MAFinalsignatures

Kurdistan Region-Iraq
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Salahaddin University -Erbil
An Analysis of the Narrative Structure

of Some Selected American Short Stories
A Thesis Submitted to the Council of the College of Languages, Salahaddin

University-Erbil in partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts in English Language and Linguistics
By
Ismail Abdulrahman Abdulla-B.A. Salahaddin University-Erbil-2007
Supervised by Dr. Suhayla Hameed Majeed
March AD 2010 Nawroz 2710 K Rabi‘a Althany 1431 H

Table of Contents
Table of Contents ........................................................................................ iii
Table of Figures .......................................................................................... vi
Abstract...................................................................................................... vii
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1Issue ......................................................................................................... 1
1.2 The Aims of the Study............................................................................ 1
1.3 Delimitation............................................................................................ 1
1.4 Hypotheses ............................................................................................. 2
1.5 Procedure ................................................................................................ 2
1.6 The Models Adopted .............................................................................. 2
1.7 The Value ............................................................................................... 3
Chapter Two
Theoretical Background
2.0 Introduction ............................................................................................ 4
2.1 Definitions .............................................................................................. 4
2.1.1 Discourse/Text ..................................................................................... 4
2.1.2 Discourse Analysis .............................................................................. 5
2.1.3 Narrative .............................................................................................. 6
2.1.4 Narratology .......................................................................................... 7
2.1.5 Short Story ........................................................................................... 8
2.2 Narrative Discourse: Types, Roles, Focus and Modern Linguistics ...... 9
2.3 A Historical Overview of Narrative and Narratology .......................... 12
2.4 Narrative Structure: The Approaches ................................................... 14
2.4.1 The Russian Formalists’ Approach ................................................... 14
2.4.2 Structuralists’ Approach .................................................................... 22
2.4.2.1 Greimas’ Model .............................................................................. 22
2.4.2.2 Genette’s Model ............................................................................. 24
2.4.3 Labov’s Model .................................................................................. 30
Chapter Three
The Structuralist Approach and the Selected Short Stories by O.Henry
3.0 Introduction .......................................................................................... 39
3.1 Greimas’ Model and the Short Stories ................................................. 39
3.1.1 ‘A Strange Story’ ............................................................................... 39
3.1.1.1 Synopsis .......................................................................................... 39
3.1.1.2 Greimas’ Actants and ‘A Strange Story’ ....................................... 40
3.1.2 ‘The Robe of Peace’ .......................................................................... 42
3.1.2.1 Synopsis .......................................................................................... 42
3.1.2.2 Actants of ‘The Robe of Peace’ ..................................................... 43
iii
3.1.3 ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ .............................................................. 45
3.1.3.1 Synopsis .......................................................................................... 45
3.1.3.2 Actants of ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ .......................................... 46
3.2 The Short Stories and Genette’s Model ............................................... 49
3.2.1 ‘A Strange Story’ ............................................................................... 49
3.2.1.1 Voice ............................................................................................... 49
3.2.1.1.1 Time of Narrating ........................................................................ 49
3.2.1.1.2 Person .......................................................................................... 50
3.2.1.2 Mood ............................................................................................... 50
3.2.1.2.1 Distance ....................................................................................... 50
3.2.1.2.1 Focalization ................................................................................. 51
3.2.1.3 Tense ............................................................................................... 51
3.2.1.3.1 Order ............................................................................................ 51
3.2.1.3.2 Duration ....................................................................................... 52
3.2.1.3.3 Frequency .................................................................................... 53
3.2.2 ‘The Robe of Peace’ .......................................................................... 54
3.2.2.1 Voice ............................................................................................... 54
3.2.2.1.2 Person .......................................................................................... 55
3.2.2.2 Mood ............................................................................................... 55
3.2.2.2.1 Distance ....................................................................................... 55
3.2.2.2.2 Focalization ................................................................................. 56
3.2.2.3 Tense ............................................................................................... 57
3.2.2.3.1 Order ............................................................................................ 57
3.2.2.3.2 Duration ....................................................................................... 58
3.2.2.3.3 Frequency .................................................................................... 59
3.2.3 ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ .............................................................. 60
3.2.3.1 Voice ............................................................................................... 60
3.2.3.1.2 Person .......................................................................................... 62
3.2.3.2 Mood ............................................................................................... 62
3.2.3.2.1 Distance ....................................................................................... 62
3.2.3.2.2 Focalization ................................................................................. 63
3.2.3.3 Tense ............................................................................................... 64
3.2.3.3.1 Order ............................................................................................ 64
3.2.3.3.2 Duration ....................................................................................... 65
3.2.3.3.3 Frequency .................................................................................... 66
Notes to Chapter Three ............................................................................... 68
Chapter Four
Analysing the Structure of the Selected Short Stories in Terms of
Labovian Linguistic Model
4.0 Introduction .......................................................................................... 70
iv
4.1 ‘A Strange Story’.................................................................................. 70
4.1.1 Abstract.............................................................................................. 70
4.1.2 Orientation......................................................................................... 71
4.1.3 Complicating Action ......................................................................... 74
4.2.4 Evaluation.......................................................................................... 77
4.1.5 Resolution.......................................................................................... 80
4.1.6 Coda................................................................................................... 81
4.2 ‘The Robe of Peace’ ............................................................................. 81
4.2.1 Abstract.............................................................................................. 81
4.2.2 Orientation......................................................................................... 82
4.2.4 Evaluation.......................................................................................... 89
4.2.5 Resolution.......................................................................................... 93
4.2.6 Coda................................................................................................... 94
4.3 ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ ................................................................. 94
4.3.1 Abstract.............................................................................................. 94
4.3.2 Orientation......................................................................................... 95
4.3.4 Evaluation........................................................................................ 103
4.3.5 Resolution........................................................................................ 109
4.3.6 Coda................................................................................................. 111
Notes to Chapter Four .............................................................................. 112
Chapter Five
Conclusions and Suggestions for further Studies
5.0 Introduction ........................................................................................ 114
5.1 Conclusions ........................................................................................ 114
5.2 Suggestions for further Studies .......................................................... 117
References ................................................................................................ 118
Abstract in Arabic
Abstract in Kurdish
v
Table of Figures
(Fig. 1) Greimas’ Actants ........................................................................... 24
(Fig. 2) Genette’s Narrative Structure Levels ............................................ 24
(Fig. 3) Labov’s Narrative Structure ......................................................... 36
(Fig. 4. a) Actants of ‘A Strange Story’ ...................................................... 40

(Fig. 4. b) .................................................................................................... 41
(Fig. 4. c) .................................................................................................... 42
(Fig. 5. a) Actants of ‘The Robe of Peace’ ................................................. 44
(Fig. 5. b) .................................................................................................... 45
(Fig. 6. a) Actants of ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ ...................................... 47
(Fig. 6. b) .................................................................................................... 48
(Fig. 7) The Narrative Structure of the Three Short Stories .................... 111
vi
Abstract
The present thesis, which is entitled An Analysis of the Narrative
Structure of Some Selected American Short Stories, aims at introducing
narrative discourse and analysing the narrative structure of three short stories
by O. Henry. The short stories are ‘A Strange Story’, ‘The Robe of Peace’ and
‘The Ransom of Red Chief’. To achieve these aims, the following hypotheses
are made: (1) Narrative texts can be regarded as long sentences. Sentence
structure and narrative structure share common features. (2)The structure of
oral narratives is, to some extent, similar to that of written ones. In order to
test the first hypothesis, Greimas’ (1966) and Genette’s (1972) structural
models are to be adopted. Labov’s (1972) linguistic model is to be followed
for testing the second one. This study falls into five chapters.
Chapter one is an introduction. It includes the issue, aims, hypotheses,
adopted models, delimitation, procedure and value of the study.
Chapter two provides a theoretical overview of narrative discourse.
Here, some terms such as, discourse/text, discourse analysis, narrative,
narratology and short story are defined. Then, a brief classification of
narrative types and roles is made. The relationship between linguistic schools
and narratological models is also explained. Later, a historical background
about narrative and narratology is presented. At the end of this chapter, the
three adopted models, as well as the formalist model—the Proppian model,
are illustrated.
The selected short stories are summarized in chapter three. Then, each
of them is analysed in terms of Greimas’ six-actant model. Through the
analysis, the researcher has found that all the actants: subject, object, sender,
receiver, helper and opponent, are found in each of the stories. The short
stories are also analysed in the light of Genette’s model. This model, like
vii
Greimas’, borrows grammatical terms such as, tense, mood, and voice, for the
analysis of narrative structure.
Chapter four introduces Labov’s six-element model to the structure of
the short stories. In order to assess its applicability to written narratives in
general and the selected short stories in particular; the short stories are
analysed into their free and narrative clauses, as far as Labov’s model is
concerned. In this chapter, it is shown that the model is relevant to the
structure of written narratives, as it is to that of the oral ones.
The last chapter, chapter five, is a summary of the concluding points at
which the study arrives, and also some suggestions are made for further
studies. This study concludes that narrative structure, like sentence structure,
is complex and rule governed. The existence of an intensive relationship
between linguistic schools and narratological theories is reinforced. It is also
mentioned that Greimas’ model, though applicable, is not that successful for
analysing narrative structure. It concludes that Genette’s schema is applicable
to some degree, while the best model is the one of Labov’s. Labov’s model is
more applicable to the personal experience narratives, ‘The Ransom of Red
Chief’, for example, than to the non-personal experience ones, ‘A Strange
Story’.
A list of the sources consulted in writing this work is provided in the
references section. Finally, the study ends with the abstract in Kurdish and
Arabic.
viii
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1Issue
Analysing narrative structure can be performed in several fields:
discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, stylistics, pragmatics and narratology.
This topic is intimately related to language and literature. To achieve this,
the study tries to answer the following questions:
(1) How is the structure of narrative genres, in general, and the structure
of the short stories, in particular?
(2) Is there any relation between the structures of orally oriented and
written narratives?
1.2 The Aims of the Study

The purpose behind this study is to introduce narrative discourse and
analyse the structure of the written English narrative in general and of the
selected short stories in particular. It also tries to assess the applicability of
the adopted models, to which reference is to be made later. The researcher
intends to indicate the most successful one among the competing
approaching, too.
1.3 Delimitation
The present study tries to introduce and analyse the structure of
written narrative, only, in three selected English short stories in terms of
the adopted models, because the structure of written narrative may change
in accordance with other approaches. The selected short stories are by the
renowned American short story writer, O. Henry.
1.4 Hypotheses
It is hypothesized that:
(1) Narrative can be treated like an extended sentence, sharing elements

like subject/object, tense/voice, etc.
(2) The structure of oral narrative, developed by William Labov (1972),
is to some extent similar to that of the written one. That is why the
model can apply to the narrative structure of short stories.
1.5 Procedure
The procedure that is followed in conducting this study is as follows:
(1) Collecting data for the theoretical part, chapter two, from
narratological and linguistic sources available: printed books and
articles and reliable websites.
(2) Analysing the selected short stories by the researcher in order to
check the authenticity of the hypotheses. The researcher has read the
selected short stories, quoted from them and analysed their
structures.
1.6 The Models Adopted

In the present study, three models are to be adopted. In the analysis
of the selected short stories according to the structuralist approach, two
models are adopted in chapter three. They are Greimas’ (1966) and
Genette’s (1972). The other model which is to be adopted is the one of
Labov’s (1972). Labov set up his model after a series of practical studies
of the natural oral spontaneous personal experience narrative in the
American Black English Vernacular (BEV) in New York City.
2
1.7 The Value
It is hoped that the present study will be beneficial for the following
people:
(1) Linguistic stylisticians who are interested in studying the relation

between language and literature.
(2) Teachers and instructors of English (and other languages: Kurdish,
Persian, etc.) literature and short stories.
(3) Discourse analysts and teachers of English language who like to
discover grammar of English in context.
3
Chapter Two
Theoretical Background
2.0 Introduction
This chapter is firstly intended to define the terminologies related to
the study. Secondly, the types, the role, the focus of narrative discourse
with its connection with the modern linguistics are explained. Thirdly,
there is a survey of historical background to narrative and narratology.
Finally, four models of narrative structure, three of which are to be applied
to the selected short stories, are discussed.
2.1 Definitions
2.1.1 Discourse/Text
The term ‘discourse’ has become a widespread concept in a

variety of disciplines: linguistics, sociology, philosophy, critical theory,
and many other fields (Johnstone 2008: 1). “It is frequently left undefined,
as if its usage were simply common knowledge” (Mills 1997: 1).
Therefore, it is necessary to know what this term refers to.
Crystal (2008:148) defines ‘discourse’ as a term referring to “a

continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence”. He adds that there
are different applications of ‘discourse’ as being “a behavioral unit which
has a pre-theoretical status in linguistics: it is a set of utterances which
constitute any recognizable speech events such as conversation, a joke, a
sermon, an interview etc” (Crystal 2008:148).
Widdowson’s (2007:129) definition to ‘discourse’ is that it is “the

meaning a first person intends to express producing a text, and that a
second person interprets from the text”. Sara Mills’ view meets with
Widdowson’s in that she sees ‘discourse’ as the “linguistic
communication seen as a transaction between speaker and hearer, as an
interpersonal activity whose form is determined by its social purposes”
(Mills 1997:4).
Finch (2000:219-20) states that the most distinctive aspect of

