Northern Virginia Community College Classmate Essay Review The professor posted: NARRATORS Objective: To show you the difference the narrator makes (and

Northern Virginia Community College Classmate Essay Review The professor posted:

NARRATORS

Objective: To show you the difference the narrator makes (and to show me that you have understood the difference between narrators). How does the way a story is told (the ‘narrative’) influence our reactions to and understanding of a story

What you need to do: Take a long paragraph/page and switch the person of the narration. (This is relatively simple. You will also need to make sure that the verbs are properly conjugated.

Then reflect on the differences that this makes to our understanding and to the effect of the story. Does this alteration change our view of the story? Does it change our identification with the characters? How would the story you have chosen be less/more moving or convincing if narrated in a different person? (Minimum: 500 words.)

Remember: this is a very short essay. It should have a thesis. It should be organized into paragraphs. It should back up its thesis with evidence from the text. It should be written in clear, grammatical English. (If you have problems with grammar, keep your sentences short.)

Klosevin, U just helped me with this assignment. I do have two of my classmates’ essays here, and I need a review for them.

For your peer review: You want to help the person whose (short) paper you are reading and you want to show me that you have given your review some thought.

Here are the questions your should answer in your review of your parnter’s drafts:

How pertinent to the thesis is each claim in the draft? Does everything fit? What doesn’t fit? Why?
How pertinent to the thesis is each claim in the draft Does everything fit? What doesn’t fit? Why?
How well does the author support each claim in the draft in terms of evidence? Is the evidence accurate?
What might be done to improve the draft? (Do not rewrite the paper for your partner.)

