1st Person Narration In Atonement And Number9dream

Narrative Analysis: First Assessed Essay Candidate

316773

Module Title

Narrative Analysis

Module Tutor

Carmen Coulthard & Malcom Coulthard

Question

How is point of view handled in text or texts of your choice? Consider Perspective and Voice (who perceives the action, who reports it?) Describe your text in terms of Narrative levels and narrators – how many are there and how are they signalled in the discourse?

Title

Narrators As Characters In Two Psychological Novels Of 2001

MHRA Citation 3352 Words

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 December/January 2002

Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 Introduction This essay will examine point of view in extracts from Ian McEwan’s Atonement and David Mitchell’s Number 9 Dream (both reproduced here as appendixes). It aims to disprove formalist ideas of character as a ‘function’ of plot (Chatman 1978, 111) by demonstrating instead that plot can serve as a function of character. Three strategies will be identified, in which point of view constructs the narrator as a character: •

In both extracts the perception and reporting of story events overshadows the events themselves.

•

The narrator’s perspective normally aligns the reader with a focalised character (in Number 9 Dream the narrator himself). Sometimes, however, it invites the reader to read against the focalised/narrator’s discourse, to discover what this character is ‘really’ like.

•

Both extracts contain several narrative layers, the ‘deepest’ of which is purely a form of characterisation, narrativising personality traits.

Diagrams of narrative levels (Figs 1&2) and narrative elements (Figs 3&4) are produced at the end of the essay to demonstrate these points.

1 The Significance of Point of View 1.1 Perception and Reporting in Number9Dream: First Person Discourse Every event in Number9Dream is reported from the perspective of Eiji Miyake’s spatiotemporally1 limited observations, and this reporting serves a characterisation function. Under of Simpon’s typology of narrative modes, the extract is in positively modalised A Form (first person narration). Eiji controls his own story as indicated by deontic and boulomaic modality: “What Tokyo needs is a good flooding” (88), “she has the most perfect neck in all creation” (49). He even explains the (supposed) relevance of his narrative: “today is one of those life-changing days” (73). From this

2

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

‘limited’ perspective Eiji is more fully characterised by analeptic traces in his FDT. We infer that he does not know who his father is from his comment that the rest of the public “know who ushered them on to Earth” (33). The obvious orientating function of Eiji’s diegesis does not, however, prevent an extremely strong sense of mimesis being created through the immediacy of this first person orientation. This immediacy is created by the dominance of Free Direct Thought2. The form is rarer in novels than indirect thought (IT) as it professes to a verbatim knowledge of a character’s thoughts, but this is exactly the effect required here, aligning the reader to Eiji’s direct perceptions in the present tense, as though he or she were ‘really there’3. The inevitable distortions caused by indirect thought’s selection process are eliminated. This technique is supported by the almost exclusive reporting of speech in a free direct form, in which the framing clause is ellipted. Characters speak without the narrator as an intermediary. Events maintain a more natural chronology where a framing clause would slow down text pace. On the surface text duration appears to be ‘scene’, but since Eiji lights a cigarette in sentence 27 and “entombs” it by sentence 46 there must be some summary. If anything, this demonstrates the arbitrariness of any relationship between text time and ‘ideal natural chronology’ when a reader decodes text4 (see Toolan 2001, 43). The closeness of reader-alignment to the narrator is heightened by the use of the ‘close’ deictic adverb here rather than the more remote adverbial there (six instances to three): It would be so much simpler if you would just drop by here for a sandwich (35) ‘Is there a machine in here?’ (507) while I stand here nitpicking with you, I got ninety angel-fish at the Metropolitan City Office in danger of asphyxiation (176) Had a hell of time getting in here, y’know (222) you burst in here, expecting to intimidate me (284) ‘Security will be here within thirty seconds.’ (307) The last four instances are taken from Eiji’s imagined adventure, demonstrating that this close alignment is retained even when he is the imagined subject of an embedded narrative layer. This directly contrasts Atonement’s third-person strategy, in which a greater mix of direct and indirect reporting means that exceptional narrative shifts are made when Briony becomes focaliser. In this more ‘distanced’ account there are as many instances of the adverbial there as here (two of each):

3

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp (23) Briony felt suddenly ashamed . . . [she] struggled to grasp the difficult thought, wasn't there manipulation here . . . now her play seemed a miserable, embarrassing thing” (140-145) The first instance is pure narration (PN) from the third-person omniscient narrator – here is used simply to create a sense of closeness in a relatively distanced form of reporting. Both grammatically and semantically, there would serve just as well. The second instance demonstrates the use of lexical and graphological features associated with DT to provide ‘speech colouring’ inside a segment of indirect thought. The use of here combined with the index of temporal-closeness now creates a vivid impression of Briony’s direct perception, without sacrificing the diegetic distance from which the narrator analyses her. 1.2 Perception and Reporting in Atonement: Focalisation Atonement has an omniscient third-person narrator5 but is at many points narrated by Briony Tallis, who oscillates between being focalised and focaliser. Free Indirect Thought (FIT) is used to convey Briony’s attitudes. This is often incredibly subtle, noticeable only in the selection of material and modality. That “there would be time for only one day of rehearsal before [Briony’s] brother arrived” (3) is attributable to Briony mainly though the evaluative adverb only, as it expresses her anxiety for the play to be good, and the constraints that have been placed upon her by circumstance6. FIT is indicated by frequent modal verbs “how could she refuse a cousin so far from home whose family life was in ruins?” (175) and by sentence adverbials “Of course she was taking the part of Arabella” (159). She is ‘focalised from inside’ (Toolan 2001, 61), the reader receives a penetrating portrait through presentation of her thoughts. Sometimes, text orientation shifts to directly convey her perception: “Briony heard at last the sound of wheels on the gravel below her bedroom window, and snatched up her pages and ran down the stairs, across the hallway and out into the blinding light of midday” (72). The actual actions described here are probably PN (Briony would hardly have thought “I am snatching up my pages, I am running down the stairs”), but the expressive adjunct “at last” and the impression of “the blinding light of midday” are definitely

4

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

orientated from Briony, as she has been couped-up inside waiting for her cousins’ with anticipation. This sentence marks a shift from the narrator’s summary, which has been an external intradiegetic analepsis, to ideal natural chronology in a ‘narrative present’. It sets up the first DS in the extract – Briony’s – and demonstrates her immersion in her play and alienation from the outside world: “I’ve got your parts, all written out. First performance tomorrow! Rehearsals start in five minutes!” (73-5). The first descriptions of her cousins all relate to their suitability for various parts in the play, so are clearly orientated from Briony’s point of view7. By shifting from the perspective of a (seemingly) extradiegetic narrator to an intradiegetic focaliser, the reader is brought closer to story events, to directly sympathise with Briony. 1.3 ‘Psychological’ Novels and the Predominance of Discourse over Story Both authors apply complex strategies for establishing point of view because this establishes the narrator’s personality. The importance of these extracts is therefore located on the level of discourse rather than story, and especially on the level of Structure of Narrative Transmission (see Figs 3&4). Here a relatively basic Substance of Content is transformed into a rich literary experience. This marks these extracts out as what Todorov defines as ‘psychological’ novels (Chatman 1978, 113). They are primarily character-based, so the most important actions are not ‘physical’ ones but expressions of personality. Number9Dream presents kernels that are ‘false’ in terms of character action (Eiji doesn’t really storm the PanOpticon), but not in terms of psychological development. Everything in both extracts, though it may not always serve a direct story function, always serves a teleological one in terms of character development. Plot is a function of character, since ‘character’ is a structural composite of various narratives in the first place. As Henry James said “Character . . . is action, and action is plot” (see Liddel 1947, 72). The narrator does not so much relate plot, as plot ‘narrates’ the narrator’s character. That is, it presents an illustration of the narrator’s character type8.

2 Interpretation Against the Narrator/Focalised 2.1 Atonement’s ‘Ironising’ Third Person Narrator Briony perceives events, but the dominant reporter of these events is the omniscient third-person narrator9. S/he is not constrained by Briony’s “limited” view, and provides a holistic view of the Tallis household. The narrator is able to ‘read against’ 5

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

Briony’s perceptions and demonstrate what she is ‘really’ like. In sentences 17-20 action is abandoned entirely and pace freezes to ‘descriptive pause’ in order to describe Briony’s room. Such setting-description is, for Rimmon-Kennan, the strongest marker of narratorial presence (see Toolan 2001, 69) and this is indeed where the narrator becomes most fully realised as an independent voice, describing elements of Briony’s personality that she would not be able to identify herself. Briony’s room is described using particularly mediated stasis statements, where identificatory information such as the positioning of Briony’s toys are described as being directly attributive of various personality traits. Her room is therefore not “tidy” but “a shrine to her controlling demon” (18).10 This narrator purports to have absolute, objective authority in describing Briony. When describing personality traits it demonstrates the status to make foundational orientations using unmodalised relational processes, many of which are identificatory: sentence identifier 19 Briony's [room]

rel. pro. was

identified identifier the only tidy upstairs Briony's [room] room in the house (19)

21

A taste for was the miniature

one aspect of an orderly A taste spirit (21) miniature

for

the

22

Another was [aspect of her orderly spirit]

a passion for secrets Another [aspect of her (22) orderly spirit]

The narrator also gives Briony’s play a ‘definitive’ interpretation. In announcing that “the piece was intended to inspire not laughter, but terror, relief and instruction, in that order” s/he implies that it is likely to make an adult audience laugh (59). This sentence is prefaced by a sentence that uses may have been idiomatically to mean was: “The Trials of Arabella may have been a melodrama”. It then makes a statement that is vital in the construction of an implied reader: “its author had yet to hear the term” (58). This implies a reader who has a more advanced grasp of narrative conventions than Briony, who would find the heightened emotions of her melodrama distasteful and who is complicit with the third person narrator in this view. This is not to say that we feel any less sympathy towards Briony, especially as the narrator builds on our new orientation looking at Briony rather than with her to create suspense. 6