discourse stresses the communicative dynamics of language. He further
says that the term ‘discourse’ is equivalent to that of the French term
‘discours’ which includes fiction and poetry as types of literary or
narrative discourse. It is worth mentioning that those linguists who use the
term ‘discourse’ in this sense will also use the term ‘text’ alternatively.
However, some other linguists use ‘discourse’ to refer the spoken, and
‘text’ to written language. Furthermore, Mills (1997:3-4) mentions that
Crystal (1987) treats ‘text’ and ‘discourse’ more or less synonymously.
Salkie (1995: 12), in his Text and Discourse Analysis, uses both
terminologies to refer to the same phenomenon. “Some scholars talk about
spoken or written discourses; others about spoken or written texts” (Mills
1997:3-4). It is worth referring to the fact that Quirk et al. speak of spoken
and written discourse and text (1985: 12 & 1424).
2.1.2 Discourse Analysis
Having known what the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘text’ refer to, it is
time to describe ‘discourse analysis’. ‘Discourse analysis’, as a term, was
first employed by Zelling Harris in 1952 as a name for “the method for the
analysis of connected speech (or writing)” for “continuing descriptive
linguistics beyond the limit of a single sentence” (1952:1).
Salkie (1995: ix) concludes that text and discourse analysis deals
with the way sentences combine to form a text. McCarthy (2005:5)
explains that discourse analysis studies “the relationship between language
5
and the context in which it is used.” Cook’s definition of ‘discourse
analysis’ goes further by stating that discourse analysis “examines how
stretches of language, considered in their full textual social and
psychological context, become meaningful and unified for their users”
(1989:ix).
2.1.3 Narrative
Generally, newspaper reports, history books, novels, films, gossips,

and psychological sessions are all narratives which permeate our lives.
Therefore, it is necessary to know what the narrative is in the view points
of different linguists and critics as well. Abrams (1993:123) defines
‘narrative’ as a story whether in prose or verse which involves events,
characters and what they do and say. Some literary forms, like novels and
short stories, are in prose, and others, like epics and narrative poetry, are
in verse. Trask’s definition of narrative is as follows:
A narrative is a text which tells a story. It differs from most other types of
text in that it relates a connected series of events, either real or fictional, in a
more or less orderly manner. In addition to familiar kinds of written
narratives such as history books, [short stories] and novels, there are oral
narratives, that is, stories told in conversation.
(2007:181)
Montague (2007) gives a complicated description which states that

a narrative is a “symbolized account of action of human beings that has a
temporal dimension; the story has a beginning, middle and an ending.”
These three were first developed by Aristotle in his Poetics
(Fludernik2009:250). The story held together by recognizable patterns of
events called plots; central to the plot structure are human “predicaments”
and attempted resolutions.
6
A more technical definition comes in Prince’s standard work, A
Dictionary of Narratology:
Narrative: The recounting [. . .] of one or more real or fictitious EVENTS

communicated by one, two, or several (more or less overt) NARRATORS to
one, two or several (more or less overt) NARRATEES .
(Prince 2003a: 58; quoted in Fludernik 2009:5)
Finally, Labov’s (1972: 359-60) definition of a narrative is that,

which is originally for oral versions of narrative, a narrative consists
minimally of two temporally ordered clauses such that reversing the order
of the clauses would change the story, as in the following examples:
(1) Jane got married and had a baby.

is not the same story as
(2) Jane had a baby and got married.
(Black 2006:39)
In the forthcoming sections (of this chapter) more will be said concerning
narrative.
2.1.4 Narratology
Harmon (2003:329) defines narratology as “the sophisticated

analysis of [the] relation among a story and all the other elements involved
in telling thereof”. In Cuddon’s (1998: 533-5) view, it is the theory of
discourse or critique of narrative. It can be stated that ‘narratology’
denotes a recent concern of narrative in general. It also deals with the
identification of structural elements and their diverse modes of
combination, narrative devices, and with the analysis of the kinds of
discourse by which the narrative gets recapitulated (Abrams 1993: 123).
7
Onega and Landa (1996: 1) and Prince (2003b:1) consider
narratology as “the science of narrative”. The term acquired
popularization in 1960-1970s by the structuralist critics such as: Todorov
(who invented the term (Fludernik 2009: 158), Genette, Gerald Prince and
others (Onega & Landa1996: 1; Baldick 2001:166; Bertens 2001: 71-6).
Despite this, older studies of narrative, as far back as Aristotle’s

Poetics (4th century BC), even before this, can be regarded as
narratological works. But modern narratology can be traced back to
Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of Folktale (1928) with its theory of
narrative function (Baldick 2001:166).
2.1.5 Short Story
Baldick in his The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms

(2001: 236) defines short story as “fictional prose tale of no specified
length, but too short to be published as a volume on its own. It usually
concentrates on a single event with only one or two character(s).” So a
short story is “a brief work of prose fiction” (Abrams 1999: 193).
Though there is no exact limit to the length of short story, Edgar

Alan Poe, who is considered the founder and the first theorist of short
story, states that a short story is a narrative which can be read at one
sitting from half an hour to two hours and it is limited to a certain unique
or single effect to which every detail is subordinate (Abrams 1999:194).
Finally, short story, as a genre, flourished in the second half of the 19th
and the early 20th centuries in magazines especially in the United States of
America (Baldick 2001:236; Kennedy 2005: 149).
8
2.2 Narrative Discourse: Types, Roles, Focus and Modern
Linguistics
All narrative consists of a discourse which integrates a sequence of
events of human interest into the unity of a single plot. As it has been said
narrative discourse is a discourse that is an account of events, usually in
the past, that employs verbs of speech, motion, and action to describe a
series of events that are contingent one on another. In the previous
sections it was noticed that narrative is very widespread in human life, but
basically, according to Malmkjær (2002:166), two types of narrative texts
are identified: (1) Personal experiences of the informant or her/his
acquaintances; and (2) Traditional myths and legends.
The myths are the most popular form of texts with linguistic
fieldworkers and are unquestionably an important and beneficial source of
information, but they are more difficult to work with than the former. This
is due to their very status as myths which are ‘sanctioned’ by tradition
means that their form may be rather conventionalized and therefore less
indicative of the actual productive use of the language in everyday life
(Malmkjær 2002:166).
Any given narrative oscillates, as Miller (2001:257) contends,
around two important areas of focus. They are: (1) the key situations and
events; and (2) the characters [and, of course, their words]. He also argues
that every narrative fulfils, again, at least, two main roles. Narrative texts
usually inform the reader (or the listener) about the events and the
characters. They also sustain the reader’s (or the listener’s) interest and
temper in the events and characters.
To a degree, Toolan (1998: 136) has a similar viewpoint about the
role of narrative texts. The only difference between the two is that
Toolan’s label is function not role.
9
It is noteworthy that, as Keen (2003: 8-9) and Herman (2009:28)
mention, narratological theories were influenced and inspired much by
modern linguistics. Modern linguistics demonstrates how language
material develops meaningfully from opposition and combination of basic
elements (phonemes, morphemes, etc.) through synchronic analyses of
language system (langue), i.e. Saussure’s system. By the same token
narrative theory, or narratology, tries to show how sentences turn into
narrative (Fludernik 2009:9), that is, how narrative emerges from narrative
texts. Claude Levi-Strauss, for example, a narratologist, examined some
French myths. He concluded that myths, as a narrative genre, were a kind
of language having the possibility of being broken down into individual
units called mythemes, like the basic sound units—phonemes, acquire
meaning only when they are combined in a particular mode. He also
noticed that these combinations could be seen as a kind of grammar, a set
of relations beneath the surface of the narrative which constituted the
myths’ true meaning. These relations, as seen by Levi-Strauss, were
universal and inherent in the human mind itself (Eagleton 1996:90; Cook
1994: 147).
Moreover, almost all structuralist narratologists, especially Chatman
in his Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film
(1978), divide narratives into two levels: level of story, (what the narrative
is about or the content or chain of events, characters and items of setting—
the plot) and level of discourse (the text, the expression, the means by
which the content is communicated) (Pier 2003:73). It can be said that
story is the abstract level whereas discourse is the concrete one (Fludernik
2005:42; 2009:8). The former level, linguistically speaking, can be
compared to the langue while the latter to the parole. This analogy is, in
fact, highly related to two linguistic trends; the Saussure’s langue–parole
and Chomsky’s competence-performance.
10
The formalists’ term for story is fabula and syuzhet for discourse’s
counterpart (Fludernik 1996: 250). Rimmon-Kenan claims that narratives,
in addition to their linguistic deep structure and surface structure, have
deep narrative structures and surface narrative structures (Rimmon-Kenan
2001: 144-5). Greimas also speaks of the presence of the same
phenomenon (Cobely 2001: 94-5). Again the concept of deep structure
and surface structure is intimately related to Chomsky’s transformational
generative grammar.
Todorov’s structural analysis for Boccaccio’s The Decameron1
resulted in the Grammar of the Decameron (1969), in which he analyses
narrative elements such as characters, their attributes, and actions in terms
of grammatical categories; characters in terms of nouns, character
attributes as adjectives and actions as verbs (Todorov 2006: 218; Eagleton
1996:91). Todorov further says that “we shall understand narrative better
if we know that the character is a noun, the action a verb. But we shall
understand nouns and verbs better by thinking of the role they assume in
the narrative” (Todorov2006: 218). As a result the canon that involves the
organization of narratives, or simply stories, is known as story grammar.
Story grammars contain information in principle, concerning the forms of
stories, or rather their structures. It is not surprising that some
narratologists have tried to analyse the structure of episodes, events in a
given narrative, with the help of using the rewriting rule of sentence
analysis. In accordance with the rewriting rule, a sentence can be analysed
as:
SENTNCE=NOUN PHRASE+VERB PHRASE
In the same way, the rewriting rule for an episode is as follows2:
EPISODE=INTRODUCTION+KNOT+CONCLUSION
(László 2008:21)
11
Finally, some narratologists tried to show that narratology has much to do
with Universal Grammar. Herman (1995), for instance, wrote a book
entitled Universal Grammar and Narrative Form, where he conducted a
study of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of narrative discourse (Pier
2003:74-5)
2.3 A Historical Overview of Narrative and Narratology

When discussing the history of narrative and narrative analysis,
some facts should always be borne in mind:
(1) The history of the narrative is vague.
(2) Most work in narrative analysis consists of synchronic formal
analysis.
(3) The history of the discipline of narratology, according to Onega
and Landa (1996:9), is largely unwritten.
What follows shows narrative’s and narratology’s development
through the early perspective of poetics of the genres, through formal and
structural analysis, to the recent trends in the field. As it has been
mentioned, Aristotle’s Poetics is the first narrative-related work, but it can
even be possibly true to consider the Republic of Aristotle’s master,
Plato’s, as the first one. Plato through his ‘spokesman’, Socrates, discusses
narrative when he talks about the style of poetic composition:
“All mythology is a narration of events, either past, present or to come [...].

And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union of the
two.” That is, the poet may speak in his own voice (simple narration) or may
speak through the voice of a character (imitation, mimesis).
(Onega & Landa1996:10)
It can be deduced that, from a narratological perspective, this can be
treated as the first theoretical approach to the problem of narrative voice
(Onega & Landa1996:10).
12
Important contributions to narrative research, according to
Fludernik (2009:10) and Keen (2003:8), were made in the first half of the
twentieth century by Percy Lubbock (The Craft of Fiction, 1921), E. M.
Forster (Aspects of the Novel, 1927) and Henry James (in the prefaces to
his novels collected in The Art of the Novel, 1934). Norman Friedman’s
article on point of view (1955) was published around the same time in the
United States. Before this, the book Theory of Literature by René Wellek
and Austin Warren (1949) had begun to introduce formalist (and
narratological) research to English-speaking countries, thereby spreading
the insights of the Russian Formalists, such as Viktor Shklovsky, Boris
Eichenbaum, and of the Prague School (Fludernik 2009:10). Russian
‘narratology’, which was founded by the Formalists, became influential
through the work of Roman Jacobson, who dealt more with poetry but
gave essential, methodological impulses (Fludernik 2009:10).
Another important figure of the Prague school of structuralism was
the Czech literary theorist Jan Mukarovsky, who had a decisive influence
on what later became narratological structuralism. The most influential
Russian narratologist is Mikhail Bakhtin who had a significant influence
on the study of speech and thought representation (McHale 2005:60).
The era regarded today as the classical phase of narratology
developed as a strand within structuralism in France and includes the work
of Claude Bremond, Algirdas Julien Greimas, Tzvetan Todorov, Roland
Barthes and Gérard Genette. They were significantly influenced by the
studies of folk tales conducted by the Russian scholar Vladimir Propp
(b.1895–d.1970). Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1928), which had a
direct influence on Bremond, opened up the possibility of a narrative
grammar which would “allow all narratives to be broken down into a
limited number of basic forms and components.”(Onega & Landa1996:32;
Fludernik 2009:10-11)
13
Nonetheless, it was Gérard Genette, a French structuralist, who
played a decisive role in the further development of narrative theory. The
third volume of Genette’s trilogy Figures, including Discours du récit
(translated as Narrative Discourse) (1972), focused almost entirely on the
narrative discourse of the novel. He brought together the insights of many
earlier researchers to create a new terminological framework that was
constructed in accordance with strict, binary principles. Because of the
delayed impact of structuralism in the United States, Genette’s model did
not become well known until just before the development of post-
structuralism in English studies and literary theory. In North America his
model found many followers, of whom the most important were Gerald
Prince and Seymour Chatman (Fludernik 2009:11).
Conversational (or aural or natural) narrative, analysed by William
Labov in the 1970s and by Deborah Tannen (1982) had played a crucial
role in th e area of narratological research in Germany in the late 1970s
and centrally influenced postclassical narratological work by David
Herman and Monika Fludernik (1993, 1996). At the same time, the
aesthetic and fictional aspects of storytelling were increasingly being
discussed in linguistics (see, for example, Fowler’s Linguistics and the
Novel (1985) and Linguistic Criticism (1995)).
2.4 Narrative Structure: The Approaches

