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Prussian Officerfrom Character Analysis

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In this paper I will try to analyse the underlying meaning of the short story The Prussian Officerfrom the level of narration andfocalization. Narration is the process of narrating a story mediated through voice of the narrator (identified as who speaks?)And Focalization is viewpoint or the perception through which the events are being reported (identified as who sees?).
The novel focuses on the suffering and self-deterioration of a young soldier by his captain who seeks forbidden sexual admiration that makes the soldier victim to the captain’s sexual frustration. The narrator allows readers to learn the minds of characters from shifting the internal focalization simultaneously.Under the light of Narrative theory of Gerard Genette Narrative …show more content…

Discussion:
Focalization is a narrative technique that allows a narrative to be presented from a particular refers to the viewpoint from which the story is told. This viewpoint can be only of a narrator or of a character or can be of more than one character in the text. If the narrative is focalized through a chosen character then it reflects the perception of that character. It is completely choice of narrator that whether he limits his focalization to one or many characters and thus presenting a different perspective of a single occurrence.
The analysis of focalization in the fiction has an aim to differentiate between various types of narrative transmissions: Does the narrator have access to one or more characters inner thoughts? Does the narrator remain covert (hidden) or he marks his presence in between the happenings through his comments or addressing directly to the narratee.
The Prussian Officer is the first story in the collection of ‘ThePrussian Officer and other stories’ published by D H Lawrence by Duckworth in London in …show more content…

The perception through which the story is told lies within the captain and his orderly simultaneously. The narrator remains suspended in the background as depersonalized-lacking definable personality but has a distinguished voice and own opinions about characters. The narrator sees through the minds of both characters that helps in recognizing the complexity of the situation in the characters world and allows reader to observe more closely their world. The narrator is free to comment on a situation:
“It was not that the youth was clumsy”(narrator calls orderly a youth who is not clumsy but innocent)’. The way Lawrence has depicted his characters sufferings with employing omniscient single narrator with two different focalizer’s presents very well the discourse on the implications of suffering on humankind.
Order of the

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