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

The declaration that “the innocent intensity with which Briony set about the project - the posters, tickets, sales booth - made her particularly vulnerable to failure” (59) is stylistically similar to a Labovian evaluation, explaining the relevance of all this reporting about Briony’s writing. It implies a tragic hypothetical outcome in which “vulnerable” Briony is hurt by the reception of her play. A Barthesian narrative ‘fork’ is thus created to which the text is heading, in which Briony either will be hurt or avoid being hurt. Briony cannot conceive this, thus making her behaviour more poigniant whenever she becomes focaliser. There is in fact no resolution to these conditions, as the events of the following evening mean that the play is not performed for another sixty years, when Briony is much changed. The purpose of this potential kernel, therefore, is as a plot action that contributes to characterisation. The combination of our focalised closeness to Briony and our narrator-orientated impression of her vulnerability create a particularly vivid impression of character. The dual perspective of Briony’s FIT is ‘ironising’ in precisely the form identified by Leech and Short, as it creates a “contrast in values associated with two different points of view” (1981, 278). The information that the busy composition of the play caused Briony to ‘miss a breakfast and a lunch’ (2) could be oriented from her perspective or even that of her mother or sister. The implication is that this is an exceptional event that illustrates the magnitude of Briony’s fervour. In the context of the entire third-person opening sentence, however, it serves more as a form of affectionate (for it is surely intended humorously) bathos. The play initially appears to be a large-scale undertaking with posters, programmes and tickets, but the missing of two meals as a consequence readjusts the scale to instead emphasise the relative triviality of young Briony’s existence. Similarly, when we enter Briony’s FIT, with the hint that she has been left to “contemplate her finished draft” (2), we regard the statement that the play is “at some moments chilling, at others desperately sad” (4) as Briony’s intention rather than the actual effect of the as yet unperformed artifice. 11 However the narrator’s authority shifts outside the extract, in Atonement’s Epilogue, when it transpires to be intra- rather than extradiegetic. The narrator is revealed to have actually been an elderly Briony, recounting her life. Like Number9Dream’s imagined adventure story, then, the primary narration is a conceit. David Lodge regards McEwan’s technique here as being particularly emblematic of “an increasing reluctance among literary novelists to assume the narrative stance of godlike omniscience that is implied by any third person representation of 7

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

consciousness, however covert and impersonal” (2002, 86). This technique certainly raises Atonement above the criticisms levelled at many Nineteenth Century novels written in the third person. This seemly ‘aloof’ external narrator actually transpires to be an internal one after all, so its internal focalisation of Briony’s thoughts becomes more plausible since her reporting is an older version of that same consciousness. However, we should note the importance of retroversion here, as the revelation only occurs in the final chapter. Though this changes the entire tone of the text, it does so retroactively – reading the text for the first time the narrator is interpreted as an external third-person figure, so this interpretation dominates. 2.2 Reading Against Eiji Miyake’s Discourse Though Eiji is the sole narrator of Number9Dream, it is still possible to ‘read against’ his discourse. As with Briony, other characters’ present a different portrait. Akiko Kato deflates Eiji’s grandiose actions with her imagined prolepsis of his future: “Such a nice life you could have had, picking oranges on Yakushima with your uncles and grandmother.” (312) The twist here is that Kato is in his mind so must be reflecting Eiji’s own insecurities. Perspective and voice demonstrate that both extracts are about about self-aggrandisement on the part of the focalised, but also that the motivation for this self-aggrandisement is that ‘in reality’ the focalised is fairly powerless. This can be demonstrated by analysis of transitivity functions12. On the level of the superordinate story, transitivity processes in which Eiji is the ‘doer’ relate only to thought or minor actions performed on coffee and cigarettes, watching, entombing his cigarette, calculating, sipping coffee, constructing a legal case in his head, supping the dregs of his coffee (twice), breaking into a ¥1000 note and ordering coffee. He only performs two agentive actions, the first of which is related to cognition rather than action: “[I] settle on the waitress of the living, wise, moonlit viola neck [as a potential kissee]”. Transitive material processes are far more frequent on the imagined narrative layer where Eiji has far more power. He is dominant in 62 of the extract’s 82 transitivity functions. In 52 he is the medium-initiator, operating tools and guns and obtaining the file which identifies his father. The thirteen processes in which Eiji plays an agentive role mark particular power over other human beings or ‘humanized’ (120) machines:

8

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

sentence

mat.pro

medium-t

circ.

40

agen t I

storm

your fortress

[will have to]

81

I

stalk

[the waitresses] home

[am a psycho waiting to]

153

I

paid

the finest freelance master hacker

[in Tokyo a fortune for those nine numbers]

237

I

pepper

her neck

with enough instant-action tranquillizer micro-pellets to knock out the entire Chinese Army.

(5 & 268)

I

find

my father

[am in Tokyo to]

279

you

reduce

me [Akiko Kato]

[to me to a state of awed obedience] *hypothetical*

284

you

intimidate

me [Akiko Kato]

[expect to] *hypothetical*

292

you

[are] threatening

me [Akiko Kato]

336

I

wheel

her body [Akiko Kato]

374

I

kick

her head [Akiko Kato]

374

I

uppercut

her [Akiko Kato]

385

I

summon

the elevator

412

I

beam at

Ice Maiden

429

‘you

are trying to disgust

me [Ice Maiden]

into the corner

over the halfmoon sofa

[could be interpreted as an intransitive clause, with ‘at Ice Maiden’ as a circ.]

9

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

This pattern is repeated in Atonement, where Briony is only the ‘doer’ in processes that refer to her writing: designed, constructed, written, studied, collecting, browsing. Prior to the conceit, Eiji hints at his inclination to daydreaming: “How do daydreams translate into reality?” Not very well, not very often” (37-39). This is very much the theme of the extract. The reader is therefore unsurprised that when the real kernel of entering the PanOpticon13 occurs, it transpires to be a disappointment. Eiji is simply turned away. The extract satirises the way in which teenage boys view their lives as heavily functional narratives, such as sci-fi movies or video games, when actually their narrative is heavily indicial, a psychological story or daydream.

3 Narrative Layers & Characterisation The ‘deepest’ narrative layer in both texts is one constructed in the main protagonists’ imagination (Eiji’s adventure story and Briony’s play/imaginings) that serves purely as characterisation, turning personality traits into discourse. They index charactertype. 3.1 Eiji’s Internal Narrative Number9Dream has five narrative layers (see Fig 1). Layers 4a and 5 are disguised as part of layer 3, the superordinate story. Leech and Short provide valuable insight into the working of this conceit: “literary discourse can function simultaneously on many levels, but unless there are signals to the contrary, the reader will assumer a merger of the different levels ‘by default’” (1981, 262). As the shift into Eiji’s imagined prolepsis is not reported (or, is reported subtly through the markers  and ) the reader simply conflates this layer with the one above. The reader assumes that Eiji’s narrative is part of the (increasingly melodramatic) superordinate story14 until they are retrospectively informed otherwise. There are, however, hints within the adventure story when the indeterminacy of indirect speech is utilised: “I make a witty pun in the manner of James Bond for my own amusement” (239). This foregrounds the sense that this story is being told rather than experienced. Eiji can’t actually think of this pun, but knows the effect that he wants to achieve. It also serves as a generic marker of the type of narrative he is attempting to construct. Even outside the adventure story, Eiji appears to be constructing his own reality15. Of the extract’s 16 characters, six are not named deictically but by Eiji (see Fig 3). Foregrounding Barthes’ idea that character is constructed from a list of traits, 10

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

Eiji first notices something about a character’s personality, and then nominalises this to subsequently name them: Professional Position ‘the boss’ waitress

Character Trait as brittle as an imperial dowager who poisoned her husband with misery (49)

Nominalisation Dowager (50, 53, 90, 510)

Waitress

one has a braying, donkey voice (49)

Donkey (50, 53, 90)

An old man (75)

He is identical to Lao Tzu from my school textbook bald, nutty, bearded (77)

Lao Tzu (80, 86, 104, 492, 496)

[Security woman on screen]

An ice maiden appears on the screen before me (115)

Ice Maiden (capitalised by 412 – has nominalised metaphor) 151, 412

a security guard (391)

He has the mass and nostrils of a minotaur. (392)

Minotaur (395, 399, 407, 409)

This reification of character traits creates relatively ‘flat’ characters16, as it naturalises the idea that there is nothing to them beyond the trait that Eiji has picked up17. Noticeably the waitress “with most perfect neck in all creation” (49) does not receive this ‘dehumanising’ activity. Her neck remains just a trait, one element of a potentially rounded character because Eiji is obsessed with her18. 3.2 The Trials Of Arabella: Briony’s Internal Narratives See Fig 2. Briony’s imagined narrative layer is not confused by the reader with reality, as in Number9Dream, as it presents events that are spatio-temporally distant. More importantly, Briony’s play (sentences 5-8) is presented as Free Indirect Writing. Play events are reported from Briony’s perspective, with her modality colouring our portrait of “a wicked count” and Arabella’s “wreckless passion” and “impetuous dash”. Indirect reporting intentionally diminishes the importance of the play, using it to narrativise Briony’s straightforward morality and melodramatic nature. When Briony’s FIT dismisses her earliest writing as “imitative of half a dozen folk tales” (33) the reader realises that this retrospective criticism of the generic nature of her stories may one day come to be applied to The Trials of Arabella. It is certainly

11

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

applicable to her closing fantasy of self-annihilation, which is effectively an amalgam of folktale archetypes – living as a feral enfants sauvage, the image of a dead girl frozen under a tree, and most clichéd of all, the bearded woodsman, a figure who belittles all of Briony’s attempts at sophistication, echoed as he is from Little Red Riding Hood. Briony’s imagined narrative layer extends beyond the play, to “the little playlets in themselves” (14) of Leon’s reactions to the play, and her reaction to Lola usurping her by taking the lead role. The ridiculousness of Briony’s proleptic death (186) is stressed by the length of the sentence in which it is conveyed. The relentless progress of new clauses constructing Briony’s plot demonstrates the rapidly escalating anxiety of her thoughts, in which only the absolute superlative, her own annihilation, will do. As with the reporting that Briony missed a lunch and a breakfast, an FIT statement that not only follows Briony’s direct line of thought but also incorporates the ironising tone of the third person narrator serves as bathos. Briony’s great drama suffers a shift in pace as she stops to consider what she should be wearing when she is found dead (indicated by one of the particularly strong sentence adverbials that mark FIT, perhaps, in “perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with pink ribbon straps”, 186). This closing sentence, as FIT, follows a realistic pattern in the ‘real time’ construction of fantasies. While imagining, events are refined and reordered so as to come up with the most satisfying fantasy possible. In Eiji’s adventure story one of the strongest elements of the conceit (that it is imagined) is the absence of such revisions. 3.3 Genre Appropriation and Internalisation These imagined narratives have been internalised from other narratives that the central protagonists have experienced. Briony’s imaginings contains traces of Victorian melodrama and fairytales. Eiji’s process of internalisation is even more pronounced. A detail he picks up from Lao Tzu’s DS when he is playing a video game: “Blasted, blasted blasted bioborgs. Every blasted time” (104-105) becomes a key plot twist in his imagined narrative, when the first Akiko Kato he encounters turns out to be a bioborg19. He also internalises the Recruitment Officer’s lecture and repeats a phrase from his lecture verbatim “sharpen my senses” (64 & 65), as justification for having a cigarette. Akiko Kato mocks Eiji’s behaviour by referencing the narratives he is attempting to emulate: “Not Luke Skywalker? 278.Not Zax Omega? . . . You never

12

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

watched Bladerunner?” (277, 355). She presents, in direct speech, a movie/airportnovel blurb to emphasise the generic nature of Eiji’s quest, and the way in which it will not translate into reality: “One island boy embarks on a perilous mission to discover the father he has never met”. Do you know what happens to island boys once they leave their fantasies?” (280-1). She recapitulates his storming in as an internal homodiegetic analeptic trace, using repetitive frequency to demonstrate the ridiculousness of his behaviour: “I would order some sandwiches, but you shot my telephone” (328).