2.4.1 The Russian Formalists’ Approach
In 1925 the Russian formalist Boris Tomashevski sought to find the

answer to the question of how language of fiction is to be distinguished
from ordinary language (Bertens 2001:35). He contended that the
difference was not in language but in presentation. In an attempt to clarify
this he juxtaposed two concepts; fabula which is the “straightforward
14
account of something, it tells us what actually happened,” and syuzhet,
“the story as it is actually told” Bertens (2001:36) formulates this
juxtaposition with an example:
John Doe kills his cousin Jack to become the sole heir of a fortune and sits
back to wait for the demise of the aged and infirm uncle-- Old J. J. Doe his
cousin’s father and only remaining kin--who controls the money. The police
work hard at solving the case but fail to do so. J. J. Doe hires a private eye
who naturally succeeds where the police have failed.
(2001:36)
Bertens explains that this shows the “bare bones” of the sort of the story.
He means that this is what actually happened, i.e. the fabula. Bertens
(2001:36) continues:
But this is not how the standard private-eye novel, which is usually narrated
by the private-eye him-(or her)self, would tell it. The novel would begin
with the private-eye clashes with J. J. Doe over the latter’s superior and
insulting attitude [...] and it will then follow the private-eye’s investigation.
The fact that the murder has been committed by John will not become clear
until we have almost reached the end. As in all detective novels, the author
manipulates the fabula to create maximum suspense. Such manipulation of
the fabula creates syuzhet
(2001:36)
The notion of fabula/ syuzhet became the cornerstone of the later
work of (another Russian Formalist) Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the
Folktale. 3 As already stated, Propp’s monograph can be regarded as the
first technical and formal narratological work in the 20th century. It is both
formal and technical in the sense that it uses technical concepts and formal
notations in the analysis of fairy tales as the table shows (see pp. 19-21 of
this chapter) (Peck & Coyle 2002:139). Moreover, László (2008: 21)
posits that Propp’s study was a starting point of story grammar. It is again
morphology in that “it is a description of the tale according to its parts and
the relationship of these components to each other and to the whole”
(Propp [1968]: 2006:55). As Bertens (2001:37-9) mentions, Propp tried to
show that Russian folk tales, which were more than one hundred fairy
15
tales, were variations, that is, syuzhets, of what seemed to be one and the
same underlying fabula.
Propp reduced the structure of all the tales he analysed into thirty-
one minimal elements called functions and seven spheres of actions called
dramatis personae. 4 Propp’s work depends on a comparative approach.
He compared the component parts of each tale to another to unify the
structure of all the tales. He, first, compared the following events of
different tales:
(1) A tsar gives an eagle to a hero. The eagle carries the hero away to
another kingdom.
(2) An old man gives Sûcenko a horse. The horse carries Sûcenko away to
another kingdom.
(3) A sorcerer gives Ivan a little boat. The boat takes Ivan to another
kingdom.
(4) A princess gives Ivan a ring. Young men appearing from out of the ring
carry Ivan away into another kingdom, and so forth.
(Propp 1999: 382)
In the aforementioned events, there are “constants” and “variables” which
play an important role in the Propp’s analysis for the narrative structure of
the fairy tales. The variables are the name of the characters, that is,
dramatis personae, while the constants are the actions performed by the
dramatis personae and their functions. They are stable in every tale. From
this comparison he concluded that it was possible to analyse the tale in
accordance with the functions of the dramatis personae (Propp 1999: 382).
The only constant element in all the preceding examples is the
transfer of somebody, say, the hero by means of something obtained from
somebody else to another kingdom. A fact which Propp insists on is that
the study of the question of what is done should precede the study of
questions of who does it and how it is done (Propp 2006: 55).
It may possibly be asked whether all the thirty-one functions are
found in all tales or not. Louchart and Aylett (2004:509) answer this
16
question. They state that it is not necessary for all the functions to be
present in every tale, the maximum number is thirty-one and twenty five
of them should always be there. There is an important point, in case of not
having all the functions altogether; the sequence of the functions will not
be changed or disordered. The existing functions will remain in situ, i.e. in
their original whereabouts, as Propp refers to this in the concluding points
of his study which are:
(1)Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale,
independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute
the fundamental components of a tale.
(2)The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.
(3)The sequence of functions is always identical.
(4)All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure.
(Propp 2006: 56-7)
Some explanation was already given to the preceding points. But,
concerning number (3), it must be said that the sequence of the functions
is identical in that there is a “logical sequence” (Cuddon 1998: 533;
Louchart & Aylett 2004:509-10). This shows that the tales have coherence
which is a basic element in providing textuality for texts in general and
narrative texts in particular (László 2008: 150-51). Another point is that
each function can be realized in terms of a noun, as demonstrated below.
To clarify what has been stated, it is reasonable to refer to the full account
of functions as listed in Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale:
(1) One of the members of a family absents himself from home

(abstention).
(2) An interdiction is addressed to the hero (interdiction).
(3) The interdiction is violated (violation).
(4) The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance (reconnaissance).
(5) The villain receives information about his victim (delivery).
(6) The villain attempts to deceive his victim in order to take
possession of him or his belongings (trickery).
17
(7) The victim submits to deception and thereby unwittingly helps his
enemy (complicity).
(8) The villain causes harm or injury to a member of the family
(villainy).
(8.a) One member of a family either lacks something or desires to have
something (lack).
(9) Misfortune or lack is made known; the hero is approached
with a request or command; he is allowed to go or he is dispatched
(mediation, the connective incident).
(10) The seeker agrees to or decides upon counteraction
(beginning counteraction).
(11) The hero leaves home (departure).
(12) The hero is tested, interrogated, attacked, etc., which prepares the
way for his receiving either a magical agent or helper (the first
function of the donor).
(13) The hero reacts to the actions of the future donor
(the hero’s reaction).
(14) The hero acquires the use of a magical agent (provision or receipt of
a magical agent).
(15) The hero is transferred, delivered, or led to the whereabouts of an
object of search (spatial transference between two kingdoms,
guidance).
(16) The hero and the villain join in direct combat (struggle).
(17) The hero is branded (branding, marking).
(18) The villain is defeated (victory).
(19) The initial misfortune or lack is liquidated (liquidation).
(20) The hero returns (return).
(21) The hero is pursued (pursuit, chase).
(22) Rescue of the hero from pursuit (rescue).
(23) The hero, unrecognized, arrives home or in another
country(unrecognized arrival).
(24) A false hero presents unfounded claims (unfounded claims).
(25) A difficult task is proposed to the hero (difficult task).
(26) The task is resolved (solution).
18
(27) The hero is recognized (recognition).
(28) The false hero or villain is exposed (exposure).
(29) The hero is given a new appearance (transfiguration).
(30) The villain is punished (punishment).
(31) The hero is married and ascends the throne (wedding).
(Propp 1999: 386-7)
Propp also, as mentioned earlier, concluded that all the characters could be
resolved into only seven types in the tales he analysed as shown in the
following inventory:
(1) Villain
(2) Donor or provider
(3) Helper
(4) Princess (a sought-for person) and her father
(5) Dispatcher
(6) Hero
(7) False Hero.
(Propp 1999: 387)
Louchart and Aylett (2004:509) state that “the functions are part of
a chronological and logical structure. They should fit into one consecutive
story, always appear in the same order and non-logical sequences should
not occur.” Another aspect which should also be referred to is that Propp’s
model can be broken down into “seven sections” that show logical and
chronological aspects as in the following table:
Table 1 Propp’s seven part narrative model

Logical and Chronological Process
Initial Situation Section
Aims
It is placed prior to the development of the tale itself (represented by the

symbol α). It introduces important characters and presents a pre-narrative
graphical representation of the different components of the tale.
19
Example
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away lived a young princess called
Victoria and a poor boy called David. Princess Victoria and David loved each
other so much that they decided to get married.
Preparatory Section
Aims
It provides the narrative and the reader with the essential necessary knowledge
to understand the next section.
Functions involved
Abstentation (β), Interdiction (γ), Violation (δ), Reconnaissance (ε), Delivery
(ξ),Trickery (η), Complicity (θ).
Example
Unfortunately for them, Victoria’s father, King Henry would not allow his
daughter to marry anyone who was not a knight, and had promised her hand in
marriage to her cousin Lord Cedric, who, although a knight was a mean and
ugly man, and Victoria did not want to marry him.
Complication Section
Aims
The call for action, the logical sequence of events that leads the hero to
decision making, actions and ultimately to leave home and his engagement into
a quest. Exposes the reasons, the motivations and the goals of the actions,
(ABC↑).
Functions involved
Villainy (A), Lack (a), Mediation connective incident (B), Beginning of
counteraction (C), Departure (↑)
Example
King Henry told David that he could achieve a knighthood, and have his
daughter’s hand in marriage, if he could kill the Dragon that lived in the
mountain and was terrorizing the people of the land
Donor Section
Aims
The hero in this section is tested, and receives a magical agent or helper that
proves to be essential for the achievement of the quest that the hero is engaged
in. The sequence DEF provides the hero the means by which the completion of
the quest is possible.
Functions involved
First function of the Donor (D), the Hero’s reaction (E), Provision or receipt of
a magical agent (F).
20
Example
David went on a long journey to the mountain in order to kill the dragon and
win the hand of his beloved. It was in the mountain that he met a strange
wizard called Archibald. Archibald offered to help David, and gave him a
magic sword to kill the dragon.
Action Section
Aims
It is led by a series of actions and ultimately results in direct confrontation of
the villain and the hero.
Functions involved
Spatial transference between two kingdoms or Guidance (G), Struggle (H),

Branding marking (J), Victory (I), Liquidation of the initial misfortune of Lack
(K), the Return
(↓), the Pursuit, Chase (Pr) and the Rescue (Rs).
Example
Thanks to the magic sword, David was able to kill the dragon and went
triumphantly back to King Henry’s castle. The King was overjoyed, and kept
his promise. David became a knight of the land, and the king offered him his
daughter in marriage.
Repeat Section
Aims
At this stage the author can either opt for a repeat of the first stage, by starting a
new villainy, or move on to the second move and end the story (the Second
move section).
Second Move Section
Aims
This section involves the function pair MN (Difficult task, Solution to the task),
brings the last actions into a story and concludes the story.
Functions involved
Unrecognized arrival (o), Unfounded claims (L), Difficult task (M), Solution
(N), Recognition (Q), Exposure (Ex), Transfiguration (T), Punishment (U),
Wedding (W).
Example
Victoria and David were married at a wonderful wedding ceremony, and they
all lived happily ever after.
(Louchart & Aylett 2004:510-1)
21
Finally, Propp’s seminal model, as mentioned above, became a
cornerstone for later narratological studies and inspired Propp’s followers
and successors to continue formulating narrative structure in general. The
French structuralists are an alive and ample example in this respect
(Palmer 2004: 28).
2.4.2 Structuralists’ Approach
Under the influence of the linguistic models, the structuralists

consider narrative as being a long sentence (Barthes 1996: 47). Narrative
shares some sentence features and characterizations as far as the structure
is concerned. This fact inspired some structuralists to analyse narrative in
accordance with verbal categories like tense, mood, person, etc. Among
these structuralists models Greimas’ (1966) and Genette’s (1972) are to be
elaborated here and put to work in chapter three.5
2.4.2.1 Greimas’ Model

Greimas, as a structuralist, tried to set up a universal grammar for
the structure analysis of narrative texts in terms of the semantic
perspective of sentence structure elements (Cuddon 1998: 534). Instead of
Propp’s seven spheres of action, Greimas, in his Structural Semantics
(1966), put forward a three basic binary opposition system collectively
called (six) ‘actants’. An actant is a fundamental and active role a
character or an object plays in an action at the level of narrative deep
structure (Palmer 2004: 29).The actants are as follows:
(1) subject/object;
(2) sender/ receiver; and
(3) helper/ opponent
(Greimas 1996: 79-81)
22
Greimas’ binary oppositions, as he proposes, describe the basic
patterns found in every narrative: “(a) desire, search or aim
(subject/object); (b) communication (sender/ receiver); and (c) auxiliary
support or hindrance (helper/opponent)”, as (Fig. 1) (on p.24) illustrates
(Cuddon 1998: 534). As Rimmon-Kenan (2002: 37) explains, Greimas
distinguishes between ‘actant’ action and ‘acteur’ character or simply as
actor, but they are both involved in accomplishing or submitting to an
action and both can include not only human beings but also inanimate
things( a magic ring, for example) and abstract concepts (destiny, for
example).
The two must not be confused; the actants are general categories
underlying all narratives, that is, they are found in the deep structure,
while the acteurs are invested with specific characteristics in different
narratives, that is, they can be seen on the surface structure. That is why
the number of the acteurs exceeds the number of the actants which are
only six in every narrative (Rimmon-Kenan 2002: 37). To illustrate this let
us consider the following examples:
(1) Jack and Jane gave an orange to David.
(2) Jack bought himself a coat.
In (1) Jack and Jane play the role of one actant; the subject and/or the
sender, but two acteurs, David is another actant, the receiver and an acteur
too, and the orange is the object. Jack in (2) is the subject; himself,
referring to Jack, is the receiver too, and the coat is an object. It should
also be stated that the actants are not equally important. Greimas
extrapolated his model from the subject-verb-object sentence structure as
the basis of narrative structure.
23
(Fig. 1) Greimas’ Actants
(Greimas 1966: 180, quoted in Herman & Vervaek 2005:53)
As a result, it can be said that the subject/object actants are more essential
than the rest (Bertens 2001: 69), as (Fig. 1) depicts, the subject/object
elements are centered in it.
2.4.2.2 Genette’s Model

