memory as a store of immutable past experiences. Analyses of ghost stories by Ellen Wood, Amelia B. Edwards, Dinah Mulock, and George MacDonald reveal that they portray memory as constructed, biased, and fallible. Through first-person and frame narratives, these stories illustrate how the act of recollection falsifies memories by reshaping them to better fit affective narrative arcs, thus depicting a form of nostalgic memory that foregrounds feeling at the cost of accuracy. Yet, even as these ghost stories highlight the impossibility of truly accurate recollection, their focus on traumatic events emphasizes the felt imperative to accurately recall and communicate emotional experiences.

Torture and Metamorphosis in Exeter Book Riddle 261

The Exeter Book Riddles provide insight into how early English medieval people felt about their place in the non-human world by giving voice to many non-human creatures. Riddle 26 depicts the creation of a manuscript from the perspective of a sheep becoming a page. A close reading of the riddle reveals that the poem is divided into two nearly identical sections, which are built around the contrast between the fundamental and material elements of book-making and the cultural and religious utility of a manuscript.The riddle begins with the killing of the animal at the hands of an unknown foe and then follows the speaking subject through its forced metamorphosis. The employment of a first-person narrator establishes an empathetic bond between the animal speaking voice and the human audience. However, near the middle of the poem, the tone changes dramatically as the emphasis turns from animal materialism to human spirituality. The closing lines insist on the beauty of the craft, the cultural significance of the book and the spiritual advantages derived from it. As a result, the interaction between the two sections appears to call into question humanity’s position in the book-making process, while simultaneously highlighting the paradoxes in book creation and manuscript culture.

The Queens of New York by E.L. Shen

Reviewed by: The Queens of New York by E.L. Shen Adam McConville Shen, E.L. The Queens of New York. Quill Tree/HarperCollins, 2023 [336p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780063237957 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780063237971 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-12 For seventeen-year-old friends Jia Lee, Ariel Kim, and Everett Hoang, this summer will be their first not spent together. For two, Everett and Ariel, it’s a summer of adventure, with Everett treading the boards at a prestigious drama camp in Ohio and Ariel boosting her science genius at a precollege program in California. Jia, meanwhile, remains in New York, working in her family’s struggling restaurant and babysitting her ailing grandmother and precocious little sister, with only texts from her far-away friends and time spent with cute new boy Akil as bright spots. Reality hits hard for all three girls, though, as Everett finds herself type-cast in a musical full of racist Asian stereotypes, and Ariel struggles to maintain her perfect-Korean-daughter image while mourning the sudden death of her older sister. Even the most drama-filled summer can’t come between these friends, though, in what is a clear narrative descendent of Brashares’ The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, unfolding along similarly predictable, comfortably familiar lines. Yet Shen claims a space of her own on the shelf of friends-as-sisters teen fare, as she draws distinctions between each girl’s personal journey, their cultural identity (Jia is Chinese; Ariel, Korean; Everett, Vietnamese), and notably, their experience of racism. The first-person narrative shifts perspective by chapter among the three, allowing focus on individual struggles, while group chat text-messages and emails spotlight their mutually supportive connection and envy-worthy friendship. Indeed, it is the friendship here that is the real star, outshining not just parental pressures and systemic racism, but every other relationship, familial and romantic. Recommend this to readers seeking an updated “sisterhood” and a culturally sensitive celebration of friendship at its most enviable. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Analysis of a poetry slam text from an interdisciplinary perspective

The article presents the poetry slam genre and its role in the development of modern literature. The poetry slam contribution consists of two parts and lasts a total of around 6 minutes. In the small introduction, the following main text is framed according to the situation. Using the multimodal, rhetorical-linguistic analysis, it was found that many components contribute to the success of the slam text. In addition to the verbal content, this includes non- and paraverbal aspects, emotions and attitudes. The I-parallel sentences, simple syntactic structures, foreign-language phrases and repetitions express the emotions on the textual level. In addition to the first-person narrator, there are also voices from other protagonists. The audience gives their direct feedback such as laughter, applause and screams off screen. The central themes of the poetry slam contribution, prejudices and the question of guilt, are examined from different perspectives. Furthermore, the comment column is also analyzed. In addition, a methodical and didactic handling of this text is sugg