Conclusion Detailed linguistic analysis proves my opening three assertions and overall point that ‘plot’ actions can serve a characterisation function. These two novels certainly demonstrate a general shift towards the representation of thought as the primary mode of novels over the last fifty years. My analysis does however demonstrate that this type of systematic language analysis remains party to the same intuitive and impressionistic trappings of conventional literary criticism that it was supposed to eliminate. As Leech and Short note, ‘it is impossible to tell by the use of formal linguistic criteria alone whether one is reading the thoughts of the character or the views of the narrator/author’ (1981, 338). Unpacking the unconscious presuppositions and cultural codes that establish character is a sure-fire way of falling victim to one’s own cultural prejudices. My analysis applies a ‘top-down’ structure onto these extracts and judges them on the terms of this external structure. The story/discourse divide, upon which my first point relies is especially dangerous as there can be no form without content and no content without form. Ultimately, however, this systematic does provide valuable insights into point of view.

13

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

Conflated Layers

Fig 1: Diagram of Narrative Levels in Number9Dream

Addresser 1 (David Mitchell)

Addressee 1 (Reader) Message (Novel)

Addresser 2 (Implied Author)

Addressee 2 (Implied Reader) Message (Novel)

Conflated Layers

Addresser 3 (Eiji Miyake)

Addressee 3 (Eiji Miyaje/Implied Reader) Message (superordinate story)

Addresser 4a (Eiji’s imagination)

Addressee 4a (Eiji Miyake)

Addressers 4b (Characters)

Message (adventure story)

Addresser 5 (characters)

Addressees 4b (Characters)

Message (dialogue)

Addresser 5 (characters)

Message (dialogue) (Derived from the structure laid down in Chatman 1978, 26)

14

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

Fig 2: Diagram of Narrative Levels in Atonement

Conflated Layers

Addresser 1 (Ian McEwan)

Addressee 1 (Reader) Message (Novel)

Addresser 2 (Implied Author)

Addressee 2 (Implied Reader) Message (Novel)

Addresser 3 (Third Person Narrator - actually elderly Briony)

Addressee 3 (Implied Reader)

Message (superordinate story)

Addresser 4a (Briony as focaliser)

Addressee 4a Addressers 4a (Briony herself) (Characters)

Message (superordinate story) Addresser 5 (Briony as focaliser) Miyake)

Addressees 4a (Characters)

Message (dialogue)

Addressees 5 (Implied audience – Emilly Tallis, Leon )

Message (The Trials of Arabella & Briony’s other fantasies)

15

Events

Actions & Happenings Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

smoking thinking talking to Lao Tzu running threatening coercing lying shooting obtaining the folder

Fig 3: Diagram of Narrative Elements In Number9Dream Story (Content) Characters

Eiji Miyake / Ran So Akiko Kato* Eiji’s Father* Clientele of the Jupite ‘The biker ahead of m Passers by (28) Waitresses – Do Do The Recruitment Officer Lao Tzu† Ice Maiden*† The Receptionist* Minotaur*† Terrified public outsi Anju*

Existents

Narrative Text (Number9 Dream) Setting

Tokyo Jupiter Café Panopticon (* interio Yakushima (Eiji’s ho Story elements, pre-processed by author’s cultural codes Structure of Narrative Transmission

Discourse (Expression)

KEY * Imagined by Eiji † Named after character attributes by Eiji

Eiji Miyake sits in the Jupiter those around him and fanta future meeting with a lawye able to identify his father.

First person narration orie view (allowing reading agai to establish some character begins with observations situation – postmodern ur interspersed with analeptic traces. Then rapid a sequence, which is (vit afterwards as imagin homodiegetic prolepsis. Va extract is of ‘scene’ dura ideal natural chronology. other characters allows reinterpret Eiji’s situation.

Manifestation TEXT, verbal. ‘A Novel particular economic comm various presupposed attribute

16

Events

Actions & Happenings Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

writing, contemp encouraging, orga divorcing, rehears dripping, dressing

Fig 4: Diagram of Narrative Elements In Atonement

impetuous dashing country, contractin healing, marrying,

Story (Content)

Characters

Leon Tallis (Brion Arabella* ‘Wicked Foreign C Impoverished Doc Arabella’s Family Emilly Tallis (Brio Leon’s ‘careless su Cecilia (Briony’s s Hermione (Emily Cecil (Hermione’s Hardman’s son Da Shakespeare* A bearded woodsm

Existents

Narrative Text (Atonement)

Setting

Story elements, pre-processed by author’s cultural codes Structure of Narrative Transmission

Discourse (Expression)

KEY * Imagined by Briony

Briony Tallis Her cousins –

Mrs Tallis’ bedro garret’* (6), ‘som hole’* (15), Cecil Soul’s College Ox the pool, the base

Eleven-year old Briony Talli shows it to her impressed mo cousins come to visit (becaus divorcing), they are reluctan practising Briony’s play, sha process Omniscient third person n Briony, but also allows nar objective view of character other characters. Extract b Briony’s writing techniqu reporting of her fiction itself tracing the way in which he When her cousins arrive, tex convey Briony’s free indire scene is mainly dialogue Briony’s perspective) b protagonists, in the nurser convey the importance of B that her visions will be dest to reality, pace slows into ‘st

Manifestation TEXT, verbal. ‘A Novel particular economic comm various presupposed attribute

17

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

18

Appendix I: Extracts from Number9Dream 1. 'It is a simple matter. 2. I know your name, nd you knew mine, once upon a time: Eiji Miyake. 3. Yes, that Eiji Miyake. 4. We are both busy people, Ms Kato, so why not cut the small talk? 5. I am in Tokyo to find my father. 6. You know his name and you know his address. 7. And you are going to give me both. 8. Right now.' 9. Or something like that. 10. A galaxy of cream unribbons in my coffee cup, and the background chatter pulls into focus. 11. My first morning in Tokyo, and I am already getting ahead of myself. 12. The Jupiter cafe sloshes with lunch-hour laughter, Friday plottings, clinking saucers. 13. Drones bark into mobile phones. 14. She-drones hitch up sagging voices to sound more feminine. 15. Coffee, seafood sandwiches, detergent, steam. 15. I have an across-the-street view of the PanOpticon's main entrance. 16. Quite a sight, this zirconium gothic skyscraper. 17. Its upper floors are hidden by clouds. 18. Under it's tight-fitting lid, Tokyo steams -34C with 86% humidity. 19. A big Panasonic display says so. 20. Tokyo is so close up you cannot always see it. 21. No distances. 22. Everything is over your head - dentists, kindergartens, dance studios. 23. Even the roads and walkways are up on murky stilts. 24. Venice with the water drained away. 25. Reflected airplanes climb over mirrored buildings. 26. I always thought Kagoshima was huge, but you could lose it down a side alley in Shinjuku. 27. I light a cigarette Kool, the brand chosen by a biker ahead of me in the queue - and watch the traffic and passersby on the intersection between Omekaido Avenue and Kita Street. 28. Pin-striped drones, a lip-pierced hairdresser, midday drunks, childladen housewives. 29.Not a single person is standing still. 30. Rivers, snowstorms, traffic, bytes, generations, a thousand faces per minute. 31. Yakushima is a thousand minutes per face. 32. All of these people with their boxes of memories labelled 'Parents'. 33. Good shots, bad shots, frightening figures, tender pictures, fuzzy angles, scratched negatives - it doesn't matter, they know who ushered them on to Earth. 34. Akiko Kato, I am waiting. Jupiter Cafe is the nearest lunch place to PanOpticon. 35. It would be so much simpler if you would just drop by here for a sandwich and a coffee. 36. I will recognize you, introduce myself, and persuade you that natural justice is on my side. 37. How do daydreams translate into reality? 38. I sigh. 39. Not very well, not very often. 40. I will have to storm your fortress in order to get what I want. 41. Not good. 42. A building as huge as the PanOpticon probably has other exits, and its own restaurants. 43.You are probably an

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 empress by now with slaves to fetch your meals. 44.Who says you even eat lunch? 45.Maybe a human heart for breakfast tides you, over until suppertime. 46.I entomb my Kool in the remains of its ancestors, and resolve to end my stake-out when I finish this coffee. 47.I'm coming in to get you, Akiko Kato. 48.Three waitresses staff Jupiter Cafe. 49.One - the boss - is as brittle as an imperial dowager who poisoned her husband with misery, one has a braying, donkey voice, and the third is turned away from me, but she has the most perfect neck in all creation. 50.Dowager is telling Donkey about her hairdresser's latest failed marriage. 51.'When his wife fails to measure up to his fantasies, he throws her overboard.' 52.The waitress with the perfect neck is serving a life sentence at the sink. 53.Are Dowager and Donkey coldshouldering her, or is she cold-shouldering them? 54.Level by level, the PanOpticon disappears the clouds are down to the eighteenth floor. 55.The fog descends farther when I look away. 56.I calculate the number of days I have been alive on a paper serviette 7,290, including four leap years. 57.The clock says five to one, and the drones drain away from Jupiter Cafe. 58.I guess they are afraid they'll get restructured if one o'clock finds them anywhere but their striplit cubicles. 59.My coffee cup stands empty in a moat of slops. 60.Right. When the hour hand touches one, I'm going into the PanOpticon. 61.I admit I'm nervous. 62.Nervous is cool. 63.A recruitment officer for the Self-Defence Forces came to my high school last year, and said that no fighting unit wants people who are immune to fear - soldiers.who don't feel fear get their platoon killed in the first five minutes on the battlefield. 64.A good soldier controls and uses his fear to sharpen his senses. 65.One more coffee? 66.No. 67.One more Kool, to sharpen my senses. 68.The clock touches half-past one - my deadline died. 69.My ashtray is brimming over. I shake my cigarette box - down to my last one. 70.The clouds are down to the PanOpticon's ninth floor. 71.Akiko Kato gazes through her airconned office suite window into fog. 72.Can she sense me, as I sense her? 73.Can she tell that today is one of those life-changing days? 74.One final, final, final cigarette: then my assault begins before 'nervous' becomes 'spineless'. 75.An old man was in Jupiter Cafè when I arrived. 76.He hasn't stopped playing his vidboy. 77.He is identical to Lao Tzu from my school textbook - bald, nutty, bearded. 78.Other customers arrive, order, drink and eat up, and leave within minu.tes. 79.Decades' worth. 80.But Lao Tzu stays put. 81.The waitresses must imagine my girlfriend has stood me up, or