Genette’s Narrative Discourse (1972, translated in 1980) is, by
general consensus, one of the most important contributions to the analysis
of narrative structure (Bertens 2001:69; Shen 2005: 137). Genette (1980:
25-27) divides narrative structure into three levels: story level, discourse
level, and narration level (cited in De Villier 2005: 118).
Narration
Narrative Discourse
Story
(Fig.2) Genette’s Narrative Structure levels
24
The level of story denotes the sequentially arranged chronological
events which actually happened (the “fabula” in the formalist terminology,
as Black (2005: 44) interprets). The level of discourse is about the actually
narrated events--the actual text written or spoken (the “syuzhet” in the
formalist terminology (Black 2005: 44)). The narration level refers to the
act of telling about events by someone, that is, the narrator (De Villier
2005: 118).
Genette’s model attempts to analyse the structure of narratives in
terms of the relation each level has with another (Bertens 2001: 71). In
order to depict the relations between the levels, he distinguishes between
three, originally, grammatical categories: voice, mood, and tense (Herman
2009: 28). The manipulation of these terminologies is metaphorical
because voice, for instance, pertains to active and passive as far as
sentence structure is concerned, while in Genette’s model it refers to the
person who narrates the events in the narrative—first person or third
person. The same is true for mood and tense; syntactically mood shows
whether a sentence is indicative, subjunctive, or imperative, but in
Genette’s model it is used to point out the point of view, that is, the
perspective through which the narrative is narrated. Tense refers to the
relationship between time and action, present, past, and future, while in
Genette’s model its use has little to do with them (Fludernik 2009: 89),
which will be explained below.
Genette makes a distinction between voice and mood: voice is

concerned with “who speaks”, mood with “who sees”, the perspective
from which the story is presented (Shen 2005: 140; Fludernik 2009: 98).
Each of voice, mood, and tense has further subcategories as shown below:
25
(1) Voice: (a) Time of Narrating: (1) Subsequent
(2) Simultaneous
(3) Prior
(4) Interpolated
(b) Person: (1) Homodiegetic
(2) Hetrodiegetic
(2) Mood: (a) Distance
(b) Focalization: (1) Zero Focalization
(2) Internal Focalization
(3) External Focalization
(3) Tense: (a) Order
(b) Duration
(c) Frequency
(adapted from Fludernik 2009: 99)
Let us discuss each of them in turn. The subdivisions of voice are time of
narrating and person. Subsequent narration is the most common temporal
position when the narrator tells what happened in past time. In prior
narration, the narrator tells what is going to happen at future time. This
kind of narration often takes the form of a dream or prophecy.
Simultaneous narration is established when the narrator tells her/ his story
at the very moment it occurs. The complex type of narration combines
prior and simultaneous narration—interpolated narration (Guillemette &
Lévesque 2006). This is why it is called ‘interpolated’. This type of
narration is found in those narratives which contain letter exchanges, in an
epistolary novel, for example (De Villiers 2004: 165; Lauer 2006).
Homodiegetic and hetrodiegetic persons show the relation the
narrator has with the world narrated, i.e., whether the narrator is part,
homodiegetic, or not part, hetrodiegetic, of the narrative (Fludernik 2009:
99). Traditionally, the first person narrative (I narrative) refers to that
narrative in which the narrator is one character in the narrative usually the
26
protagonist, but a homodiegetic person may not be the protagonist.
Hetrodiegetic narrative refers to the third person narratives in which the
third person pronouns, s/he and/or they, are used seeming to be narrating
the story (Fludernik 2009: 88). If the narrative is in the first person
pronoun and the pronoun denotes the protagonist, then it is said to be an
autodiegetic narrative (Rimmon-Kenan 2002: 99). For example, Daniel
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is a homodiegetic narrative in which the “I”
pronoun refers to the protagonist; so, it is autodiegetic. In Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea, in which the pronoun “he” refers to the hero,
Santiago, the narrator is not part of the narrated world; it is hetrodiegetic.
Under the heading of distance, as a subcategory of mood, Genette
contends that in narrative discourse “language can represent verbal
utterances much better than actions, colors or feelings” (Fludernik 2009:
102). It also refers to “how far the symbolic medium of language can be
used to achieve iconic or quasi-iconic effects”. This is the point at which
Genette discusses speech and thought representation (Fludernik 2009:
102). Distance also pertains to the degree of distance of the narrator from
the story, which is presented through the fact whether the characters’
speeches are reported or directly quoted. It is said that when the narrator
quotes the speeches and thoughts verbatim, there is smaller distance
between her/him and the story world than when narrating them in his/her
own words—reported speeches ( Fludernik 2009: 162).
In a narrative, as Genette argues, there may be either an external
focalization, which describes a view on the characters and the fictional
world from the outside whereas the inner life of the protagonist remains a
mystery to the audience, or internal focalization representing a view of the
fictional world through the eyes of a character, a view from within; the
story is narrated in the viewpoint of a character. There may also be zero
focalization which is equal to the perspective of an authorial narrator. For
27
Genette, zero focalization is an unlimited (non-focalized) view which
combines external and internal focalizations (Fludernik 2009: 153).
Tense is concerned with “temporal relations between the levels of
story and discourse” (Genette 1980: 30-31 cited in Friedman 2005: 193).
Tense includes three subcategories: order, duration, and frequency, which
are the main concern of this study as far as Genette’s model is concerned.
Each of the three answers a question: statements about order answer the
question “when?” realized in terms of first, second, last, before, etc.;
duration will answer “how long?” in terms of an hour, a month, a year,
etc.; and frequency will answer “how often?” in terms of x times a day, a
week, a page, etc. (Rimmon-Kennan 2002: 48; Black 2006: 44).
In the analysis of order, Genette focuses on different types of
‘anachrony’, discordance between the two orderings of the story and
discourse such as “analepsis” (flashback) and “prolepsis” (flash-forward)
6
(Shen 2005:137). In a detective story, for instance, the chronological
order of the events in level of story is like this: a murder occurs (event
A1), then the detective finds the murderer and arrests him/her (event B2),
finally the criminal is sentenced (event C3), while the events are arranged
in the text (discourse) level as: B1, A2, and C3. A2 is an analepsis. Prolepsis
tells the future before its time (Rimmon-Kennan 2002: 50). The use of this
reordering, as Shen (2005: 138) contends, involves different ways of using
language to create different effects.
Genette (1980: 87-88 cited in Shen 2005:138) states that duration,
or narrative speed, refers to the relationship between the actual duration of
events and textual length. It distinguishes between story time and
discourse time—the time taken for events to occur in the ‘real world’, and
the time taken to narrate the events (Black 2006: 45). For example, ‘two
years passed’ has a lengthy story time, but a short discourse time – it takes
only a second to narrate or read it. The reverse is also found; a short
28
lasting event in the story level is given a long time span in the discourse
level. The story time and discourse time relations can be summarized in
the following types:
(1) scene, when the story time and discourse time are identical;
(2) summary, when discourse time is shorter than the story time where the
narrator compresses the narrative;
(3) stretch, when events take longer to narrate than their occurrence
would, as explained above;
(4) ellipsis, when time passes and events occur with no words devoted to it
in the text; and
(5) pause, when the story is suspended but the discourse continues, which
is very common in descriptive passages (Black 2006: 45-46).
It is worth to note that Genette (1980: 87- 88 cited in Shen 2005:137)
posits that a narrative “can do without anachronies, i.e., flashback and
flash-forward, but not without any anisochronies [accelerations or
slowdowns].”
Frequency is concerned with showing the number of times an
incident occurs in the story level—in the fabula, and the number of times
it is narrated in the discourse (text)level—in the syuzhet (Black 2006: 46).
In this mode, a relation is established between the repetitions of story
events and the narrative statements pertained to these events (De Villier
2005: 147). Genette (1980: 114-16 cited in De Villier 2005: 147-50)
condenses this relationship in four points:
(1) Narrating once what happened once (abbr.1N/1S), for example:
Last night I went to bed early.
This type is called singulative because both the narrated event and the
narrative statement are singular and correspond to each other (De Villier
2005: 147).
29
(2) Narrating n times what happened n times (nN/nS), for example:
Monday I went to bed early. Wednesday I went to bed early.
This type is also called singulative because the events that happened
correspond to discourse; however, Genette (1980: 115) prefers to call this
type anaphoric rather than singulative. Here singulative is related to the
matter of equality, not number: anaphoric relationships deal with
something that happened more than once and narrated more than once (De
Villier 2005: 147).
(3) Narrating n times what happened once (nN/1S), for example:
Last night I went to bed early, Last night I went to bed early, Last
night I went to bed early.
This is known as repeating (or repetitive) narrative (Fludernik 2009: 99;
Black 2006: 47).
(4) Narrating once what happened n times (1N/nS).Genette (1980: 116)
labels this type iterative. Iterative narratives are, as Black (2006: 47)
mentions, marked by items such as every day, always, frequently,
often, would, etc. as in:
Every day of the week I went to bed early, instead of saying
Monday I went to bed early, Tuesday I went to bed early,
Wednesday I went to bed early (De Villier 2005: 150).
A thorough explanation of these devices can be seen in the practical
analysis of the short stories in the coming chapter.
2.4.3 Labov’s Model7

In the late 1960s and earlier 1970s, the American linguist, William
Labov, analysed a large body of tape-recorded oral narratives of personal
experience (Labov 1972: 354-355). As mentioned earlier, to Labov, a
minimal narrative is made up of a “sequence of two clauses which are
temporally ordered”, to put it another way, it comprises two clauses which
30
have a single temporal juncture (Labov 1972: 360-61), so any change in
the order will result in a change in their semantic interpretation, as in:
(1) (a) This boy punched me

(b) and I punched him. (Labov 1972: 360)
(2) (a) I punched him
(b) and he punched me.
The order of the clauses shows that in (1a) the boy first hit the speaker,
and in (1b) the speaker took his revenge on the boy, while the reverse
happened in (2a and b) respectively.
Labov (1972: 362) and Labov and Waletzky (1997: 15) distinguish
between two types of clause within the skeleton of the narrative: narrative
clause and free clause. Narrative clause is a “temporally ordered clause”.
A free clause is a clause which is not “confined in a temporal juncture.” It
is free in a sense, as László (2008:11) mentions, that it “can be moved
within the text without affecting the meaning or the course of events of a
given story.”
The overall structure of oral versions of narrative in Labov’s schema
includes six elements. They are as follows:
(1) Abstract
(2) Orientation
(3) Complicating Action
(4) Evaluation
(5) Result or Resolution
(6) Coda
(Labov 1972: 363)
According to Labov (1972), a fully formed narrative should include
the above-mentioned six elements, each of which can be described in
31
terms of a hypothetical question it asks, the function it fulfils, and the
linguistic form it has. Below, we discuss them one by one.
2.4.3.1 Abstract 8
Usually narrators begin their stories with “one or two clauses
summarizing the story” (Labov 1973: 363). The hypothetical question the
abstract asks, as Labov (1973: 370) proposes, is “what was this about?”
The abstract signals that the story is about to begin and draws the attention
of the listener. Syntactically, the abstract is realized in terms of short
summarizing clauses provided before the narrative commences, as in the
following example:
(3) (Were you ever in a situation where you were in a serious danger of being
9
killed?)
(a) My brother put a knife in my head
(How’d that happened?)
(b) Like kids you get into a fight.
(c) and I twisted his arm up behind him.
(d) This was just a few days after my father died.
(Labov 1973: 363)
Clauses (a) and (b) serve as the abstract to the narrative. They encapsulate
the point of the story (Labov 1973: 363).
2.4.3.2 Orientation 10
Orientation is that section in a narrative which asks “who or what is
involved in the story and when and where did the events take place?”
(Labov 1973: 370). It usually consists of some free clauses that orient the
listener in respect of person, time, place, and behavioral situations (Labov
and Waletzky 1997: 27). Orientation in the narrative is marked by past
progressive verbs and adjuncts of time, place, and manner (Labov 1972:
364). In the previous example, (3a, b and d) clauses give information
32
about person, manner, and time—they make up the orientation section.
The placement of orientation clauses is usually before the narrative
clauses (Labov 1972: 364-365), as illustrated in (Fig. 3) on p.36.
2.4.3.3 Complicating Action

Complicating action is the most important element in the narrative
in which the narrative clauses are contained. A narrative clause usually
comprises a series of events (Labov & Waletzky 1997: 27). Complicating
action begins from the first narrative clause and ends up with a result.
Thus the question it asks is “then what happened?” (Labov 1972: 370)
Formally, complicating action can be recognized by temporally ordered
narrative clauses with verbs in the simple past or present (preterit verbs, in
Labov’s (1972: 376) terminology).11 It is worth stating that this element is
the core of narrative without which it is impossible to have a narrative
(Labov 1972: 360).
2.4.3.4 Evaluation
Labov and Waletzky (1997: 28) define evaluation as “that part of

narrative which reveals the attitude of the narrator” towards the events. It
functions to make the point of the story clear. It is by this element that the
narrator wards off the “so what?” question which the listener may ask
(Labov 1972: 370). The evaluation is the most sophisticated and
problematic section in Labovian schema. It is of two types: external and
internal evaluation (Labov 1972: 371-72).
The external one can be identified, simply, when the narrator stops
the flow of narrating and turns to the listener to tell her/him what the point
of the narrative is, that is, why s/he is telling the story (Labov 1972: 370-
71). It can also be expressed by indicating the reaction of the narrator to
33
the events being reported, i.e., by quoting her/his sentiment when the
action went off (Labov 1972: 371-72).
The internal (or embedded) evaluation is more complicated than the
external one. As the word ‘embedded’ implies, the evaluative materials (or
devices) here are woven into the narrative clauses (Labov 1972: 372).
Toolan (1998: 139-40) summarizes the four subtypes of internal
evaluations:
(1) The intensifying evaluations, which contribute vividness via gestures (in
spoken narratives), repetition, emphases or dramatic sounds—all kinds
of ‘performing’ of the narrative:
Elvis thundered down the street, bddoingg.
(2) Comparator evaluation, sketching in alternative narrative developments
which are not actually followed up in the present narrative, especially
using negative, modal, hypothetical sentence:
Elvis didn’t repair any window, he just kept breaking them.
(3) Correlative evaluations, reporting secondary activities which are
contemporaneous with particular events:
While Mr. Lacey watered his flowers, Elvis thundered down the street,
bouncing his basketball on any available surface.
(4) Explanative evaluations, which give the background reasons and causes
for narrative events:
Elvis made a huge nuisance of himself, largely because he hated being
so big.
(Toolan 1998: 139-40)
Another important point about evaluation is its placement in the

narrative. It is usually located at the end of the complicating action and at
the beginning of the resolution sections as shown in (Fig. 3) on p.36, but
sometimes the evaluative devices are scattered throughout the narrative
(McCarthy 2005:138; Cater et al. 1997: 171).
34
2.4.3.5 Result (Resolution)
Resolution is defined as the “portion of the narrative which follows

