NARRATIVE THEORY & THE GRAVEYARD BOOK (2008)

LCN617—Children’s Literature: Criticism and Practice

2015

Erica Hateley--erica.hateley@qut.edu.au

Narrative = what happens / story / plot Narration = how the story is told

“The narrator’s is the ‘voice’ we hear as we ‘listen’ to the story being told, and the narratee is the more or less shadowy being within the story whom, it can always be shown, the narrator addresses.” (Wall 4) Overt and covert (Wall 5)

NARRATIVE AS AN EDUCATIONAL STRATEGY… Didactic children’s literature is very clear in its linking of

actions with consequences (positive and negative); texts will clearly endorse particular ways of acting and being.

More contemporary children’s literature has tended towards greater complexity: Exploring ethics – seeking the ‘good’ Linking behaviour with character, suggesting that “what you do” =

“who you are” We start to see logics such as:

Problematic action negative consequence shows us a “bad”/problematic person

Approved/desired action positive consequence “good”/approved person

More complex literature will invite readers to contemplate the fact that bad things happen to “good” people; that “bad” people can do good things; and, that not all bad deeds/people are punished, nor good deeds/people are rewarded.

NARRATION AS AN EDUCATIONAL STRATEGY…

The language used to tell a story can shape a reader’s interpretation of narrative; the ways they identify with or against particular characters; their alignment with or deferral from particular social values

NARRATION IN FAIRY TALES

Both Perrault and the Grimms use third-person narration, and offer us seemingly “omniscient” narrators (storytelling voices that ‘know all’).

For example: “Little Red Riding Hood, hearing the big voice of the wolf, was at

first afraid; but believing her grandmother had a cold and was hoarse…” (Perrault)

“This wife brought two daughters into the house with her. They were beautiful, with fair faces, but evil and dark hearts. Times soon grew very bad for the poor stepchild.” (Grimms)

We tend to trust and believe third-person narrators, where we realise that first-person narrators could be lying. BUT…

FIRST AND THIRD-PERSON NARRATION “Narrative point of view [narration] is the most powerful means

by which the reader’s perceptions and sympathies are manipulated. In first-person narratives the character telling the story filters the events through his or her own consciousness. A first-person narrator may be naive or limited in understanding so that the reader will be skeptical of his or her judgements as, for instance, we are skeptical of the superficial, pedantic Lockwood’s judgement of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, but even so the narrator’s perspective cannot be ignored. More usually, especially in children’s literature, a first-person narrative invites the reader’s acceptance of the narrator’s values and judgements.

In third-person narratives the point of view is less obvious and consistent. The events may be focalized through the consciousness of one or more of the characters. The reader’s opinions about the other characters and events will, therefore, be influenced by the attitudes of the focalizing character.” (Hourihan 38)

IDENTIFYING WITH PROTAGONISTS:

The protagonists of these narratives are either children or childlike animals or adults.

…the texts invite readers to identify with their protagonists…

The texts are focalized through their child or childlike protagonists and thus offer a childlike view of the events described.

While the focalization is childlike, the texts are not first-person narratives. They report the protagonists’ perceptions by means of third-person narrators who often report or imply perceptions at odds with those of the protagonist (Nodelman 77)

WHAT IS FOCALISATION?

“The process by which a perceiving mind (narrator or character) embodies and conveys a point of view in a narrative text” (Stephens, “Glossary” 51)

“Another way to put this is to say that phenomena are focalized by some perceiving agent, whom we can call the focalizer. There can be a lot of switching between narrator focalization and character focalization, and between various characters.” (Stephens, Language 27)

Genette defined narration and focalisation in order to resolve the “regrettable confusion between the question who is the character whose point of view orients the narrative perspective? and the very different question who is the narrator?—or, more simply, the question who sees? And the question who speaks?” (186)

HARRY POTTER: Third-person, focalised—that is to say, we hear from an omniscient narrator but also ‘zoom

in’ at times to see the world from specific characters’ perspectives. For example:

THIRD PERSON: “When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country.” (Rowling 7)

THIRD-PERSON FOCALISED: “He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry, Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her - if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ...He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door.” (Rowling 9)

It makes sense that Rowling chooses to focalise through Mr Dursley in this first chapter—on the one hand, he is not a character with whom we are supposed to identify, but on the other hand, he offers a truly “muggle” view of things (we need to be eased into the magical world).

FOCALISATION & READER POSITIONING

“In offering subject positions, fictional texts for children work to construct their readers’ subjectivity.

They do so primarily by encouraging real readers to become implied readers, to identify both with specific characters and with the point of view through which a text is focalized. For instance, Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are offers a subject position both by inviting child readers to think of themselves as the boy Max and by offering a narrative point of view that tells them how to think about Max: to admire his fearlessness.” (Nodelman and Reimer 178)

As the Harry Potter novels progress, they are increasingly focalised through Harry more than any other character—like Max, Harry becomes our lens on events and our role-model/exemplar: the character with whom we identify most strongly – the figure we often call the “hero” (but who may not always actually be a hero!)