20

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 else I am a psycho waiting to stalk them home. 82.A muzak version of 'Imagine' comes on and John Lennon wakes up in his tomb, appalled. 83.It is vile beyond belief. 84.Even the traitors who recorded this horror hated it. 85.Two pregnant women enter and order iced lemon teas. 86.Lao Tzu coughs a cough of no return, and dabs phlegm off his vidboy screen with his shirtsleeve. 87.I drag smoke down deep and trickle it out through my nostrils. 88.What Tokyo needs is a good flooding to clean it up. 89.Mandolineering gondoliers punting down Ginza. 90.'Mind you,' continues Dowager to Donkey, 'his wives are such grasping, mincing little creatures, they deserve everything they get. 91.When you marry be sure to select a husband whose dreams are exactly the same size as your own.' 92.I sip my coffee foam. 93.My mug rim has traces of lipstick. 94.I construct a legal case to argue that sipping from this part of the bowl constitutes a kiss with a stranger. 95.That would increase my tally of kissed girls to three, still less than the national average. 96.I look around the Jupiter Cafe for a potential kissee, and settle on the waitress of the living, wise, moonlit viola neck. 97.A tendril of hair has fallen loose, and brushes her nape. 98.It tickles. 99.I compare the fuchsia pink on the mug with the pink of her lipstick. 100.Circumstantial evidence, at any distance. 101.Who knows how many times the cup has been dishwashed, fusing the lipstick atoms with the porcelain molecules? 102.And a sophisticated Tokyoite like her has enough admirers to fill a pocket computer. 103.Case dismissed. 104.Lao Tzu growls at his vidboy. 'Blasted, blasted blasted bioborgs. 105.Every blasted time.' 106.I sup my dregs and put on my baseball cap. 107.Time to go and find my maker.  108.PanOticon's lobby - cavernous as the belly of a stone whale - swallows me whole. 109.Arrows in the floorpads sense my feet, and guide me to a vacant reception booth. 110.A door hisses shut behind me, sealing subterranean blackness. 111.A tracer light scans me from head to foot, blipping over the barcode on my ID Panel. 112.An amber spotlight comes on, and my reflection stares back.113. I certainly look the part. 114.Overalls, baseball cap, toolbox and clipboard. 115.An ice maiden appears on the screen before me. 116.She is blemishlessly, symmetrically beautiful. 117.SECURITY glows on her lapel badge. 118.'State your name,' she intones, 'and business.' 119.I wonder how human she is. 120.These are days when computers humanize and humans computerize. 121. I play the

21

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 overawed yokel. 122.'Afternoon. 123.My name is Ran Sogabe. 124.I'm a Goldfish Pal.' 125.She frowns. 126.Excellent. 127.She's only human. 128.'Goldfish Pal?' 129.'Not seen our ad, ma'am?' 130.I sing a jingle. 'We cater for our finny friends -' 131.Why are you requesting access to PanOpticon?' 132.I act puzzled. 133.'I service Osugi and Kosugi's aquarium, ma'am.' 134.'Osugi and Bosugi.' 135I check my clipboard. 136.'That's the badger.' 137.'I'm scanning some curious objects in your toolbox.' 138.'Newly imported from Germany, ma'am. 139.May I present the ionic flurocarb pellet popper - doubtless you know how crucial pH stability is for the optimum aquarium environment? 140.We believe we are the first aquaculturists in the country to utilize this little wonder. 141.Perhaps I could offer a brief -' 142.'Place your right hand on the access scanner, Mr Sogabe.' 143.'I hope this is going to tickle.' 144.'That is your left hand.' 145.'Beg pardon.' 146.A brief eternity elapses before a green AUTHORIZED blinks. 147.'And your access code?' 148.She is vigilant. 149.I scrunch my eyes. 150.'Let me see: 313 - 636 - 969.' 151.The eyes of the ice maiden flicker. 152.'Your access code is valid.' 153.So it should be. I paid the finest freelance master hacker in Tokyo a fortune for those nine numbers. 154.'For the month of July. 155.I must remind you we are now in August.' 156.Cheapskate bum jet-trash hackers. 157.'Uh, how peculiar.' 158.I scratch my crotch to buy myself a moment. 159.'That was the access code I was given by Ms' - a doleful glance at my clipboard - 'Akiko Kato, associate lawyer at Osugi and Kosugi.' 160.'Bosugi.'

22

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 161.'Whatever. 162.Oh well. 163.If my access code isn't valid I can't very well enter, can I? 164.Pity. 165.When Ms Kato wants to know why her priceless Okinawan silverspines died from excrement poisoning, I can refer her to you. 166.What did you say your name was?' 167.Ice Maiden hardens. 168.Zealous ones are bluff-susceptible. 169.'Return tomorrow after rechecking your access codes.' 170.I huff and shake my head. 171.'Impossible! 172.Do you know how many fish I got on my turf? 173.In the old days, we had a bit more give and take, but since total quality management got hold of us we operate within an hour-by-hour timeframe. 174.One missed appointment, and our finny friends are phosphate feed. 176.Even while I stand here nitpicking with you, I got ninety angel-fish at the Metropolitan City Office in danger of asphyxiation. 177.No hard feelings, ma'am, but I have to insist on your name for our legal waiver form.' 178.I do my dramatic penpoise pause. 179.Ice Maiden flickers. 180.I relent. '181.Why not call Ms Kato's secretary? 182.She'll confirm my appointment.' 183.'I already did.' 184.Now I'm worried. 185.If my hacker got my alias wrong too, I am already burger-meat. 186.'But your appointment appears to be for tomorrow.' 187.'True. 188.Quite true. 189.My appointment was for tomorrow. 190.But the Fish Ministry issued an industry-wide warning last night. 191.An epidemic of silverspine, uh, ebola has come in from a contaminated Taiwanese batch. 192.It travels down air conduits, lodges itself in the gills, and . . . a disgusting sight to behold. 193.Fish literally swelling until their entrails pop out. 194.The boffins are working on a cure, but between you and me-' 195.Ice Maiden cracks. 196.'Anciliary authorization is granted for two hours. 197.From the reception booth proceed to the turbo elevator. 198.Do not stray from the sensor floor arrows, or you will trigger alarms and illegal entry recriminations. 199.The elevator will automatically proceed to Osugi and Bosugi on level eighty-one.' 200.'Level eighty-one, Mr Sogabe,' announces the elevator. 201.'I look forward to serving you again.' 202.The doors open on to a virtual rainforest of pot plants and ferns. 203.An aviary

23

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 of telephones trill. Behind an ebony desk, a young woman removes her glasses and puts down a spray-mister. 204.'Security said Mr Sogabe was coming.' 205.'Let me guess! Kazuyo, Kazuyo, am I right?' 206.'Yes, but-' 207.'No wonder Ran calls you his PanOpticon Angel!' 208.The receptionist isn't falling for it. 209.'Your name is?' 210.'Ran's apprentice! Joji. 211.Don't tell me he's never mentioned me! 212.I do Harajuku normally, but I'm covering his Shinjuku clients this month on account of his, uh, genital malaria.' 213.Her face falls. 214.'I beg your pardon?' 215.'Ran never mentioned it? 216.Well, who can blame him? 217.The boss thinks it's just a heavy cold. 218. that's why Ran didn't actually cancel his name from his clients' books ... All hushhush!' 219.I smile gingerly and look around for video cameras. 220.None visible. 221.I kneel, open my toolbox with the lid blocking her view, and begin assembling my secret weapon. 222.'Had a hell of time getting in here, y'know. 223.Artificial intelligence! 224.Artificial stupidity. 225.Ms Kato's office is down this corridor, is it?' 226.'Yes, but, look, Mr Joii, I have to ask you for a retinal scan.' 227.'Does it tickle?' 228.Finished. 229.I close the toolbox and approach her desk with my hands behind my back and a gormless grin. 230.'Where do I look?' 231.She turns a scanner towards me. 'Into this eyepiece.' 232.'Kazuyo.' I check we are alone. 233.'Ran told me, about, y'know - is it true?' 234.'Is what true?' 235.'Your eleventh toe?' 236.'My eleventh what?' 237.The moment she looks at her feet I pepper her neck with enough instant-action tranquillizer micro-pellets to knock out the entire Chinese Army. 238.She slumps on her blotter. 239.I make a witty pun in the manner of James Bond for my own amusement.

24

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 240.I knock three times. 241.'Goldfish Pal, Ms Kato!' 242.A mysterious pause. 243.'Enter.' 244.I check that the corridor is empty of witnesses, and slip in. 245.The actual lair of Akiko Kato matches closely the version in my imagination. 246.A chequered carpet. 247.A curved window of troubled cloud. 248.A wall of old-fashioned filing cabinets. 249.A wall of paintings too tasteful to trap the eye. 250.Between two half-moon sofas sits a huge spherical tank where a fleet of Okinawan silverspines haunt a coral palace and a sunken battleship. 251.Nine years have passed since I last saw Akiko Kato, but she has not aged a single day. 252.Her beauty is as cold and callous as ever. 253.She glances up from behind her desk. 254.'You are not the ordinary fish man.' 255.I lock the door. and drop the key in my pocket with my gun. 256.She looks me up and down. 257.'I am no fish man at all.' 258.She puts down her pen. 259.'What the hell do you-' 260.'It is a simple matter. 261.I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time: 262.Eiji Miyake. 263.Yes, that Eiji Miyake. 264.True. 265.It has been many years. 266.Look. 267.We are both busy people, so why not cut the small talk? 268.I am in Tokyo to find my father. 269.You know his name and you know his address. 270.And you are going to give me both. 271.Right now.' 272.Akiko Kato blinks, to verify the facts. 273.Then she laughs. 274.'Eiji Miyake?' 276.'I fail to see the funny side.' 277.'Not Luke Skywalker? 278.Not Zax Omega? 279.Do you seriously expect to reduce me to a state of awed obedience by your pathetic spiel? 280."One island boy embarks on a perilous mission to discover the father he has never met." 281.Do you know what happens to island boys once they leave their fantasies?' 282.She shakes her head in mock pity. 283.'Even my friends call me the most poisonous lawyer in Tokyo. 284.And you burst in here, expecting to intimidate me into passing on classified client information? 285.Please!' 286.'Ms Kato. 287.I produce my Walther PK 7.65mm, spin it nattily and aim it at her.