the evaluation. If the evaluation is the last element then the resolution
section coincides with it (Labov & Waletzky 1997:32). The last narrative
clause is usually the resolution section in the narrative providing an
answer to “what finally happened?” question (Labov 1972: 370). It signals
the end of the story proper. It is the natural outcome of the preceding
action (Black 2006: 40).
2.4.3.6 Coda
Usually narratives end up with the resolution section, but for a
complete narrative one or two free clause(s) are required forming what
Labov (1972: 365) calls coda. The coda bridges the gap between the
moment of the time at the end of the narrative proper and the present. It
also closes off the sequence of narrative clauses and indicates that none of
the events that follow are important (Labov 1972: 365-66). Black argues
that “the fairy-tale ending and they lived happily ever after is perhaps a
typical coda” (2006: 40). Finally, coda “forestalls further questions about
the narrative” (Labov 1972: 366).
In short, a complete narrative is summarized in the abstract, begins

with an orientation, proceeds to the complicating action, is suspended at
the focus of the evaluation before the resolution, concludes with the
resolution, and returns the listener to the present time in the coda. These
six elements can be depicted in the following figure:
35
(Fig. 3) Labov’s Narrative
Structure
( (Labov 1972:369)
12
(Abstract)
Moreover, narratives with the aforementioned elements tend to be a

series of answers to the following hypothetical questions:
(1)Abstract: What was this about?
(2)Orientation: who, when, what, where?
(3) Complicating action: Then what happened?
(4) Evaluation: so what?
(5)Result or Resolution: what finally happened?
(6) Coda: It prevents any further questions regarding the story events.
(Labov 1972: 370)
The selected short stories in the present study will be analysed, in chapter
four, to see whether or not they provide the answers for these six
questions, as Labov claims that the oral narratives do.
36
Notes to Chapter Two
1. Many great English writers were influenced by Giovanni Boccaccio’s works.
Among the well-known ones are Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare, and John
Dryden. The structure of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for instance, which
employs the frame story device, is modeled after that of The Decameron
(“Giovanni Boccaccio” 2007).
2. Though Chomsky used NP and VP, not the full forms of block-capital, like
what is shown here: Sentence NP + VP (Chomsky 1957: 26).
3. Proppian approach is regarded a morphological model in some narratological

sources, such as Fludernik (2005: 23); Pier (2003: 78). This is due to the fact
that Propp used the formalist model, where sentence structures are broken
down into their analysable elements called morphemes; by analogy he
analysed the structure of the folk tales into their smallest units called
narratemes (Everard 2007).
4. Crystal (2008: 202) states that in a narratological perspective the word

‘function’ refers to what a character does in a story.
5. Like modern linguistic models, Greimas and Genette use binary oppositions
such as sender/receiver, helper/opponent, homodiegetic/hetrodiegetic,
internal/external etc., which can be considered another evidence of the
influence the modern linguistic models had on the structural models of
narrative analysis, like Chomsky’s competence/performance, surface/deep,
structures (Fludernik 2009:88).
6. As Bertens (2001:72) states, Genette did not use the terms flashback and flash-
forward.
7. It is also known as Labov and Waletzky’s model or a Sociolinguistic model as

in Elliott (2005: 42) and Simpson (2004: 144).
8. This is also known as “story-preface” (Gramley & Pätzold 1992: 218).
9. This is such a question that the interviewer asked the interviewees as an

opening to the narrative. If the answer to this question was “Yes!”, then the
interviewer would ask “what happened?” and leave the ground for the
interviewee to narrate his/her story (Labov 1972: 354).
10. Berman (2001: 1) has mentioned three alternative terminologies for

orientation: (1) setting; (2) initial background information; and (3)
contextualizing state clauses.
37
11. Rarely will we find narratives told entirely in present simple (historical
present). There are shifts from past to present and vice versa (Schifrin 1981:
51), as we will be discussing in chapter four.
12. Originally, abstract is not there, as the parenthesis brackets show, though its
presence is implied by the existence of the up warded arrow.
38
Chapter Three
The Structuralist Approach and the Selected Short Stories by
O. Henry 1
3.0 Introduction
This chapter scrutinizes the narrative structure of three short stories
by O. Henry. A synopsis is provided for each of them, first. Then, each is
examined in accordance with both the actantial model of Greimas’ and the
temporal model of Genette’s, which have been explained in the previous
chapter.
3.1 Greimas’ Model and the Short Stories

3.1.1 ‘A Strange Story’
3.1.1.1 Synopsis
This story tells about a family, by the name of Smothers, consisting
of three members; the father, the mother and their little daughter. One
night, their little daughter gets sick. The father leaves for the down town to
bring her some medicine. The little girl recovers but he never comes back.
As a result his wife remarries. The little girl gets married, too. Now she is
living in the same house where her family was living. She gives birth to a
girl. One night, on the anniversary of Smothers’ disappearance, her little
daughter, now five year old, becomes sick. Her husband tries to fetch her
some drug but his wife does not allow him, fearing of happening what has
happened to her father long ago. Suddenly, an old man enters the house and
brings out a bottle of medicine and gives some medicine to the girl, taking
her for his own daughter. She becomes better soon. The old man is
Smothers. Finally, strangely, he explains that he is a little bit late because
he has been waiting for a car.
3.1.1.2 Greimas’ Actants and ‘A Strange Story’
As mentioned earlier, Greimas claims the existence of subject-object,
sender-receiver and helper-opponent. In this short story, the father, John
Smothers plays the role of the subject, trying to bring the object, the
medicine, for the receiver. The sender role is also taken by the father
because he sends the medicine to his daughter. The helper is the car, which
takes the subject, the father, to the town and takes him back to the village.
At the same time the car is the opponent, preventing the subject to give the
object to the receiver. The following figure illustrates what has been said:
Sender Object Receiver

John Smothers the medicine Smothers’ daughter
Helper Subject Opponent

the car John Smothers the car
(Fig 4. a) Actants of ‘A Strange Story’
The same story can be interpreted in another way. The object can be
the health of Smothers’ daughter. Consequently, the pharmacist and the
drug are the helper, God is the sender, and Smothers’ long disappearance is
the opponent. The subject and the receiver do not change. One might
wonder why God is to be regarded as the sender of the cure which is again
referred to in the story not explicitly. The answer is that an actantial
position can be filled by characters, concepts, (health, disappearance, etc.
as in the present narrative), settings or objects (Keen 2003: 85).
40
Furthermore, these actants are felt through the general image of the story.
Another point is that the actants reflect the deep narrative structure rather
than the surface narrative structure (Greimas 1996: 76). This can be
clarified when illustrated by the following examples 2:
(1)The man was killed yesterday.
(2)(a) The police killed the man yesterday.
(b) The kidnappers killed the man yesterday.
(c) Mary killed the man yesterday.
Example (1), which is in passive form, can be the surface structure of any
of the active forms of example (2), any of which can be the deep structure
of (1) though none of the police, the kidnappers and Mary is mentioned in
the surface structure. So the same relation can hold between the deep
narrative structure and the superficial one. Though the narrator does not say
any thing about health and pharmacist, for example, they could be
interpreted in the deep structure. So, the image may look like what is
shown here in (Fig.4. b):

God cure of the disease Smothers’ daughter
(Health)

The pharmacist John Smothers Smothers’ long
the medicine disappearance
(Fig 4. b)
41
As it is revealed in the story, Smothers’ daughter never receives the
medicine. Smothers does not come back until the little girl grows up and
gets married and gives birth to a girl. Her little girl gets sick too. Her father,
John Smith, as John Smothers’ son-in-law now, attempts twice, out of his
mercy to her sick daughter, to go downtown to bring her some medicine
but his wife stops him, out of the fear of not returning home like her own
father. All of a sudden, Smothers comes in, with a bottle of medicine in his
hand. She takes the medicine and gets well. Here, John Smith and John
Smothers are together, albeit two characters, one subject. The medicine is
the object. John Smith’s wife is the opponent, while the paternal pity is the
helper. The little girl, Pansy, who takes the drug is the receiver.

John Smothers the medicine Smith’s daughter
(Pansy)

Paternal pity John Smith John Smith’s wife
John Smothers
(Fig 4. c)
It can also be said that Smothers can be regarded as a sender too, as shown
above in (Fig 4. c).
3.1.2 ‘The Robe of Peace’
3.1.2.1 Synopsis
It tells the story of a very prosperous and renowned man in New
York called Bellchambers. This man disappears suddenly and
mysteriously. His friends search everywhere for him but they do not find
42
any trace of him. They, finally, come to the conclusion that they will not
find him.
Two of his friends by the names Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam
go on a business trip to European countries. They happen to hear of a very
ancient monastery on the top of a very high mountain in the Swiss Alps.
They are told that no English men have ever set foot in that monastery. So,
inspired by being the pioneer of the English, they visit the monastery. Upon
their arrival at the monastery they witness surprises; they see Bellchambers
amongst the monks, wearing a very simple black robe. They are
dumbfounded in astonishment. They talk to him for a long time. They ask
him to leave the monastery and come back home with them, but he refuses
and says that he will stay in the monastery for the remainder of his life
because he has found what he has been seeking for— peace and happiness.
Finally they leave the monastery and never see Bellchambers again.
3.1.2.2 Actants of ‘The Robe of Peace’

In the present narrative text, two actantial divisions can be seen in
the narrative structure. One of them is primary and the other is secondary
according to the title and the overall theme of the story.
The primary one is Bellchambers’ strong desire and longing for
spiritual peace and tranquility. He can not achieve this aim unless he
deserts the society and the luxurious life style and retreats to the monastery.
In the monastery, his monk-friends and the simple life they lead help
Bellchambers ‘hit his target’. He concludes that he can attain his aim only
under the umbrella of religion. So, Bellchambers is both the subject and the
receiver. The object is peace or spiritual tranquility. The sophisticated
luxurious life he has been leading before he goes to the monastery and the
society serve as being against Bellchambers’ object. Thus, it can be said
that matter, in general, is the opponent. The monastery, its monks, the
43
humble life he leads there, and the simple black robe he wears are all the
helper. (Figure 5.a) illustrates our argument:

Religion peace or spiritual Bellchambers
tranquility
(Happiness)

the monastery, Bellchambers luxurious life,
the monks, wealth and
the robe and the society
humble life (Matter)
(Fig 5. a) Actants of ‘The Robe of Peace’
Concerning the secondary actant division in the narrative, it can be

said that the story of Bellchambers’ old friends contains other actants
serving as secondary subject-object, sender-receiver and helper-opponent
elements. The narrator relates the story of Tom Eyres and Lancelot
Gilliam’s trip to the European continent when they are told about a
monastery on the top of a very high mountain. People tell them that till now
no English man has ever set foot in the monastery, there is a delicious drink
there and there is a very ancient bell ever rang on the earth. These reasons
make them neglect the difficulties they face on their way to the monastery.
They are accompanied by two guides who show them the way to the
monastery. Accordingly, the subject is Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam. The
monastery, its bell and drink serve as the object. Meeting with
Bellchambers and demanding him to come back home with them become
another object later in the story. The danger and difficulty of the road to the
44
monastery they have is the opponent while the two guides provide the
helper actant.

The people (who the monastery, Eyres and Gilliam
inform Eyres its bell, its drink
and Gilliam (meeting Bellchambers)
about the monastery)

The two guides Eyres and Gilliam the dangerous and
difficult road
to the monastery
(Fig. 5. b)
It can be said that the people who inform Eyres and Gilliam can
serve as the sender. Eyres and Gilliam together serve as the receiver, as the
overall picture can be seen in the above depicted figure.
3.1.3 ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’

3.1.3.1 Synopsis
This story tells of a young boy stolen for ransom by two money
‘hunting’ criminals, Bill Driscoll and Sam. The two men are trying to get
the $2,000 they need in order to launch a land fraud scheme in Illinois.
They decide to implement this project in the quiet town of Summit,
Alabama because of the Philoprogenitiveness — love for one’s own
children — that they believe is common in rural communities.
Bill and Sam decide to kidnap the son of an important citizen named
Ebenezer Dorset and demand a ransom of $2,000, and quickly collect the
payoff. However, once they actually kidnap the boy and make their way to
a hideout in the nearby hills, their plan quickly begins to fail. Their young
45
redheaded captive, who calls himself Red Chief, actually enjoys his stay
with his kidnappers, and thinks he is on a camping trip.
Red Chief proceeds to disturb his captors with trouble and demands
that they play wearying games with him, such as pretending to be a scout
and using Bill as his horse. Bill and Sam are soon desperate to get rid of the
little troublemaker. They lower the price to $1,500 but still receive no
answer. They later receive a reply to their ransom letter from Red Chief’s
father offering to take the boy off their hands for $250, but when the men
take Red Chief to his father, he does not want to leave his captors. He then
tries to stay with the two kidnappers but his father holds him back. The two
kidnappers run away as quickly as they can.
3.1.3.2 Actants of ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’

Like the other two narratives analysed earlier, the actants of the
present narrative can be analysed into two separate divisions. Unlink them,
there are two opposite subjects trying to get two contrasting ends. Such a
contrast is found in those narrative texts in which there exists a restricted
categorization into good versus bad group of actants (Rulewicz: n. d).
Thus, the notion of opponent and helper are not sufficient, as Rulewicz (n.
d.) states, to indicate the whole network relationship between these
opposing groups.
To solve this problem, Greimas develops notions like “anti-actant
subject, negative object, anti-sender and anti-receiver” (Rulewicz: n. d.).
This invention can work in the present narrative since there are two
different bodies in action one against the other.
First, Sam and Bill, as the kidnappers, are attempting to get the
amount of money, as a ransom, from the father of the captive—Ebenezer
Dorset. There are certain assistants in the operation. The notions of
philoprogenitiveness, explained earlier, and the suitability of the town of
46
Summit are all helping the kidnappers to carry out their plan. Besides, the
buggy (a carriage pulled by a horse), which they hire and use in the
abduction, the cave where they shelter near Summit, as a hideout, and the
letter they send to the father of Red Chief, in which they demand him to
send them the ransom, function as the helper. So, Ebenezer Dorset is the
sender and he is an opponent as well; since he never gives them the
ransom. The ransom is the object. Sam and Bill act as the receiver, though
they never receive their object. So far, the actants in this narrative can be
shown in the following figure:

Ebenezer The Ransom Sam and Bill
Dorset

Philoprogenitiveness, Sam and Bill Ebenezer Dorset
suitability of Summit,
the cave, the buggy
and the letter
(Fig. 6 a) Actants of ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’

The second actantial division can be made about the anti-actants
present in the narrative structure of this short story. At the end of the story,
it comes out that Ebenezer Dorset, in a letter, in reply to the demand of the
kidnappers, instead of sending the ransom, eccentrically, demands an
amount of $ 250, just to take Red Chief off their hands. Now everything is
upside down for the kidnappers. They are obliged to pay the amount of the
money. The naughtiness of the child is a good helper for his father to ask
that amount of money. At the same time, the child is an opponent to the
interests of the kidnappers.
47
Accordingly, it can be said that Ebenezer Dorset is the anti-subject
and anti-receiver. The money, Dorset demands is the negative object. Sam
and Bill function as the anti-sender; they compulsorily send the money, a
long with Red Chief, to Dorset. Thus, Sam and Bill are the opponents too.
The letter Dorset sends and the child, who posts it, riding on the bicycle,
are the helper to the anti-subject in obtaining his demand.
This issue can be illustrated below:
Anti-Sender Negative-Object Anti-Receiver

Sam and Bill Red Chief Ebenezer Dorset
and the $250
Helper Anti-Subject Opponent

Red Chief’s Ebenezer Sam and Bill
naughtiness, Dorset
the letter
and
the child
(who posts the letter)
(Fig. 6 b)
Finally, throughout this section the researcher has been analyzing the
narrative structure of the selected short stories in terms of the actantial
model developed by Greimas. All the six actants are found in the structure
of each narrative; this can be considered a positive point for applicability of
the model. There are some disadvantageous aspects in it, too. The model is
too general; not only narrative but non-narrative texts, a descriptive text,
for instance, can be analysed with the model. Another negative point is that
in the structure of each short story there are more than one or two possible
actantial groups. Such short comings might not be encountered in the other
structural schema—Genette’s model (which will be considered in the
coming section).
48
3.2 The Short Stories and Genette’s Model
3.2.1 ‘A Strange Story’
3.2.1.1 Voice
As stated earlier, voice, in Genette’s model pertains to two aspects of
narrative structure: time of narrating and person. These two were discussed
in chapter two; now we refer to the examples of these elements in the
present narrative.
3.2.1.1.1 Time of Narrating

In most of the cases, there is a thorough correspondence between the
times the events that happened, which are, of course, in the past, and the
time of narrating those events. Therefore, it can be said that this narrative is
a subsequent narrative since the time of narrating the events comes after the
events happened. The tense form of the verbs is the best evidence for this
fact, as in the very beginning of the narrative:
In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the name
of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, [...].
One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic,
and John Smothers hurried down town to get some medicine.
(Henry 1953: 1045)
In the above passage the narrator uses past simple to narrate the story
which also happened in the past.
It is worth stating that there is prior time of narrating in the present
narrative. The prior time of narrating is found only in some, but not all,
direct speeches since most of them are about the future time in the story
and they are predictions as in the following quotes:
“I will go downtown and get some medicine for her,” said John Smith ...
“No, no, dear John,” cried his wife. “You, too, might disappear forever,
3
and then forget to come back.”
(1953: 1046)
49
The last speech by John Smothers, albeit direct, is in the form of
subsequent narrative:
“I was a little late,” said John Smothers, “as I waited for a street
car.”
(1953: 1046)
3.2.1.1.2 Person
Person is related to the voice which is narrating the story—the
narrator. It seeks to know whether the narrator is a character in the story or
not; whether it is an I narrative or s/he narrative. Accordingly, the present
narrative is a he narrative, third person narrative. In Genette’s terms, this
type of narrative is known as hetrodiegetic because the narrating person is
outside the narrated world.
3.2.1.2 Mood
As mentioned earlier, mood is concerned with two facets of narrative
structure: distance and focalization. They are explained in the coming
subsections.
3.2.1.2.1 Distance
Distance shows whether there is a small or great distance between
the narrator and the events and the story world. The distance of the narrator
changes with direct and indirect speeches.
It is worth stating that the narrator of ‘A Strange Story’ is far-away
from the narrative at the first half of the story. This is due to the fact that
neither direct nor indirect speeches of the characters are mentioned in this
part, moreover the narrator is not a character in the story, i.e., hetrodiegetic,
as mentioned earlier. The narrator only describes the places and characters
which are involved in the story events. So, the narrator can not show
himself near to the characters. Another point is that narrating events is a
process of verbalizing non-verbal language (De Villiers 2005: 153);
therefore it is difficult to find him/her in the process of narration. Towards
50
the end of the narrative, the narrator quotes some speeches of the characters
in which the role of the narrator can be seen very explicitly. There is, as a
result, smaller distance between the characters and the narrator.
3.2.1.2.1 Focalization
Focalization is, as stated earlier, about the perspective or point of

view from which the events are narrated. Furthermore, focalization is to
seek whether the narrator knows about the events more or less than (or as
much as) the characters (Eagleton 2005: 92). Depending on this, it can be
said that the narrator of the present narrative knows less than the characters
in the story. John Smothers, as a major character of ‘A Strange Story’
knows more than the narrator and the rest of the characters in the narrative.
He discloses less than he knows to the reader and the other characters; he
does not reveal the real reason why he was away for that long period.
3.2.1.3 Tense
Tense is concerned with showing the relationship that exists between
the levels of a narrative, especially between the story level and discourse
level. This relationship can be explained in terms of order, duration and
frequency.
3.2.1.3.1 Order
The events of the present narrative have, generally, a linear
arrangement. They are chronologically order. First, the little girl falls ill;
consequently the father goes to bring her some medicine in the town. This
does not mean that there are no discordances in it. There are analepsis and
prolepsis. In the following extract, for instance, analepsis is found:
She still lived in the same house where they dwelt when her father had
left and never returned.
One night by a remarkable coincidence her little girl was taken with cramp
colic on the anniversary of the disappearance of John Smothers,
51
who would now have been her grandfather if he had been alive and had a
steady job.
(1953: 1045)
In the above passage, the narrator refers to the time when Smothers was
with his family and to the disappearance which happened earlier.
In the dialogue between John Smith and his wife, there are prolepsis
and analepsis too:
“I will go downtown and get some medicine for her,” said John Smith ...
“No, no, dear John,” cried his wife. “You, too, might disappear forever,
(1953: 1046)
This contains prediction to what will happen to her spouse and flashback of
the disappearance of her father.
3.2.1.3.2 Duration
Duration is concerned with narrative speed; the duration an event
takes to happen in the level of story in the ‘real world’ and the duration of
the time it takes to narrate or read it in the discourse level. The duration of
an event may take one of the following forms: scene, summary, stretch,
ellipsis or pause (for their definitions, see chapter two; p. 29). Depending
on this division, ‘A Strange Story’ can be considered in terms of summary,
pause and ellipsis as far as duration is concerned.
The whole narrative is a summary since the discourse time is very
shorter than the story time. If one looks at the space, in pages, the whole
short story has taken only one and a half pages.4 Moreover, the duration the
events took to happen is more than a decade, as it can be felt via the
narrative, while the whole text can be read with a slow reading in less than
five minutes!
52
Pause is found in the first descriptive paragraph, when the narrator
provides a brief description of the place and characters involved in the
narrative. Here the story time is suspended while the discourse time is
going on.
There are several examples of ellipsis, as shown bellow:
The little girl recovered and in time grew up to womanhood.
(1953: 1045)
In this, there is an implicit ellipsis; the reader can feel the “gap in narrative
continuity”, though its presence is not announced in the text (Lauer 2006).
No word is provided to narrate the long duration of her recovery and
growth to womanhood.
There are other examples of ellipsis in what follows:
The mother grieved very much over her husband’s disappearance, and it was
nearly three months before she married again, and moved to San Antonio.
The little girl also married in time, and after a few years had rolled
around, she also had a little girl five years of age.
(1953:1045)
This means three months after Smothers had disappeared; she remarried
and moved to the mentioned place. This can be called an explicit ellipsis as
the narrator’s words clearly show, in the level of discourse, no account has
been provided for that long period of time in the story level. A few years
had rolled around is, since the ellipsis is not indicated clearly, an
“indefinite ellipsis”, with the only exception of five years of age—it is an
explicit and “definite ellipsis” (Lauer 2006).
3.2.1.3.3 Frequency
Frequency is to show the differences or correspondences found

between the number of times an event occurred in the story level and the
number of the times it is narrated in the discourse level. The disappearance
53
of Smothers happened only once in the story level while narrated or
referred to more than four times in the text. So, one can say that this is an
example of a repetitive narrative. There are other events which happened
more than once and narrated more than once. Marriage, for instance,
occurred twice and narrated twice; the remarriage of the wife of Smothers’
after he disappears and the marriage of his daughter. Thus, it is singulative.
The sickness, like marriage, is singulative, as it will be mentioned in detail
in chapter four (see section 4.2.4).
3.2.2 ‘The Robe of Peace’

3.2.2.1 Voice

The time of narrating the events varies in this narrative. In most
instances, narrating is subsequent to the occurrence of the events and it is
simultaneous or prior to the time event occurrence in some other cases. At
the beginning of the narrative, both, simultaneous and subsequent, times
are used in narrating the events since there are present and past tenses used
to tell of story:
Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading
public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel
at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This
particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so
strange and incredible to the mind of the average man that only a select
few who were in close touch with Bellchambers will give it full
credence.
(1953: 1521-22)
Later the narrator proceeds to narrate the events with usual time,
subsequent:
Bellchambers disappeared very suddenly. For three days his absence
brought no alarm to his friends, [...]
In May, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam, two of Bellchambers’ old
friends, went for a little run on the other side.
(1953: 1522)
54
In the direct speeches by Bellchambers, the time of narrating is prior to the
events. Thus, future tense is used:
“...Here I shall remain for the remainder of my days. You
see this robe that I wear?”... “At last I have found something that will not
bag at the knees...”
(1953: 1524)
3.2.2.1.2 Person
The person who speaks, i.e., narrates the events, is not part of the
story world. S/he is not a character in the story—s/he is just a narrator. So,
in Genette’s terms, ‘The Robe of Peace’ is hetrodiegetic as far as person is
concerned. Thus, it is a third person narrative, in which the narrator tells
what happened to other people.
3.2.2.2 Mood
3.2.2.2.1 Distance
Like the previous short story, in this narrative the narrator is distant
from the story world in the first part of the short story since there is no
direct speech by the characters to be narrated by the narrator. The first
paragraphs of this short story, as it will be mentioned in detail in the
coming chapter, are devoted to describe the personality, social rank and life
style of the major character, Bellchambers.
Later on, in the story, the reader may feel a smaller distance between
the narrator and the narrated world as the narrator approaches the
characters by quoting their speeches straight from their mouths, as in:
“It's Bell, without a doubt,” said Eyres, firmly, “or I'm pretty badly
in need of an oculist. But think of Johnny Bellchambers, the Royal High
Chancellor of swell togs and the Mahatma of pink teas, up here in cold
storage doing penance in a snuff-colored bathrobe! I can't get it
straight in my mind. Let's ask the jolly old boy that's doing the
honors.”
[...]
“Glad to see you, old man,” said Eyres, somewhat awkwardly. “Wasn't
expecting to find you up here. Not a bad idea though, after all.
55
Society's an awful sham. Must be a relief to shake the giddy whirl and
retire to--er--contemplation and--er--prayer and hymns, and those
things.”
(1953:1523-24)
The narrator is, as stated in chapter two, more successful in narrating
speeches rather than events. Because there is conversion from a non-verbal
phenomenon into a verbal one when narrating events (De Villiers 2005:
153), therefore it is easier for the narrator to narrate words than showing
events. As in the above extract, the narrator can even refer or imitate the
pauses Eyres makes when talking to Bellchambers.
The events of the present narrative can be divided into two parts as
far as focalization is concerned. At the very beginning, the narrator
characterizes Bellchambers and relates what happened to him. For this part
of the narrative, it can be said that all of the events related and descriptions
made are narrated through the view point of the narrator himself, who is
outside of the story world. So, the person who speaks can be, as Rimmon-
Kenan (2002: 74) contends, the same person who sees the events. The
result is to have zero, (or authorial) focalization, since the narrator, one can
say the author—O. Henry, knows all about this part; he gives as much
information as he wishes about the major character to the reader. This type
of narrator is known as “omniscient” (Fowler 1996: 160).
But when the narrator relates the story of the two friends of
Bellchambers’, there is another type of focalization. The narrator’s mere
task is to relate what they saw during their visit to the monastery where
they met Bellchambers among the monks. All the events and speeches of
this part are focalized by the characters within the story: Eyres, Gilliam and
Bellchambers. Therefore, one can speak of an internal focalization for this
part.
56
It is necessary that the black robe Bellchambers is wearing in the
monastery has been considered in different perspectives. Eyres calls it a
bathrobe: “Peel the bathrobe,” pleaded Eyres (1953: 1524), while it is the
thing that Bellchambers has been seeking or it is the robe of peace, as the
title asserts.
3.2.2.3 Tense
3.2.2.3.1 Order
At the very beginning of the short story, the narrator proclaims that
he is relating the mysterious disappearance of a man which is no longer a
mystery, since he has been found. Here, it can be said that there is prolepsis
since this announcement must have come late at the end of the narrative,
but the narrator has done that for creating special effects.5
After that, the narrative takes its normal order—there is a linear

