The Study of Existents in Sandpiper Essays -- Ahdaf Soueif Sandpiper I

The Study of Existents in SandpiperIn a short story like Sandpiper, where the protagonist does little except move around in her beach-house in an uneventful afternoon, thinking her thoughts, readers mustiness look for an attraction alternative to the plot. Indeed, the writer, Ahdaf Soueif, has chosen to offer to us an fire array of existents, in place of the story line, as the master(prenominal) focal point of this narrative. In the following essay, I shall discuss how existents--the collection of characters and setting--are used to nominate feelings of dispossession and displacement in the story Sandpiper, which are essential in raising the main issue of the story, which is the question of cardinals identity. Having agreed that the event itself, a summer afternoon spent at a beach-house, is rather inconsequential, we go on to deduce that the actions of our characters, since they do not contribute to the plot, are genuinely reflections of their personality. This is what Frenc h structuralist, Tzvetan Todorov proposed as a characteristic of psychological narratives, narratives which place their main focus on the development of their characters (Chatman 114). We hindquarters therefore, identify distinctive traits be to the characters by observing their actions.The characters in this narrative are few to wit the protagonist, I her estranged husband (she refers to him as her lover) her daughter, Lucy and her husbands old nanny, Um Sabir. Since it is only the protagonist that appears about often and to whom the readers interact at a time, I shall focus most of my discussion based on her development . Our protagonist, I, can be gain ground differentiated into the narrator, I-now and the character, I-then. I-now is the present figure that has ... ...his narrative is such that we follow the fibril of thoughts of our protagonist I as she considers the repercussions of her broken marriage. Since we only interact directly with her, we become persuaded to t ake her point of view, thus her problem becomes our problem too. In its effective use of character, by focusing the essay on one specific character and endowing her with specific traits relevant to bring out the issues refer and by setting up the story in an environment that can both draw responses from the protagonist as well as intelligibly portray her feelings to us, Sandpiper has successfully raised the question on ones identity. Works CitedSoueif, Ahdaf. Sandpiper. Sandpiper. capital of the United Kingdom Bloomsbury, 1997 23 - 36.Chatman, Seymour. Existents. Story and Discourse Narrative Structure in fable and Film. Ithaca, N.Y. Cornell UP, 1978 107 - 145.