25

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 288.'You have a file on my father in this room. 289.Give it to me. 290.Please.' 291.She fakes outrage. 292.'Are you threatening me?' 293.I release the safety catch. 294.'I hope so. 295.Hands up where I can see them.' 296.'You got hold of the wrong script, child.' 297.She picks up her telephone, which explodes in a plastic supernova. 298.The bullet pings off the bulletproof glass and slashes into a picture of lurid sunflowers. 299.Akiko Kato bulges her eyes at the rip. 300.'You heathen! 301.You damaged my Van Gogh! 302.You are going to pay for that!' 303.'Which is more than you ever did. 304.The file. 305.Now.' 306.Akiko Kato snarls. 307.'Security will be here within thirty seconds.' 308.'I know the electronic blueprint of your office. 309.Spyproofed and soundproofed. 310.No messages in, none out. 311.Stop blustering and give me the file.' 312.'Such a nice life you could have had, picking oranges on Yakushima with your uncles and grandmother.' 313.'I don't want to ask you again.' 314.'If only matters were so simple. 315.But you see, your father has too much to lose. 316.Were news of his whored bastard offspring brat - you, that is - to leak out, it would cause red faces in high places. 317.This is why we have a modest secrecy retainer arrangement.' 318.'So?' 319.'So, this is a cosy little boat you are attempting to rock.' 320.'Ah. 321.I see. 322.If I meet my father you won't be able to blackmail him.' 323."'Blackmail" is a litigable word for someone still in search of the perfect acne lotion. 324.Being your father's lawyer calls for discretion. 324.Ever heard of discretion? 325.It sets decent citizens apart from criminals with handguns.' 326.'I am not leaving this office without the file.' 327.'You have a long wait ahead. 328.I would order some sandwiches, but you shot my telephone.'

26

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 329.I don't have time for this. 330.'Okay, okay, maybe we can discuss this in a more adult way.' 331.I lower my gun, and Akiko Kato allows herself a pert smile of victory. 332.The tranquillizers embed themselves in her neck. 333.She slumps back on to her chair, as unconscious as the deep blue sea. 334.Speed is everything. 335.I peel the Akiko Kato fingerpads over the Ran Sogabe ones, and access her computer. 336.I wheel her body into the corner. 337.Not nice - I keep thinking she's going to come back to life. 338.The deeper computer files are passworded, but I can override the locks on the filing cabinets. 339.MI for MIYAKE. 340.My name appears on the menu. 341.Double-click. 342.EIJI. 343.Double-click. 344.I hear a promising mechanical clunk, and a drawer telescopes open halfway down the wall. 345.I leaf through the slim metal carrier cases. 346.MIYAKE - EIJI - PATERNITY. 347.The case shines gold. 348.'Drop it.' 349.Akiko Kato closes the door with her ankle, and levels a Zuvre Lone Eagle .440 at the spot between my eyebrows. 350.Dumbly, I look at the Akiko Kato still slumped in her chair. 351.The doorway Kato laughs, a grin twisted and broad. 352.Emeralds and rubies are set in her teeth. 353.'A bioborg, dummy! 354.A replicant! 355.You never watched Bladerunner? 356.We saw you coming! 357.Our spy picked you up in Jupiter Cafè - the old man you bought cigarettes for? 358.His vidboy is an eye-cam linked to PanOpticon central computer. 359.Now kneel down - slowly - and slide your gun across the floor. 360.Slowly. 361.Don't make me nervous. 362.A Zuvre at this range will scramble your face so badly your own mother wouldn't recognize you. 363.But then, that never was her strong point, was it?' 364.I ignore the taunt. 365.'Unwise to approach an intruder without back-up.' 366.'Your father's file is a highly sensitive issue.' 367.'So your bioborg was telling the truth. 368.You want to keep the hush money my father pays you all for yourself.' 369.'Your main concern should not be practical ethics, but to dissuade me from omeletteing you.' 370.Keeping her eyes trained on me, she bends over to retrieve my Walther. 371.I aim the carrier case at her face and open the switchclips. 372.The lid-mounted incandescent booby trap explodes in her eyes. 373.She

27

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 screams, I roll-dive, her Zuvre fires, glass cracks, 374.I leap through the air, kick her head, wrench the pistol from her grip - it fires again - spin her around and uppercut her over the half-moon sofa. 375.Silverspines gush and thrash on the carpet. 376.The real Akiko Kato lies motionless. 377.I stuff the sealed folder on my father down my overalls, load up my toolbox and exit. 378.I close the door quietly over the slow stain already gathering on the corridor carpet. 379.I stroll down to the elevator, casually whistling 'Imagine'. 380.That was the easy part. 381.Now I have to get out of PanOpticon alive. 382.Drones fuss around the receptionist still slumped in her rainforest. 383.Weird. 384.I leave a trail of unconscious women wherever I go. 385.I summon the elevator, and show appropriate concern. 386.'Sick building syndrome, my uncle calls it. 387.Fish are affected in the same way, believe it or not.' 388.The elevator arrives and an old nurse barges out, tossing onlookers aside. 389.I step in and press the close button to whisk me away before anyone else can enter. 390.'Not so fast!' 391.A polished boot wedges itself between the closing doors, and a security guard muscles them apart. 392.He has the mass and nostrils of a minotaur. 393.'Ground Zero, son.' 394.I press the button and we begin our descent. 395.'So,' says Minotaur. 396.'You an industrial spy, or what?' 397.Blood and adrenalin swish through my body in strange ways. 398.'Huh?' 399.Minotaur keeps a straight face. 400.'You're trying to make a quick getaway, right? 401.That's why you nearly closed me in the elevator doors up there.' 402.Oh. 403.A joke. 404.'Yep.' 405.I rap my toolbox. 406..'Full of goldfish espionage data.' 407.Minotaur snorts a laugh. 408.The elevator slows and the doors open. 409.'After you,' I say, even though Minotaur shows no signs of letting me go first. 410.He disappears through a side door. 411.Floorpad arrows return me to a security booth. 412.I beam at Ice Maiden. 413.'I get to have you on the way in and on the way out? 414.This is the hand of destiny.'

28

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 415.Her eyes dart over a scanner. 416.'Standard procedure.' 417.'Oh.' 418.'You have discharged your duties?' 419.'Fully, thank you. 420.You know, ma'am, we at Goldfish Pal are proud to say that we have never lost a fish due to negligence in eighteen years of business. 421.We give each a postmortem, to establish cause of death. 422.Old age, every time. 423.Or client-sourced alcohol poisoning, during the end-of-year party season. if you are free I could tell you more about it over dinner.' 425.Ice Maiden glaciates me. 426.'We have nothing whatsoever in common.' 427.'We're both carbon-based. 428.You can't take that for granted these days.' 429.'If you are trying to disgust me out of asking why you have a Zuvre .440 in your toolbox, I must tell you that your efforts are wasted.' 430.I am a professional. 431.Fear must wait. 432.How, how, could I have been so stupid? 433.'That is absolutely impossible.' 444.'The gun is registered under Akiko Kato's name.' 445.'Oooh!' I chuckle, open the box and take out the gun. 446.'Do you mean this?' 447.'I do mean that.' 448.'This?' 449.'That.' 450.'This is, uh, for-' 451.'Yes?' 455.Ice Maiden reaches for an alarm. 456.' - this!' 457.The glass flowers with the first shot - alarms scream - the glass mazes with the second shot - I hear gas hiss - the glass cracks with the third shot, and I throw my body through the window - shouting and running - I land tumbling over the floor of the lobby, flashing with arrows. 458.Men and women crouch, terrified. 459.Everywhere is noise and jaggedness. 460.Down an access corridor guards' boots pound this way. 461.I engage the double safety catch, switch the Zuvre to continuous plasma fire, toss it into the path of the guards, and dive for the entrance. 462.Three seconds to overload doesn't give me enough time, and the explosion lifts me off my feet,

29

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 slams me into the revolving door, and literally spins me down the steps outside. 463.A gun that can blow up its user - no wonder Zuvres were withdrawn from production nine weeks after their launch. 464.Behind me all is chaos, smoke and sprinklers. 465.Around me is consternation, traffic collisions, and what I need most - frightened crowds. '466.A madman!' I rave. 467.'Madman on the loose! 468.Grenades! 469.He's got grenades! 470.Call the cops! 471.We need helicopters! 472.Helicopters everywhere! 473..More helicopters!' 474.I hobble away into the nearest department store. 475.I take my father's file from my new briefcase, still in its plastic seal, and mentally record the moment for posterity. 476.August 24th, twenty-five minutes past two, in the back of a bioborg taxi, rounding the west side of Yoyogi Park, under a sky as stained as a bachelor's underfuton, less than twenty-four hours after arriving in Tokyo, I discover my father's true identity. 477.Not bad going. 478.I straighten my tie. 479.I imagine Anju swinging her legs on the seat beside me. 480.'See?' 481.I tell her, tapping the file. 482.'Here he is. 483.His name, his face, his house, who he is, what he is. I did it. 484.For both of us.' 485.The taxi swerves to one side as an ambulance blue-shifts towards us. 486.I slit open the seal with my thumbnail, and extract the card file. 487.EIJI MIYAKE. 488. IDENTITY OF FATHER. 489.I take a deep breath, and far things feel near. 490.Page one. 491.The air-reactive ink is already melting into white.