narration of the events. The order of the events in the discourse level
matches to the one of story level. This goes on till the narrator gets to retell
the unexpected meeting of Eyres and Gilliam with Bellchambers when
there are again discordances between the arrangements of events in the
levels of story and discourse. In the following extract, for instance, there is
analepsis:
“What the deuce,” said he [Gilliam], wonderingly, “is old Bell doing here?
Tommy, it surely can't be he! Never heard of Bell having a turn for the
religious. Fact is, I've heard him say things when a four-in-hand didn't
seem to tie up just right that would bring him up for court-martial
before any church.”
(1953: 1523)
Gilliam remembers how Bellchambers was far from religion before. This
shows that he is surprised with Bellchambers being a monk. There is
prolepsis in the speeches of Eyres and Bellchambers:
57
“Peel the bathrobe,” pleaded Eyres, almost tearfully, “and go back with
us. The old crowd'll go wild to see you.... You'll get catarrh here, Johnny--
and-- My God! you haven't any socks on!”
[...]
“You fellows don't understand,” he [Bellchambers] said, soothingly. “It's
nice of you to want me to go back, but the old life will never know me again.
I have reached here the goal of all my ambitions. I am entirely happy
and contented. Here I shall remain for the remainder of my days...”
(1953: 1524)
The foreshadowing (prolepsis) in the speech of Eyres will never come off
in the story while the one in Bellchambers’ does since Bellchambers does
not return home as it is announced before the story ends in the following
statement by the narrator: They left the monastery without seeing him again
(1953: 1524).
3.2.2.3.2 Duration
Like in the previous short story, different types of speed acceleration
are used in telling the events of the present narrative. There are summary,
pause and ellipsis found in the level of discourse in comparison to the story
level.
The short story can be totally considered as a summary with regard
to duration since the duration the events took in the ‘real world’ is longer
than the duration the reading or narrating the story takes. The reader can
feel that the events took about several months to happen while the text can
be read in less than twenty minutes! In pages, it has been narrated in only
6
three and a half pages. The descriptive passages provide examples of
pause when the story pauses while the discourse time is ongoing.
Examples of ellipsis are found in the following passages from the narrative:
brought no alarm to his friends, and then they began to operate the usual
methods of inquiry. [...]
58
It took them two days with the aid of two guides to reach the monastery
of St. Gondrau. (1953: 1522)
Here, the narrator mentions that three days passed after the disappearance
of Bellchambers without providing any word to recapitulate about that
duration in the discourse level. The two days it took Eyres and Gilliam to
reach the church is also a long time in the story level but no space or
discourse time is provided for narrating the details.
3.2.2.3.3 Frequency
As usual, the commonest type of narration concerning the frequency
of events narrated at the level of discourse in comparison to the number of
times they happened at the story level in ‘The Robe of Peace’ is
singulative. This does not mean that the other types are not present in it.
There are circumstances in which repetitive or iterative forms have been
used.
Examples of repetitive are found in the fact that the disappearance of
Bellchambers happened only once in the story while it has been mentioned
more than five times in the text. Another example of repetitive form of
frequency is when the narrator announces twice, (pp. 1522 and 1524), that
the story source is from two old friends of Bellchambers’ when they meet
Bellchambers in the monastery in Europe.
All examples of iterative in the present narrative are in what follows:
Especially did he shine in the matter of dress. In this he was the

despair of imitators. Always correct, exquisitely groomed, and possessed
of an unlimited wardrobe, he was conceded to be the best-dressed man in
New York, and, therefore, in America. There was not a tailor in Gotham
who would not have deemed it a precious boon to have been granted the
privilege of making Bellchambers' clothes without a cent of pay. As he
wore them, they would have been a priceless advertisement. Trousers
were his especial passion. Here nothing but perfection would he notice.
He would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked a
wrinkle. He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing his ample
59
supply. His friends said that three hours was the limit of time that he
would wear these garments without exchanging.
(1953: 1522)
Here, these events have been narrated only once in the discourse level
while happened many times in the story level, as the items in boldface
assert that.
3.2.3 ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’
3.2.3.1 Voice
At the very beginning of this short story, past tense has been used in
telling the story. So, like the other two short stories, most of the times the
events of this short story have been told with the help of subsequent time.
This is not the only category employed here; there are uses of prior,
simultaneous, and even interpolated time of narrating.
The narration prior to the occurrence of the events which is found in

the following:
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you
[...]
Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt
down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I
tell you.
[...]
“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill,
climbing over the wheel.
(1953: 1144)
In the above extract, the statements are all prolepses for what will happen
in the future of the plan—failure. The direct speech by Bill above indicates
that he is going to take extra money on the account of the brick the child hit
him. On the contrary, in the following question, Bill contradicts his
previous speech:
60
“Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay
out money to get a little imp like that back home?”
(1953: 1146)
This shows that he is doubtful about the success of their plan. So, he has a
different prediction for the future. He foresees that the child’s father may
not pay the ransom.
The simultaneous narrating is found wherever present simple tense is
used for narrating the events. Since many examples will be mentioned
regarding the utilization of present tense in narrating past events in chapter
four, no reference is made to it here.
Interpolated narrating, as mentioned in the previous chapter, is found
in epistolary narratives, namely novels; in which many aspects and
developments of the events are explained via letters exchanged between the
characters within the story world. That is why in the present narrative there
are two letters through which the kidnapers and the captive’s father
communicate. The letters are inserted between the moments of the
occurrence of the events. In both letters, it can be noticed that through the
letters some past events have been narrated and some future events have
been caused, as in the response letter of Ebenezer to the kidnapers:
Two Desperate Men.
Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom
you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little
high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition,
which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny
home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree
to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the
neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for
what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very
respectfully,
Ebenezer Dorset.
(1953: 1151)
61
In this letter it has been narrated that Ebenezer received the kidnappers’
letter and their neighbours have not yet known that his son has been
kidnapped. This letter also undermines the plan for taking the ransom. It
also foresees that the kidnappers should pay, instead of taking the allocated
money.
3.2.3.1.2 Person
The person who narrates the events and the speeches of the
characters in the story is an active character contributing to the kidnapping
with Bill. So, the narrator narrates his own experience. Thus, this narrative
is homodiegetic as far as narrator or person is concerned. The I/we
pronouns in the story refer to the narrator, Sam, and his partner, Bill. It is
worth stating that, albeit homodiegetic, this narrative can not be regarded
autodiegetic, since the narrator is not a protagonist in the short story.
3.2.3.2 Mood
3.2.3.2.1 Distance
Unlike the previously analysed narratives, since the narrator is a
character in the story, there is a very small distance between him and the
story world.
The narrator uses both direct and indirect speeches and thoughts by the
characters. Again this shows that there is smaller distance between the
narrator and reader to the events.
In this narrative, one can notice that the narrator has no problem in
narrating speeches; but in the description of colour and non-verbal objects,
he is obliged to use simile and metaphor. For instance, when the narrator
describes the hair of the child they kidnap, he can not say the exact colour
unless he makes the comparison:
The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the
colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you
want to catch a train. (1953: 1144)
62
Through this comparison, the narrator approaches the reader and drags
her/his attention to the story events. There are other examples of this type
which are to be mentioned in the coming chapter (in the evaluation
section).
Depending on the fact that the narrator, Sam, a major character in the
story, witnessed the story and lived in the events, it can be said that the
events are internally focalized, i.e., there is internal focalization. In the
narrative there are different perspectives concerning the ransom and
labeling the abducted child. Throughout the story, the reader can notice that
the viewpoint of Bill changes with the passage of time and degree of the
harm and the pain he receives from the child. First when the child hits him
with a piece of brick, Bill promises to take an extra $500. But later, he begs
Sam to reduce the ransom from $2000 to $1500. After that, when they
receive Ebenezer’s letter asking $250 in return of accepting his son back
home, Bill is the first one to show his agreement:
“Sam,” says he, “what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all?
We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed
in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is
a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going
to let the chance go, are you?”
(1953: 1151)
Bill regards getting rid of the child a chance that should not be missed
regardless to the fact that he and Sam should pay instead of being paid to.
Again the child has been described by the kidnappers from several
perspectives along with the different phases the story passes through, which
will be referred to in the next chapter. One can also notice that the narrator
praises himself when he shows himself not to be afraid and dispraises his
friend as being frightened and terrorized by the child. It can be said that he
has a positive attitude about himself but a negative one towards Bill.
63
3.2.3.3 Tense
3.2.3.3.1 Order
Most of the events in the present narrative have been narrated
chronologically in the discourse level, i.e. there is a linear structure in the
order of the events. There are also discordances—analepsis and prolepsis.
The first analepsis in the narrative is seen in the following extract:
After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away,
where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.
(1953: 1145)
The event narrated here, through the clause in boldface, refers back to an
event that happened earlier in the story level but is narrated later in the
discourse level. This event happened in the preparations for the operation
before the start of the kidnap, as the past participle tense, had hired,
implies. Again, there is analepsis in the following passage:
I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red
Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake
at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up
and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.
(1953:1146)
The narrator relates that he remembered what the child had said yesterday;
so it is the outcome of the following prolepsis:
He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when
his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the
rising of the sun.
(1953: 1145)
The examples of prolepsis surpass the ones of analepsis in the present
narrative. Since some examples of prolepsis have been mentioned earlier in
the prior time of narrating and they will also be explained in chapter four
when discussing the evaluative devices in Labov’s model, just one more
example is referred to here:
“Sam,” says he [Bill], “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all?
We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed
in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is
64
a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going
to let the chance go, are you?”
(1953: 1151)
The narrator quotes the speech of Bill’s in which he foreshadows that he
will go to madhouse if Red Chief stays with them one more night.
Therefore, it is necessary for the kidnappers to take the captive back to
his father’s and pay the money Dorset demands.
3.2.3.3.2 Duration
Generally, ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’, like the other short stories, is
a summary regarding the duration it takes the narrator to narrate or a reader
to read the events in the level of discourse in analogy to the duration the
events took to happen in story level. This is because the time it took for the
kidnap to happen up to the moment of submitting the money and Red Chief
to Ebenezer in the story level exceeds the time or space provided for in the
level discourse. The kidnapping starts from, as the narrator accounts, “one
evening after sundown” (1953: 1144) and the kidnappers keep the child
with them up to 12:00 AM of the second day, as Sam narrates:
We took him home that night
[...]
It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's front door.
(1953: 1151)
So, it can be concluded that the events lasted for about 30 hours in the ‘real
world’ but the whole story can be read in approximately 30 minutes with a
slow pace of reading. Moreover, only eight and a half pages have been
provided for the whole story in the text level. 7
At the very beginning, the narrator is supposed to commence telling
the story but he stops narrating the story. Accordingly, a pause is found in
the first descriptive passage in which the narrator introduces the village
where they kidnap, the people of Summit, Ebenezer and his son.
There are several examples of ellipsis. Here, some of them will be
referred to:
65
After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away,
where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.
(1953: 1145)
The narrator has given no detail for that long duration it took him to take
the buggy back to the village and come back to the cave. The reader can
feel the gap in the continuation of the narrative. During the night when the
kidnappers put Red Chief between themselves in the bed, Sam relates that
Red Chief kept them awake for three hours (1953: 1146), while no word is
provided to give an account of the detail of that duration. Again, when Bill
faints after red Chief hits him, Sam says:
I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.
(1953: 1147)
Ellipsis is also found in:
I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square.
(1953: 1151)
Sam just says that he waited for an hour upon the tree under which the
messenger of Ebenezer left the letter with no detail of how this hour passed
on or what he did during that time.
3.2.3.3.3 Frequency
Concerning frequency of the events, some events can be traced back
to the repetitive form of narrative frequency. Some others are iterative or
singulative; to which most of the events belong. An example of singulative
type is found in the following excerpt:
We went to bed about eleven o’clock. We spread down some wide
blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. (1953: 1146).
In the above extract, the narrator narrates only once that they went to
bed, spread down some wide blankets and quilts, and put Red Chief
between them, which happened only once in the story level.
66
It is clear that the kidnap happened only once in the real world while
it has been referred to or narrated several times in the discourse level, as in:
“when this kidnapping idea [...] a kidnapping project ought to...” (1953:
1144), and in the following example too:
I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the
cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been
regarded in Summit.
(1953: 1148)
In the above examples and others, which have not been referred to here, the
kidnap has been mentioned. So, this (kidnap) can be considered a repetitive
event.
Several iterative events have been mentioned in the following extract:
Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and
pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber
for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a
war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver.
(1953: 1145)
As Black (2006: 47) states, iterative narratives are syntactically marked by
the items in boldface. It is worth stating that he only refers to always,
would and often, while now and then and every + a noun (functioning as an
adverb of time, like the one in the above extract) can be added to the
inventory.
Finally, as noticed throughout the structure analysis of the three short

stories in the perspective of Genette’s framework, most of the elements
used in describing the relationship between the three levels of narrative
structure are present. The elements of voice and mood are found in the
three stories but neither scenic nor stretch narration, as elements of
frequency, has been seen. This can be regarded a weak point in the model.
Thus, in search for a better model, the selected short stories are to be
analysed in terms of a so called linguistic model in the coming chapter.
67
68
Notes to Chapter Three
1. O. Henry is the most famous “America’s master of the short story” (Henry
1953). O. Henry’s real name was William Sydney Porter and he was born in
Greensboro, North Carolina on September 11, 1862 (Hansen 1953: vi). At
age of twenty, he moved to Texas, where he had various jobs .He married
Athol Estes in 1887; they had a son and a daughter. His wife died from
tuberculosis in 1897. In 1894 while working for First National Bank in
Austin, Porter was accused of stealing $4000. He went to prison in
Columbus, Ohio for 3 years eventually. While in prison Porter first started
to write short stories and it’s believed that he has found his writer’s
pseudonym there. After Porter was released from the prison in 1901, he
changed his name to O. Henry and moved to New York in 1902. From
December 1903 to January 1906 O. Henry wrote a story a week for the New
York World magazine, and published several short stories in other
magazines. His short stories are famous for their surprise endings and
humor; this is clear in the three selected short stories. He wrote classic short
stories such as ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ and ‘The Gift of the Magi’.
Several collections of his short stories were published during his days (Marc
2007), but, posthumously, a collection of his works in two volumes, entitled
The Complete Works of O. Henry (1953), was published. It includes his
short stories, (thus, the selected short stories of the present study have been
taken from it) and poems. In his last years, He had financial and health
problems. He died on June 5, 1910, at the age of forty seven, in New York
City (Hansen 1953: vi).
2. Similar examples are given in Rimmon-Kenan (2002: 11) to illustrate the

notion of deep and surface sentence as well as narrative structures.
3. Here, the verbs within the frame of the inverted commas are indented not the
main verbs outside the clauses which are in past form too. So if we consider
68
them as the narrating verbs, which are so in reality, it must be said that, then,
the direct speeches are examples of subsequent, not prior, time of narrating.
4. Pp. 1045-46 in the original text.
5. Such as the quality of literariness. In the Russian formalists’ viewpoint, the

difference between non-literary and literary languages is that in literary
language the author makes the familiar things, with which the readers are
acquainted, unfamiliar (Bertens 2001:34). People know that events happen
chronologically in real life. While the author disorders the events when
narrating, just to make the readers see the events anew. This technique is
known as “defamiliarization”, “making strange” (Cook 1994: 130-31). The
rearrangement of the order of events is, of course, for emphasis.
6. Pp. 1521-24 in the text.
7. Pp. 1144-52 in the text.
69
Chapter Four
Analysing the Structure of the Selected Short Stories in
Terms of the Labovian Linguistic Model
4.0 Introduction
This chapter presents an analysis of the narrative structure of the
selected short stories according to Labov’s six-element model introduced in
chapter two. The short stories are arranged in the same sequence of the
previous chapter: ‘A Strange Story’, ‘The Robe of Peace’ and ‘The Ransom
of the Red Chief’.
4.1 ‘A Strange Story’