JOSEPH CAMPBELL’S “MONOMYTH”, AKA THE HERO’S JOURNEY:

Separation  “The hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. . .” (30).  The hero sets forth, or “is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds to the threshold of adventure” (245).

Initiation “fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won . . .” (30). 

Return “the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power  to bestow boons [gifts] on his fellow man” (30).

“WHY” DO WE KEEP TELLING THIS STORY?

“Dream is personalised myth, myth the depersonalised dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions are directly valid for all mankind.” (Campbell 24)

The major criticism of Campbell is that there may not actually be any “all mankind”…

HEROIC NARRATIVES & CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

“The story of the hero and his quest, the adventure story, is always essentially the same […] it appears in countless legends, folk tales, children’s stories and adult thrillers, it is ubiquitous. Northrop Frye has argued that the quest myth is the basic myth of all literature […] whether we accept this or not, the centrality of the hero story in our culture is unarguable.” (Hourihan 2)

GAIMAN—WRITING FOR CHILDREN

“Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She sometimes wondered who they thought they were talking to.” (Gaiman, Coraline

20)

“Scarlett’s father, who said that he believed that imaginary friends were a common

phenomenon at that age” (Gaiman, Graveyard 36)

THE GRAVEYARD BOOK AND NARRATIVE:

The Graveyard Book is a hero/quest narrative: literally, Bod is searching for an identity

There is the framing heroic narrative of “solving” and “resolving” the murder of his family

“this was back in Egypt, in pyramid days—he foresaw that one day, there would be a child born who would walk the borderland between the living and the dead” (253)

symbolically, in that children’s literature is often concerned with quests for agency and autonomy: the ability to be and to act as an individual… Bod’s quest for home and self structures the narrative, as he ages from infancy to adulthood

Separation / Initiation / Return (Campbell) Each chapter could be seen as following this structure – each

“initiation” advances Bod’s maturation The novel as a whole could be seen as a build-up to “separation”

“The plots usually follow a basic pattern of movement from home to away and then back home again.” (Nodelman 80) “Bod looked at it uncertainly, wondering why it did not seem

familiar or special. It was only a house, like any other” (Graveyard 234)

“This is my home,’ he said. ‘I can do things here” (Graveyard 244)

THE GRAVEYARD BOOK AND NARRATION:

There is a strong narrative voice telling this story, who ‘knows’ more than any one of the characters: “Bod endured the lesson: When Silas taught him things,

it was interesting. Much of the time Bod didn’t realise he had been taught anything at all” (Graveyard 63)

There is even an occurrence or two of the elusive second-person, direct address! Observe the slippage from second-person to third-person plural: “You would have seen these things in the moonlight, if

you had been there that night” (Graveyard 7) “for he came from a more formal age than our own”

(Graveyard 8)

SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOD’S EYES?

“He was surprised when he hit the floor, but he did not cry out: if you cried they came and put you back in your cot” (Graveyard 6)

“Bod, who was, on the whole, obedient, did not push between the railings, but he went down there and looked through. He knew he wasn’t being told the whole story, and it irritated him” (Graveyard 93)

“It did not even cross Bod’s mind to wonder if his guardian was lying or joking. He knew that he was being told the truth.” (Graveyard 285))

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

Would you see this as a didactic text and if so what ‘lessons’ is it attempting to teach both implicitly or explicitly? Discuss not only in relation to The Graveyard Book but you may also like to relate it to other texts (including those we read in Week 2).

What constructions of ‘childhood’ are evident in the novel? Compare for example Bod's life with that of the glimpses we get of children from earlier times resident in the graveyard as well as Scarlett and the children Bod encounters outside the graveyard. Does Bod function as a role model or a cautionary figure?

How does the novel engage the meaning and significance of ‘education’?

Who is the implied reader(s) of the novel? Give reasons for your response. What other readers might find the book appealing? Would you acquire this book for your library? Why/why not?

Areas you may like to explore further: The Graveyard Book as adaptation of Kipling’s The Jungle Book (intertextuality) The Graveyard Book as award winner You can read about a few of the paths I wish I had had time to follow at:

http://lcn617.tumblr.com/post/112662873099/the-graveyard-book-leave-no-path-untaken

WORKS CITED:

Campbell, Joseph. Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1948.

Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. 2002. New York: Harper, 2006.

---. The Graveyard Book. 2008. Illus. Chris Riddell. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.

Hourihan, Margery. Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children’s Literature. London: Routledge, 1997.

Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008.

--- and Mavis Reimer. The Pleasures of Children’s Literature. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2003.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London: Bloomsbury, 1997.

Stephens, John. “Glossary.” From Picture Book to Literary Theory. Sydney: St. Clair Press, 1994. 50-55.

---. Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction. New York: Longman, 1992.

Wall, Barbara. The Narrator’s Voice: The Dilemma of Children’s Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1991.