 492.Lao Tzu growls at his vidboy. 493.'Blasted bioborgs. 494.Every blasted time.' 495.I sup my dregs, put on my baseball cap, and mentally limber up. 496.'Say, Captain,' Lao Tzu croaks, 'you wouldn't have a spare ciggie there, by any chance?' 497.I show him the empty carton of Mild Seven. 498.He gives me a doleful look. 499.I need some more anyway. 500.I have a stressful meeting ahead. 501.'Is there a machine in here?' 502.'Over there' - he nods - 'in all those plants. 503.I smoke CarIton.' 504.I have to break open yet another onethousand-yen note. 505.Money evaporates in Tokyo. 506.I may as well order another coffee to

30

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 build up my adrenalin before facing the real Akiko Kato. 507.In lieu of a fantasy Walther PK. I deploy my telepathy - 'Waitress! 508.You with the most perfect neck in all creation! 509.Stop unloading the glasswasher, come to the counter and serve me!' 510.My telepathy fails me today. 511.I get Dowager instead.

Appendix II: Extract from Atonement 1.The play - for which Briony had designed the posters, programmes and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper - was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch. 2. When the preparations were complete, she had nothing to do but contemplate her finished draft and wait for the appearance of her cousins from the distant north. 3. There would be time for only one day of rehearsal before her brother arrived. 4. At some moments chilling, at others desperately sad, the play told a tale of the heart whose message, conveyed in a rhyming prologue, was that love which did not build a foundation on good sense was doomed. 5. The reckless passion of the heroine, Arabella, for a wicked foreign count is punished by ill fortune when she contracts cholera during an impetuous dash towards a seaside town with her intended. 6. Deserted by him and nearly everybody else, bed-bound in a garret, she discovers in herself a sense of humour. 7. Fortune presents her a second chance in the form of an impoverished doctor - in fact, a prince in disguise who has elected to work among the needy. 8. Healed by him, Arabella chooses judiciously this time, and is rewarded by reconciliation with her family and a wedding with the medical prince on 'a windy sunlit day in spring'. 9. Mrs Tallis read the seven pages of The Trials of Arabella in her bedroom, at her dressing table. 10. With the author's arm around her shoulder the whole while. Briony studied her mother's face for every trace of shifting emotion, and Emily Tallis obliged with looks of alarm, snickers of glee and, at the end, grateful smiles and wise, affirming nods. 11. She took her daughter in her arms, onto her lap - ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet - and said that the play was 'stupendous', and agreed instantly, murmuring into the tight whorl of the girl's ear, that this word could be quoted on the poster which was to be on an easel in the entrance hall by the ticket booth.

31

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 12. Briony was hardly to know it then, but this was the project's highest point of fulfilment. 13. Nothing came near it for satisfaction, all else was dreams and frustration. 14. There were moments in the summer dusk after her light was out, burrowing in the delicious gloom of her canopy bed, when she made her heart thud with luminous, yearning fantasies, little playlets in themselves, every one of which featured Leon. In one, his big, good-natured face buckled in grief as Arabella sank in loneliness and despair. 15. In another, there he was, cocktail in hand at some fashionable city watering hole, overheard boasting to a group of friends: Yes, my younger sister, Briony Tallis the writer, you must surely have heard of her. In a third, he punched the air in exultation as the final curtain fell, although there was no curtain, there was no possibility of a curtain. 16. Her play was not for her cousins, it was for her brother, to celebrate his return, provoke his admiration and guide him away from his carless succession of girlfriends, towards the right form of wife, the one who would persuade him to return to the countryside, the one who would sweetly request Briony's services as a bridesmaid. 17. She was one of those children possessed by a desire to have the world just so. 18. Whereas her big sister's room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony's was a shrine to her controlling demon: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals, but all facing one way - towards their owner - as if about to break into song, and even the farmyard hens were neatly corralled. 19. In fact, Briony's was the only tidy upstairs room in the house. 20. Her straight-backed dolls in their many-roomed mansion appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls; the various thumb-sized figures to be found standing about her dressing table - cowboys, deep-sea divers, humanoid mice - suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen's army awaiting orders. 21. A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. 22. Another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished 23. cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp, and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. 24. In a toy safe opened by six secret numbers she stored letters and postcards. 25. An old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed. 26. In the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a

32

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 mutant double acorn, fool's gold, a rain-making spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel's skull as light as a leaf. 27. But hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. 28. Her wish for a harmonious, organised world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. 29. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel. 30. Her effective status as an only child, as well as the relative isolation of the Tallis house, kept her, at least during the long summer holidays, from girlish intrigues with friends. 31. Nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding; no one knew about the squirrel's skull beneath her bed, but no one wanted to know. 32. None of this was particularly an affliction; or rather, it appeared so only in retrospect, once a solution had been found. 33. At the age of eleven she wrote her first story - a foolish affair, imitative of half a dozen folk tales and lacking, she realised later, that vital knowingness about the ways of the world which compels a reader's respect. 34. But this first clumsy attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: once she had begun a story, no one could be told. 35. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone know. 36. Even writing out the she saids, the and thens, made her wince, and she felt foolish, appearing to know about the emotions of an imaginary being. 37. Self-exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character's weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. 38. What other authority could she have? 39. Only when a story was finished, all fates resolved and the whole matter sealed off at both ends so it resembled, at least in this one respect, every other finished story in the world, could she feel immune, and ready to punch holes in the margins, bind the chapters with pieces of string, paint or draw the cover, and take the finished work to show to her mother, or her father, when he was home. 40. Her efforts received encouragement. 41. In fact, they were welcomed as the Tallises began to understand that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words. 42. The long afternoons she spent browsing through dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in his pocket were 'esoteric.', a hoodlum caught

33

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 stealing a car wept in 'shameless autoexculpation.', the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a 'cursory' journey through the night, the king's furrowed brow was the 'hieroglyph' of his displeasure. 43. Briony was encouraged to read her stories aloud in the library and it surprised her parents and older sister to hear their quiet girl perform so boldly, making big gestures with her free arm, arching her eyebrows as she did the voices, and looking up from the page for seconds at a time as she read in order to gaze into one face after the other, unapologetically demanding her family's total attention as she cast her narrative spell. 44. Even without their attention and praise and obvious pleasure, Briony could not have been held back from her writing. 45. In any case, she was discovering, as had many writers before her, that not all recognition is helpful. 46. Cecilia's enthusiasm, for example, seemed a little overstated, tainted with condescension perhaps, and intrusive too; her big sister wanted each bound story catalogued and placed on the library shelves, between Rabindranath Tagore and Quintus Tertullian. 47. If this was supposed to be a joke, Briony ignored it. 48. She was on course now, and had found satisfaction on other levels; writing stories not only involved secrecy, it also gave her all the pleasures of miniaturisation. 49. A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. 50. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling love could be achieved in a single word - a glance. 51. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained. 52. Her passion for tidiness was also satisfied, for an unruly world could be made just so. 53. A crisis in a heroine's life could be made to coincide with hailstones, gales and thunder, whereas nuptials were generally blessed with good light and soft breezes. 54. A love of order also shaped the principles of justice, with death and marriage the main engines of house keeping, the former being set aside exclusively for the morally dubious, the latter a reward withheld until the final page. 55. The play she had written for Leon's homecoming was her first excursion into drama, and she had found the transition quite effortless. 56. It was relief not to be writing out the she saids, or describing the weather or the onset of spring or her heroine's face - beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, had infinite variation. 57. A universe reduced to what was

34

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 said in it was tidiness indeed, almost to the point of nullity, and to compensate, every utterance was delivered at the extremity of some feeling or other, in the service of which the exclamation mark was indispensable. 58. The Trials of Arabella may have been a melodrama, but its author had yet to hear the term. 59. The piece was intended to inspire not laughter, but terror, relief and instruction, in that order, and the innocent intensity with which Briony set about the project - the posters, tickets, sales booth - made her particularly vulnerable to failure. 60. She could easily have welcomed Leon with another of her stories, but it was the news that her cousins from the north were coming to stay that had prompted this leap into a new form. 61. That Lola, who was fifteen, and the nineyear-old twins, Jackson and Pierrot, were refugees from a bitter domestic civil war should have mattered more to Briony. 62. She had heard her mother criticise the impulsive behaviour of her younger sister Hermione, and lament the situation of the three children, and denounce her meek, evasive brother-in-law Cecil who had fled to the safety of All Souls College, Oxford. Briony had heard her mother and sister analyse the latest twists and outrages, charges and counter charges, and she knew her cousins' visit was an open-ended one, and might even extend into term time. 63. She had heard it said that the house could easily absorb three children, and that the Quinceys could stay as long as they liked, provided the parents, if they ever visited simultaneously, kept their quarrels away from the Tallis household. 64. Two rooms near Briony's had been dusted down, new curtains had been hung and furniture carried in from other rooms. 65. Normally, she would have been involved in these preparations, but they happened to coincide with her two-day writing bout and the beginnings of the front-of-house construction. 66. She vaguely knew that divorce was an affliction, but she did not regard it as a proper subject, and gave it no thought. 67. It was.a mundane unravelling that could not be reversed, and therefore offered no opportunities to the storyteller: it belonged in the realm of disorder. Marriage was the thing, or rather, a wedding was, with its formal neatness of virtue rewarded, the thrill of its pageantry and banqueting, and dizzy promise of lifelong union. 68. A good wedding was an unacknowledged representation of the as yet unthinkable - sexual bliss. 69. In the aisles of country churches and grand city cathedrals, witnessed by a whole society of approving family and friends, her heroines and heroes, reached their innocent climaxes and needed to go no further.