You might do well to write your response as a letter. Julia Kidwell
Formative essay
15 July 2020
Original:
“Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Avenue; when
we move out you’ll still be too young to remember the house, but we’ll show you pictures of it,
tell you stories about it. I’d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you’re conceived,
but the right time to do that would be when you’re ready to have children of your own, and we’ll
never get that chance. Telling it to you any earlier wouldn’t do any good; for most of your life
you won’t sit still to hear such a romantic— you’d say sappy—story. I remember the scenario of
your origin you’ll suggest when you’re twelve. “The only reason you had me was so you could
get a maid you wouldn’t have to pay,” you’ll say bitterly, dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the
closet. “That’s right,” I’ll say. “Thirteen years ago I knew the carpets would need vacuuming
around now, and having a baby seemed to be the cheapest and easiest way to get the job done.
Now kindly get on with it.”
3rd person:
Right now her dad and mom have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Avenue;
when they move out she’ll still be too young to remember the house, but they’ll show her
pictures of it, tell her stories about it. She’d love to tell her the story of this evening, the night she
was conceived, but the right time to do that would be when she’s ready to have children of her
own, and they’ll never get that chance. Telling it to her any earlier wouldn’t do any good; for
most of her life she won’t sit still to hear such a romantic— she’d say sappy—story. She
remembers the scenario of her origin she’ll suggest when she’s twelve. “The only reason they
had her was so they could get a maid they wouldn’t have to pay,” she’ll say bitterly, dragging the
vacuum cleaner out of the closet. “That’s right,” they’ll say. “Thirteen years ago they knew the
carpets would need vacuuming around now, and having a baby seemed to be the cheapest and
easiest way to get the job done. Now kindly get on with it.”
In “Story of your Life” by Ted Chiang, I took the original text in 1 st person and changed it
to 3rd person. I decided to do this because the reader does not know who the characters are, up
until my paragraph at least. One can assume that the narrator is a female, because she talks
about her husband. She also talks about the night that a child was conceived, so it has to be a
female. You have to dig deeper into the story to get genders and names of people. although
this story is written in 1st person and it leaves the reader guessing who is narrating, having
names is not as helpful as it sounds.
I decided to make the child that was conceived a female. It really changes the way we
look at the characters due to the fact that she is not a “they”, “you”, “a baby”, etc. It allows the
reader to be more understanding of the story and which character is what. It does not talk too
much in the beginning of the story about who the main characters are. It is mentioned how
there is a husband and a child. You then assume there is a female involved because they
describe her characteristics. I chose my paragraph from the beginning of the short story, so that
is why I am mentioning that now. I know later on in the story they go more into detail.
As any mom should be, the mother in this story goes on to wonder what kind of life she
will provide for her child, what will be happening when her daughter is a teenager, and the
coming of alien-like beings, also known of as heptapods. The mother in this story goes on to
really understand the heptapods. The mother of the child, Dr. Louise Banks, and fellow physicist
Dr. Gary Donnelly are in charge of learning more about the heptapods. The two most famous
heptapods in this story are Flapper and Raspberry. We learn Dr. Louise Banks’ name a few
pages in.
In conclusion, giving pronouns for the characters really helps the reader envision the
story better. If it was told in second person, the narrator would be referring to a human as an
“it.” This would most definitely confuse the reader, as if this “it” is not a human, rather, and
object or some sort of creature. When I was reading this story, I had a few things come to mind.
First, it was very interesting. But since the narrator is narrating her own story, it all sounded like
a biography. As if the narrator was trying to save all of these stories for her child when she got
older. I do think it would be less convincing if it was written in a different person. Since the
narrator is talking about her own experiences, you can really believe that it actually happened.
Being able to understand what you are reading, who your characters are, and what is
happening in the story is important.
Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
Third person:
Louise has a recurring dream about her daughter’s death. In the dream, Louise is the one who’s rock
climbing—Louise, can you imagine it?— and her daughter is three years old, riding in some kind of
backpack she’s wearing. They’re just a few feet below a ledge where they can rest, and the girl won’t
wait until she’s climbed up to it. The girl starts pulling herself out of the pack; Louise orders her to stop,
but of course she ignore her. She feels the girl’s weight alternating om one side of the pack to the
other as she climbs out; then feels her le foot on her shoulder, and then her right. Louise is screaming
at her, but can’t get a hand ee to grab her. She can see the wavy design on the soles of her daughter’s
sneakers as she climbs, and then sees a flake of stone give way beneath one of them. Her daughter
slides right past her, and she can’t move a muscle. She looks down and sees her daughter shrink into the
distance below her. Then, all of a sudden, Louise is at the morgue. An orderly li s the sheet om her
daughter’s face, and she sees that she’s twenty-five.
“You okay?” Louise was sitting upright in bed; She’d woken Gary with her movements. “I’m fine. I was
just startled; I didn’t recognize where I was for a moment.” Sleepily, he said, “We can stay at your place
next time.” She kissed him. “Don’t worry; your place is fine.” They curled up, her back against his chest,
and went back to sleep.
When Louise’s daughter is three and they’re climbing a steep, spiral flight of stairs, she holds her hand
extra tightly. The girl pulls her hand away om her. “I can do it by myself,” She’ll insist, and then move
away om her mother to prove it, and Louise will remember that dream. They’ll repeat that scene
countless times during the girl’s childhood. Louise can almost believe that, given her daughter’s contrary
nature, her attempts to protect her will be what create her love of climbing: first the jungle gym at the
playground, then trees out in the green belt around their neighborhood, the rock walls at the climbing
club, and ultimately cliff faces in national parks.
Reflection:
I chose a portion of “Story of Your Life” where the narrator and mother, Louise, talks about the
recurring dream of her daughter’s death. There is a brief passage where she is talking to her future
husband, and then a flashback to another memory of her daughter, but younger. The passage as a
whole tells the story of her daughter’s death, in a roundabout way. I decided to switch the narrator to
an omniscient third person.
Telling this portion of the story from the perspective of an onlooker is depersonalizing, as the
scene is pretty emotional and personal. The narrator talks about her dream and her deep personal
thoughts, so it must be an omniscient narrator to be in third person. It’s much more effective to use first
person if it deals with intense emotions, because it feels like the person who experienced it wrote it
themselves.
The original story uses “I” and “you” to refer to Louise and her daughter, never using the
daughter’s name, and the mother’s name is only known from a previous passage in the story. This made
it difficult to switch to third person, because both people are now “she”. I decided to refer to the
original narrator as Louise, and to her daughter as “her daughter” or “the girl”. It made it a lot clunkier
to read, because I felt like I had to constantly clarify who “she” was, otherwise it was not clear. I would
have to rearrange a lot more words than just pronouns and verb conjugations to make the passage
easier to read. The original point of view was easier to understand because it was both first person and
second person, like the narrator was talking only to her daughter and nobody else. Similarly, in the parts
where Louise is talking to Gary, I was able to just use “she” and “he” to differentiate who was speaking,
instead of continually naming the speaker.
It’s easier to identify with a character when they are the narrator. We as the audience get to
hear their voice in the narration style and it’s automatically more relatable and personable. The story
feels as if a mother is telling her daughter a story and we are just reading it. First person makes
moments like, “Then, all of a sudden, I’m at the morgue” more impactful because we feel the sudden
shift in setting along with the character. Switching to third person makes us feel like an outsider looking
in, rather than being told a story by one of its characters, or seeing from the point of view of the
narrator, telling her life’s story to her daughter.
The story’s first-person narrator is the most effective method of telling the story, as perspective
is a major theme. Louise talks about her thought processes, dreams, and feelings in a way that feel odd
to hear from another person’s point of view. Speaking in the first person and using second person “you”
to refer to her daughter continually throughout the story reminds the reader that it’s really two stories
happening at once. The narrator uses “I” when talking about her own experiences, and “you” when
telling her daughter’s story.

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