Question

When a character looks back at events in literature

Answer 1

Answer:

Developing a sense of the plot, cast of characters, and language of a given diary or collection of letters is the surest way to begin reading in greater depth. Now we can think further about strategies for moving into the pages of a personal text, entry by entry, letter by letter, looking for how this writer gives us a particular lens through which to see the past by creating herself as a writer at the same time she portrays others and the world around her. Consider again the observation, made earlier, that personal texts are fueled by accounts of key events that occur over time, events which the writer feels are important enough to express: a marriage, a disastrous storm, a daughter leaving home, the routine of work. But events are only a starting point. The tale of events inevitably reveals a pattern of key relationships – the writer’s friendships, kinships, acquaintances and strangers. These relationships, in turn, shape our understanding (just as they shaped the writer’s) of which events are important to tell. A central strategy for us as readers of a text, then, is to understand how the writer joins events and relationships together, each giving the other substance. We can see events and relationships as a kind of dynamic logic – a dialectic – of personal texts which, over time, reveals patterns of choice and characterization by writers, giving each writer a certain style or voice, a distinct way of representing self and others. It also shows that the meaning of events is not static, but changes as correspondents change over time.