35

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 70. If divorce had presented itself as the dastardly antithesis of all this, it could easily have been cast onto the other pan of the scales, along with betrayal, illness, thieving, assault and mendacity. 71. Instead it showed an unglamorous face of dull complexity and incessant wrangling. 72. Like re-armament and the Abyssinia Question and gardening, it was simply not a subject, and when, after a long Saturday morning wait, Briony heard at last the sound of wheels on the gravel below her bedroom window, and snatched up her pages and ran down the stairs, across the hallway and out into the blinding light of midday, it was not insensitivity so much as a highly focused artistic ambition that caused her to shout to the dazed young visitors huddled together by the trap with their luggage, 'I've got your parts, all written out. 73. First performance tomorrow! 74. Rehearsals start in five minutes!' 75. Immediately, her mother and sister were there to interpose a blander timetable. 76. The visitors - all three were ginger-haired and freckled - were shown their rooms, their cases were carried up by Hardman's son Danny, there was cordial in the kitchen, a tour of the house, a swim in the pool and lunch in the south garden, under the shade of the vines. 77. All the while, Emily and Cecilia Tallis maintained a patter that surely robbed the guests of the ease it was supposed to confer. 78. Briony knew that if she had travelled two hundred miles to a strange house, bright questions and jokey asides, and being told in a hundred different ways that she was free to choose, would have oppressed her. 79. It was not generally realised that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone. 80. However, the Quinceys worked hard at pretending to be amused or liberated, and this boded well for The Trials of Arabella: this trio clearly had the knack of being what they were not, even though they barely resembled the characters they were to play. 81. Before lunch Briony slipped away to the empty rehearsal room - the nursery - and walked up and down on the painted floorboards, considering her casting options. 82. On the face of it, Arabella, whose hair was as dark as Briony's, was unlikely to be descended from freckled parents, or elope with a foreign freckled count, rent a garret room from a freckled innkeeper, lose her heart to a freckled prince and be married by a freckled vicar before a freckled congregation. 83. But all this was to be so. 84. Her cousins' colouring was too vivid virtually fluorescent! - to be concealed. 85. The best that could be said was that Arabella's lack of freckles was the sign - the hieroglyph, Briony

36

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 might have written - of her distinction. 86. Her purity of spirit would never be in doubt, though she moved through a blemished world. 87. There was a further problem with the twins, who could not be told apart by a stranger. 88. Was it right that the wicked count should so completely resemble the handsome prince, or that both should resemble Arabella's father and the vicar? 89. What if Lola were cast as the prince? 90. Jackson and Pierrot seemed typical eager little boys who would probably do as they were told. 91. But would their sister play a man? 92. She had green eyes and sharp bones in her face, and hollow cheeks, and there was something brittle in her reticence that suggested strong will and a temper easily lost. 93. Merely floating the possibility of the role to Lola might provoke a crisis, and could Briony really hold hands with her before the altar, while Jackson intoned from the Book of Common Prayer? 94. It was not until five o'clock that afternoon that she was able to assemble her cast in the nursery. 95. She had arranged three stools in a row, while she herself jammed her rump into an ancient baby's high-chair - a bohemian touch that gave her a tennis umpire's advantage of height. 96. The twins had come with reluctance from the pool where they had been for three hours without a break. 97. They were barefoot and wore singlets over trunks that dripped onto the floorboards. 98. Water also ran down their necks from their matted hair and both boys were shivering and jiggled their knees to keep warm. 99. The long immersion had puckered and bleached their skin, so that in the relatively low light of the nursery their freckles appeared black. 100. Their sister, who sat between them, with left leg balanced on right knee, was, by contrast, perfectly composed, having liberally applied perfume and changed into a green gingham frock to offset her colouring. 101. Her sandals revealed an ankle bracelet and toenails painted vermilion. 102. The sight of these nails gave Briony a constricting sensation around her sternum, and she knew at once that she could not ask Lola to play the prince. 103. Everyone was settled and the playwright was about to begin her little speech summarising the plot and evoking the excitement of performing before an adult audience tomorrow evening in the library. 104. But it was Pierrot who spoke first. 105. 'I hate plays and all that sort of thing.' 106. 'I hate them too, and dressing up,' Jackson said.

37

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 107. It had been explained at lunch that the twins were to be distinguished by the fact that Pierrot was missing a triangle of flesh from his left ear lobe on account of a dog he had tormented when he was three. 108. Lola looked away. 109. Briony said reasonably, 'How can you hate plays?' 110. 'It's just showing off.' 111. Pierrot shrugged as he delivered this self-evident truth. 112. Briony knew he had a point. 113. This was precisely why she loved plays, or hers at least; everyone would adore her. 114. Looking at the boys, under whose chairs water was pooling before spilling between the floorboard cracks, she knew they could never understand her ambition. 115. Forgiveness softened her tone. 116. 'Do you think Shakespeare was just showing off?' 117. Pierrot glanced across his sister's lap towards Jackson. 118. This warlike name was faintly familiar, with its whiff of school and adult certainty, but the twins found their courage in each other. 119. 'Everyone knows he was.' 120. 'Definitely.' 121. When Lola spoke, she turned first to Pierrot and halfway through her sentence swung round to finish on Jackson. 122. In Briony's family, Mrs Tallis never had anything to impart that needed saying simultaneously to both daughters. 123. Now Briony saw how it was done. 124. 'You'll be in this play, or you'll get a clout, and then I'll speak to The Parents.' 125. 'If you clout us, we'll speak to The Parents.' 126. 'You'll be in this play or I'll speak to The Parents.' 127. That the threat had been negotiated neatly downwards did not appear to diminish its power. 128. Pierrot sucked on his lower lip. 129. 'Why do we have to?' 130. Everything was conceded in the question, and Lola tried to ruffle his sticky hair. 131. 'Remember what The Parents said? 132. We're guests in this house and we make ourselves - what do we make ourselves? 133. Come on. 134. What do we make ourselves?'

38

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 135. 'A-menable,' the twins chorused in misery, barely stumbling over the unusual word. 136. Lola turned to Briony and smiled. 137. 'Please tell us about your play.' 138. The Parents. 139. Whatever institutionalised strength was locked in this plural was about to fly apart, or had already done so, but for now it could not be acknowledged, and bravery was demanded of even the youngest. 140. Briony felt suddenly ashamed at what she had selfishly begun, for it had never occurred to her that her cousins would not want to play their parts in The Trials of Arabella. 141. But they had trials, a catastrophe of their own, and now, as guests in her house, they believed themselves under an obligation. 142. What was worse, Lola had made it clear that she too would be acting on sufferance. 143. The vulnerable Quinceys were being coerced. 144. And yet, Briony struggled to grasp the difficult thought, wasn't there manipulation here, wasn't Lola using the twins to express something on her behalf, something hostile or destructive? 145. Briony felt the disadvantage of being two years younger than the other girl, of having a full two years' refinement weigh against her, and now her play seemed a miserable, embarrassing thing. 146. Avoiding Lola's gaze the whole while, she proceeded to outline the plot, even as its stupidity began to overwhelm her. 147. She no longer had the heart to invent for her cousins the thrill of the first night. 148. As soon as she was finished Pierrot said, 'I want to be the count. 149. I want to be a bad person.' 150. Jackson said simply, 'I'm a prince. 151. I'm always a prince.' 152. She could have drawn them to her and kissed their little faces, but she said, 'That's all right then.' 153. Lola uncrossed her legs, smoothed her dress and stood, as though about to leave. 154. She spoke through a sigh of sadness or resignation. 155. 'I suppose that because you're the one who wrote it you'll be Arabella . .' 156. 'Oh no,' Briony said. 157. 'No. Not at all.' 158. She said no, but she meant yes. 159. Of course she was taking the part of Arabella. 160. What she was objecting to was Lola's 'because'. 161. She was not playing Arabella because she wrote the play, she was taking the part because

39

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 no other possibility had crossed her mind, because that was how Leon was to see her, because she was Arabella. 162. But she had said no, and now Lola was saying sweetly, 'In that case, do you mind if I play her? 163. I think I could do it very well. 164. In fact, of the two of us...' 165. She let that hang, and Briony stared at her, unable to keep the horror from her expression, and unable to speak. 166. It was slipping away from her, she knew, but there was nothing that she could think of to say that would bring it back. 167. Into Briony's silence, Lola pressed her advantage. 168. 'I had a long illness last year, so I could do that part of it well too.' 169. Too? Briony could not keep up with the older girl. 170. The misery of the inevitable was clouding her thoughts. 171. One of the twins said proudly, 'And you were in the school play.' 172. How could she tell them that Arabella was not a freckled person? 173. Her skin was pale and her hair was black and her thoughts were Briony's thoughts. 175. But how could she refuse a cousin so far from home whose family life was in ruins? 176. Lola was reading her mind because she now played her final card, the unrefusable ace. 177. 'Do say yes. 178. It would be the only good thing that's happened to me in months.' 179. Yes. 180. Unable to push her tongue against the word, Briony could only nod, and felt as she did so a sulky thrill of self-annihilating compliance spreading across her skin and ballooning outwards from it, darkening the room in throbs. 181. She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone, face-down on her bed and savour the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. 182. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime. 183. Not only Leon to consider, but what of the antique peach and cream satin dress that her mother was looking out for her, for Arabella's wedding? 184. That would now be given to Lola. 185. How could her mother reject the daughter who had loved her all these years? 186. As she saw the dress make its perfect, clinging fit around her cousin and witnessed her mother's heartless smile, Briony knew her only

40

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001 reasonable choice then would be to run away, to live under hedges, eat berries and speak to no one, and be found by a bearded woodsman one winter's dawn, curled up at the base of a giant oak, beautiful and dead, and barefoot, or perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with pink ribbon straps...

41

Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological Novels of 2001

Sources Cited Chatman, S 1978 Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film Ithica/London: Cornell Univ. Press Leech, G & Short, M 1981 Style in Fiction: a Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose London: Longman Liddel, Robert 1947 A Treatise on the Novel London: Jonathan Cape Lodge, David 2002 Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays London: Secker & Warburg McEwan, Ian 2001 Atonement London: Vintage Mitchell, David 2001 Number9Dream Polmont: Hodder & Stoughton Simpson 1993 Language, Ideology & Point of View London: Routledge Toolan, M R 2001 Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (2nd ed) London: Routledge

42

1

Notes

Number9Dream is orientated from the spatio-temporal setting of late-Twentieth Century Tokyo, a Jamesonian postmodern city indexed by deictic items such as the coffee house (the Jupiter Café), electronic gadgets like Lao Tzu’s vidboy (a thinly-veiled Nintendo Gameboy) and observations of enormous dehumanising commotion: “Not a single person is standing still. 30. Rivers, snowstorms, traffic, bytes, generations, a thousand faces per minute” (29-30). Under Liddel’s relations of setting to plot and character, Number9Dream is ‘kaleidoscopic’, it shifts rapidly between the physical world and the world of the imagination (1947, 124-5). Temporal and spatial deixis combine to make this highly ‘proximal’ (see Simpson 1993, 18). 2

FDT never extends to stream of consciousness, the ‘closest’ form of reporting. Though Eiji’s thoughts are presented in the present tense and first-person, they are still ordered and grammaticised in a conventional fashion. 3

Our sense of space is very much Eiji’s, as indicated by his verbal qualifiers: “A big Panasonic display” (19), “A building as huge as the PanOpticon” (42). 4

The reader is aligned so closely to Eiji that it is difficult to differentiate definite FDT statements such as: My first morning in Tokyo, and I am already getting ahead of myself (11) Quite a sight, this zirconium gothic skyscraper (16) How do daydreams translate into reality? (37) from PN: The Jupiter cafe sloshes with lunch-hour laughter, Friday plottings, clinking saucers. Drones bark into mobile phones. She-drones hitch up sagging voices to sound more feminine. Coffee, seafood sandwiches, detergent, steam. I have an across-the-street view of the PanOpticon's main entrance. (12-15) I light a cigarette . . . and watch the traffic and passers-by on the intersection between Omekaido Avenue and Kita Street. Pin-striped drones, a lip-pierced hairdresser, midday drunks, child-laden housewives. Not a single person is standing still. (27-29) The last instance seemingly combines PN with FDT, as it is not only an accurate description but a modal statement expressing Eiji’s negative attitude towards Tokyo’s extreme bustle. In first person discourse Free Direct Thought appears to be indistinct from Pure Narration, as all external events must be perceived by the narrator and expressed in thought if they are to be described to the reader. FDT is only set aside by obvious mediation such as the expressive aside “quite a sight” (16). Eiji’s presence is constant in PN, in deliberate lexis choices such as his use of bark rather than speak to describe people on mobile phones, indicating his country-boy disdain of urban behaviour (sentence 13). But he would be unlikely to think in this kind of vocabulary when he perceived the people on the phone (if he thought anything at all, as it is very difficult to establish what, if any, kind of cognitive experiences are pre-linguistic). This is diegesis, told to us by Eiji, in the middle of what purports to be experiential, mimetic text. What a reader easily interprets through the conventions of novel-writing does not unpack satisfactorily on an extra-textual level. As Leech & Short put it: “the thoughts of characters . . . are ultimately an artifice. We cannot see inside the minds of other people, but if the motivation for the

actions and attitudes of characters is to be made clear to the reader, the representation of their thoughts, like the use of soliloquy on stage, is a necessary licence” (1981, 337). 5

Atonement is orientated from the spatio-temporal setting of an English Country house at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, as indexed by deictic items such as a house library (43), bedrooms with dressing tables (9), cocktails (15) and characteristically large families. These serve as a generic marker of ‘the English Country House novel’, a mode utilised from Jane Austen to Agatha Christie, and associated information from these texts is reapplied by the reader. As in Austen, the relationship of setting to plot and character is ‘utilitarian’. It is minimally necessary, “simple, low-toned, descriptive writing, intended to throw the human drama into relief” (Liddel 1947, 113-15). At points, however, it becomes ‘symbolic’ (1947, 115), relating Briony’s organised space to her organised nature. 6

To fully convey the impact of Briony’s disillusionment in attempting to actually stage her play, the text pace slows to ‘stretch’. During her free direct thought ‘yes’, which will mark her defeat, an enormous amount of complex emotions strike Briony, including several proleptic scenes (running away, hiding in her room, her mother’s neglect and ultimately her death) must happen in moments. 7

Other characters are portrayed foremost through Briony’s FIT, our opinion of them is initially conditioned by Briony’s: “Cecilia's enthusiasm, for example, seemed a little overstated, tainted with condescension perhaps, and intrusive too” (46) 8

The (relative) preponderance of discourse over story in Atonement is a feature of this extract, rather than the novel as a whole. Its purpose is to give the reader such a sense of Briony’s mindset that they understand her subsequent behaviour, which results in Robbie Turner being sent to prison for rape. The interiority of young Briony is never investigated in this kind of detail again, instead moving around other character’s consciousness to observe events. 9

To use Simpson’s typology of narrative modes, Atonement oscillates between types B(R) and B(N) (that is, third person character-mediated narration or entirely impersonal third person narration) (see Toolan 2001, 70). Both are positively modalised, demonstrating an ‘objective’ view of character and a definite purpose. 10

Her toys are not so much organised, as a direct representation of her desire for order and control. Metaphor and similie are used to turn what are effectively relational processes (“Her room was tidy. Her toy animals and dolls were well organised”) into the dynamic material processes of break, instruct, touch and awaiting: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals, but all facing one way - towards their owner - as if about to break into song . . . Her straight-backed dolls in their many-roomed mansion appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls; the various thumb-sized figures to be found standing about her dressing table - cowboys, deep-sea divers, humanoid mice - suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen's army awaiting orders (18-20). 11

Briony’s discourse is undermined, finally, by other character-alignments. In Number9Dream the sole character-viewpoint is Eiji’s, despite the presence of fifteen other characters (see Fig 3). This is not the case in Atonement where traces of Emily Tallis and the twins’ thoughts are reported. As Leech and Short put it, “even by the mere use of thought act reporting, [a writer] is inviting us to see things from that character’s point of view” (1981, 338). When Briony shows her play to her mother, the pace slows

from summary to scene for the first time, to allow what is undoubtedly a report of FIT: She took her daughter in her arms, onto her lap - ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet - and said that the play was 'stupendous' (11) The use of dashes demonstrates a shift to Emily Tallis’ direct perceptions, still more so the internal marker of emotion ah. This thought confirms what the reader has probably already interpreted of Briony, that her bold drama marks the naivety and powerlessness of a child. The reporting of the twins’ FIT contributes to the impression that Briony, as a child, has a limited view of the outside world: Pierrot glanced across his sister's lap towards Jackson. This warlike name [“Shakespeare”] was faintly familiar, with its whiff of school and adult certainty, but the twins found their courage in each other. (117-18). This thought process indicates a whole world that is very different to Briony’s. Shakespeare does not connotate joyous cultural value to the twins, but school. While Shakespeare symbolises the freedom to express oneself through writing for Briony, for them it is a form of oppression, indissolubly tied an external adult world The narrator makes Briony’s alienation from the external world even explicit in an external, heterodiegetic aside: “Like re-armament and the Abyssinia Question and gardening, it was simply not a subject” (72). 12

However transitivity processes are not as useful in other texts, as Eiji’s mode of presentation often elipts processes which are interpreted from the dialogue, and often opts to perceive actions which have happened due to his material processes. So instead of saying “I shot the telephone” he says the telephone “explodes in a plastic supernova” (297) 13

The PanOpticon is itself intertextual, a reference to Nineteenth Century prisons where every prisoner is under constant surveillance. As Akiko Kato says, “We saw you coming!” (356) 14

The embedded narrative layer has its own chronology, even its own external homodiegetic analepsis: “I paid the finest freelance master hacker in Tokyo a fortune for those nine numbers”. The foregrounding of narrative construction is not only described as a facet of Eiji’s narration, but also as an inherent property of the consumer-capitalist world. Eiji attempts to construct his identity by smoking a brand called Kool, a straightforward representation of the semes (signifieds of connotation) utilised in the world of advertising, where a brand name is created by nominalising an attractive attribute (with associated pop culture misspelling). It echoes Martin Amis’ nominalising of attributes to name cars in Money, where the central protagonist rides a Fiasco. Here the associated detail that this was “the brand chosen by a biker ahead of me in the queue” (97) indicates the type of image that Eiji is trying to cultivate, connotating the ‘typical’ idolising nature of an adolescent. This nominalising process is not restricted to Eiji, however. Akiko Kato’s obsession with her “Van Gogh” (301) demonstrates that the same process occurs in the adult world, masking aesthetic objects with nominalised connotations of false value systems. 15

16

If a character is defined by a sole trait, they are the ultimate ‘flat’ character in EM Forster’s terms (see Chatman 1978, 132). By contrast the waitress ‘with the perfect neck’ is full of indeterminancies, and will develop into a ‘round’ character as the novel progresses. 17

This micro-linguistic strategy of symbolic construction serves a particularly postmodern purpose. It is metafictional in that it draws attention to the fact that our perception is this novel is entirely conditioned by Eiji’s perceptions. 18

The idea that Eiji is constructing himself through his discourse reaches new complexity on the level of the adventure story, in which he plays out another identity (Ran Sogabe) which, in itself, has two layers (Ran is imitated by Joji, ‘Ran’s apprentice’). Unpacked, Eiji is pretending to be a proleptic version of himself who is pretending to be a fishtank repairman who is in turn pretending to be another fishtank repairman. The repetitive frequency of the opening lines of the extract (lines 1-8 are repeated as lines 260271, in a slightly refined version), seemingly shifted from an imagined to a real context the second time, emphasise the crucial elements of Eiji’s characterisation – he is Eiji Miyake, he does not know the identity of his father, and he is in Tokyo to find this out. This is expanded as a theme, through the use of a lexical cohesive chain relating to identity: I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time (2) Eiji Miyake. Yes, that Eiji Miyake. (2-3) You know his name and you know his address (6) they know who ushered them on to Earth (34) sipping from this part of the bowl constitutes a kiss with a stranger (95) State your name (118) My name is Ran Sogabe (123) 'That was the access code I was given by Ms' - a doleful glance at my clipboard - 'Akiko Kato (159) What did you say your name was?' (166) but I have to insist on your name for our legal waiver form.' (177) If my hacker got my alias wrong too, I am already burger-meat. (185) 'Let me guess! Kazuyo, Kazuyo, am I right?' (205) 'Your name is?' (209) 'Ran's apprentice! Joji. (210) Mr Joii, I have to ask you for a retinal scan.' (226) 'Goldfish Pal, Ms Kato!' (241) 'You are not the ordinary fish man.' (254) 'I am no fish man at all.' (257) I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time (261) .Eiji Miyake. Yes, that Eiji Miyake. (262-3) You know his name and you know his address (269) 'Eiji Miyake?' (274) 'Not Luke Skywalker? 278.Not Zax Omega? (277) Were news of his whored bastard offspring brat - you, that is - to leak out (316) MIYAKE - EIJI - PATERNITY. (346) 'A bioborg, dummy! 354.A replicant! (353) Our spy picked you up in Jupiter Cafè - the old man you bought cigarettes for (357) A Zuvre at this range will scramble your face so badly your own mother wouldn't recognize you. But then, that never was her strong point, was it?' (362-3) 'You an industrial spy, or what?' (396) 'The gun is registered under Akiko Kato's name.' (444) 'Here he is. His name, his face, his house, who he is, what he is. (482-3) EIJI MIYAKE. IDENTITY OF FATHER (487-8)

19

The repetitive frequency of Lao Tzu’s comment, occurring immediately before and after descent into the imagined narrative level, serves as a marker of the third (narrative) layer, another form of bathos which implies that excitement in the superordinate world can only be found by entering an embedded narrative layer, by immersing oneself in a game.