4.1.1 Abstract
In this story, which has been summed up in the previous chapter,
there is no clear abstract as far as Labov’s model is concerned, with the
exception of the title. The title could be regarded as an abstract. In some,

but not all, stories, the titles may offer hints about the narrative events. This
is because such titles provide the readers with a summary of the story
events. The function of the abstract is to provide the reader with a survey of
the kernel events, on the one hand, and, as Toolan (1998: 134) states, to
“whet the appetite” of the reader (or narratee) to follow upon discovering
the details of the story by attracting his/her attention, on the other. Black
(2005: 39) and Carter (2000: 123) point out that the title of some stories can
serve as abstracts. As a result, we can consider A Strange Story functioning
as an abstract because it calls the attention of the reader to the fact that it is
a story but not like others—it is a strange one.
Furthermore, the first free clause, as shown below, could be reckoned
as an abstract:
In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the
name of Smothers. (Henry 1953:1045)
Through this clause, the narrator catches the attention of the narratee that it
is about a family. As Black (2005: 39) and McCarthy (2000:139) note,
expressions like once, as in the above mentioned clause, once upon a time
and (in the ancient times), etc. could be observed as an indication for the
abstract. Despite all what has been mentioned, there is no one-to-one
correspondence between Labov’s terms for an abstract and what has been
stated here in this sub-section
4.1.2 Orientation
The first paragraph in the story provides the reader with information
about the place where the events went off, and the persons who are
involved in the narrative events:
In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the
name of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, his wife,
himself, their little daughter, five years of age, and her parents,
making six people toward the population of the city when counted for a
special write-up, but only three by actual count.
(1953:1045)
The paragraph is locates the spatial in terms of an adjunct of place

syntactically realized as a prepositional phrase, “in the northern part of
Austin”. The information about person is also contained in the first clause,
“an honest family by the name of Smothers”, and the detail about the family
is given in the second free clause. It has been clarified that the father’s
name is John Smothers and the family is of three members, the father
himself, his wife, and their daughter. Further information, which is
71
important for the narrative events, is given about the age of the little girl—
she is five, as it can be seen in the above mentioned extract.
These pieces of information have been given before the occurrence of
any event in the narrative, but throughout the remaining components of the
narrative structure other orientation clues are found. In the first two
narrative clauses, for instance, two adverbs are given, indicating the time
and place when and where the given events happened:
One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic,
and John Smothers hurried down town to get some medicine.
(1953:1045)
It can also be said that “a severe colic” and “some medicine” together
provide an answer to the question “what is involved in the story?” as it is
the function of the orientation section. The verb “hurried” includes the
sense of “very quickly”, so it shows the manner the father went to the
proposed place.
Again orientation information is present in the second event when the
granddaughter of John Smothers is afflicted with a sickness similar to her
mother’s, when she was like her, five years old, as the narrator recounts:
One night by a remarkable coincidence her little girl was taken with
cramp colic on the anniversary of the disappearance of John Smothers, who
would now have been her grandfather if he had been alive and had a steady
job.
(1953:1045)
The underlined items provide information about orientation elements;
elements of time, manner, person, thing and time, as succession in the
above text.
72
Later on, in the story, it becomes clear that the name of the second
little girl is Pansy. It is worth stating that, like oral narratives, the
orientation section sometimes spreads through out the narrative. The reason
is that with the passage of time event and the development of events new
persons, places and time emerge into the course of the story. That is why;
when orientation elements are displaced, they give an evaluative sense
(Labov 1972: 392).
It is true that there are orientation elements in ‘A Strange Story’, but
there is no tense correspondence between Labov’s tense form, which is in
present simple, and the tense form of the free clauses of the orientation
section of the present narrative; all of them are in past simple tense. They
are realized and identified by free clauses in past simple tense and with
adjuncts of (1) time, (2) place and (3) manner, as in:
 in the northern part of Austin (place)
 One night after supper (time)
 suddenly (manner)
 it was nearly three months before she married again(clauses in past
tense /time)
 San Antonio (place)
 One night by remarkable coincidence (time and manner)
 On the anniversary of the disappearance of John smothers (time).
Despite this, it should be noticed that there is no such controversy

between Labov’s elements of orientation and the orientation information
provided in the present narrative. What is significant is that all necessary
information for the question “who, what, when, where?” is, totally,
73
supplied. That is what orientation means according to Labov’s system of
components of narrative structure.
4.1.3 Complicating Action

The first narrative clause, the backbone of the narratives, as stated earlier,
provided in ‘A Strange Story’, begins with the first illness that seized the
daughter of John Smothers. If we look at this, we can come up with the
outcome that the problem in the story originates from the sickness of the
girl that brings that catastrophe upon the family, as shown below in the
narrative clauses 1:
(a) One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic,
(b) and John Smothers hurried down town to get some medicine.
(1953:1045)
There is a temporal juncture between (a) and (b). The temporal juncture
shows that the clauses are temporally ordered, in the real sequence of the
events. First, the girl falls sick, and second, the father tries to fetch her some
drug. This temporal relation, found between these clauses, shows that the
two clauses are the basis upon which all the other clauses in story are built.
It is worth stating that the finite verbs, i.e., was seized and hurried, in the
narrative clauses are called “narrative heads” (Labov & Waletzky1997: 20).
The chain of the narrative clauses resumes after the previous pair within the
boundary of the complicating action section to develop the story in its
direction:
(c) He never came back.
(d) The little girl recovered
(e) and in time grew up to womanhood.
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(f) The mother grieved very much over her husband’s disappearance, and it
was nearly three months before she married again,
(g) and moved to San Antonio.
(1953:1045)
What has been said about the first pair of narrative clauses, (a) and
(b), can be correctly applied to the most of the above listed clauses. The
same temporal relation, for instance, is held between (b) and (c); (a) and
(d); (d) and (e); (c) and (f); and between the bold face part of (f) and (h) as
well.
It is worth noting that there is a causal relation between the
temporally related narrative clauses. As Herman (2009: x) and Elliot (2005:
7-8) posit, the “causal-chronological” relation distinguishes narrative
discourses from other types of discourse, such as description 2. In the sense
that one event happens first and cause another event to happen second and
so on.
Thus, the narrative clauses in the present narrative can be explained
in terms of this relation too. Clauses (a), one night after supper the little girl
was seized with a severe colic; and (b) and John Smothers hurried down
town to get some medicine, for example, can be interpreted as: Because the
little girl was seized with a severe colic, John Smothers hurried down town
to get some medicine.
The narrative clauses go on in:
(h) The little girl also married in time
(i) and after a few years had rolled around,.
(j) She also had a little girl five years of age.
(1953:1045)
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It is obvious that the same link, as the previous ones, is found between each
pair of these clauses. Let us look at the following clause:
(k) She still lived in the same house where they dwelt when her father had
left and never returned. (1953:1045)
Clause (k) seems to be neither a narrative clause nor a free one. It is not a
narrative clause because it can be “displaced over a large part of the
narrative without altering the temporal sequence of the original semantic
interpretation, not over the entire narrative” (Labov 1972: 362). It is not
free because its movement in the narrative is restricted. This why Labov
calls such type of clauses “restricted clauses” (1972: 362).
The story course again moves towards another tense situation when
the narrator relates that the little girl, Pansy, falls sick and her father tries to
bring her some medicine in the city center:
(l)...her little girl was taken with cramp colic on the anniversary of the
disappearance of John Smothers...
(m) “I will go downtown and get some medicine for her,” said John Smith
(n) “No, no, dear John,” cried his wife. “You, too, might disappear forever,
(o) So John Smith did not go,
(p) and together they sat by the bedside of little Pansy
(q) After a little Pansy seemed to grow worse,
(r) and John Smith again attempted to go for medicine,
(s) but his wife would not let him.
(1953:1045-46)
There is another important point in (m) and (n). They are, unlike all the
previously mentioned clauses, which were in indirect speeches, are in the
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form of direct speeches. Schiffrin (1981: 46) states that an entire “direct
quote forms one complicating action clause.”
Finally, as shown in the excerpts throughout the complicating action
section, all the clauses are marked with verbs in past simple tense. This is
evidence that shows a correspondence to Labov’s markers of narrative
clauses. Labov (1972: 375) describes the narrative clause as “one of the
simplest grammatical patterns in connected speech.” The simplest structure
of most of them, as he concludes (1972: 375-76), consists of a series of
syntactic components like the following:
sentence adverbial (or conjunctions) + the subject noun phrase + the verb phrase
Most of the narrative clauses in the present narrative have this simple
structure.
4.2.4 Evaluation
The narrator of ‘A Strange Story’ has employed both types of
evaluation to comment on the narrative events and fend off the question,
“So what?”, that the reader or narratee may possibly ask as far as Labov’s
model is concerned. Examples of external as well as the internal evaluation
are found in the current narrative. Generally, most of the evaluative devices
are of the internal ones and all of them are spread throughout the text, from
the title up to the last clause in narrative, as (Fig.7) illustrates (see p.111).
The title, A Strange Story, though considered earlier as the abstract
indirectly, can be regarded as an external evaluation. The narrator
comments on the story generally as being strange. S/he supports this view
point by providing evidence of the story’s strangeness, by different means.
The occurrence of the sickness twice in the story, the first time when the
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little daughter of John Smothers suffers from stomach-ache and his father
goes to the town to bring her some medicine but he does not return, until
she becomes a mother, after getting married to John Smith, having a five-
year daughter, and second when John Smith’s daughter gets a severe
stomach-ache, strangely, on the anniversary of her grandfather’s, John
Smothers’ disappearance, is a clear testimony upon the story’s being
strange. Stranger than this is the sudden and surprise return of John
Smothers after that long absence; after his family members became sure
that would not return for another time—that is why his wife remarried. The
unbelievable pretext that John Smothers mentions for his being away for
that time is another support for the notion of the strangeness of the narrative
events.
In addition to external evaluation, as mentioned there are the
embedded evaluative devices used to clear the point of the narrative. The
narrator has made use of three sub-types of the embedded evaluation: (1)
intensifying, (2) comparator and (3) explicative, as they are exemplified
below respectively:
Intensifying evaluation is realized in terms of repetition of the item
“no” in the following direct quote by John Smith’s wife:
“No, no, dear John,” cried his wife. “You, too, might disappear forever, and
then forget to come back.”
(1953:1046)
As Labov (1972: 379) contends, “the device of repetition is relatively

simple from the syntactic point of view but is effective in narrative in two
senses: it intensifies the action, and it suspends the action.” Here the
repetition is intended to intensify that she is concerned much about her
78
spouse fearing that what happened to her father will also happen to her
husband.
The comparators are another sub-type of the embedded evaluation
realized in terms of negative structure, modal verbs and hypothetical
constructions in the current narrative, as in the following excerpts from the
short story:
One night by a remarkable coincidence her little girl was taken with
cramp colic on the anniversary of the disappearance of John Smothers,
who would now have been her grandfather if he had been alive and had a
steady job.[...]
“You, too, might disappear forever, and then forget to come back.” [...]
So John Smith did not go, [...].
(1953: 1045-46)
As Labov (1972: 381-82) states, comparators compare generally the “events
which did occur to those which did not occur”, (as it is the case with the
negatives), and the “things would happen if other things did not happen” or
vice versa (as the case with the modals and the hypothetical constructions).
The explicative evaluation, as the term ‘explicative’ entails, refers to
the explanation(s) why something happened; why a character said/did
something in the story. An ample example of an embedded explicative
evaluation is found in the direct quote by John Smothers that the narrator
relates at the end of the short story:
car.” (1953: 1046)
Here the narrator via John Smothers explains why he was late, though it is
strange that John Smothers considers that long duration as being short, “I
was a little late”; the given reason is “as I waited for a street car,” is a naked
lie. The narrator indirectly wants to say that Smothers is not telling the
truth. Describing the family as being “honest” by the narrator is an irony
79
because the narrator has shown the other way around in the words of John
Smothers and the deeds of his wife, when she remarries after three months
of her husband’s disappearance. Using any figurative speech, such as irony,
metaphor; or simile, is, in itself, an evaluation to the events, characters and
their actions in the narrative texts especially the written ones (Black 2006:
45).
4.1.5 Resolution
At the end of ‘A Strange Story’ the problem of John Smothers’
disappearance is ‘resolved’ by his return after a long time of being away
from his family. This is, to some degree, an answer provided by the narrator
to the “what finally happened?” question. The following narrative clauses
function as the resolution of the story:
(t) Suddenly the door opened,
(u) and an old man, stooped and bent, with long white hair, entered the
room.
(1953: 1045)
This old man is, as the following quote demonstrates, John Smothers:
“Hello, here is grandpa,” said Pansy.
The sickness of Pansy is also treated with the medicine her
grandfather brings her. This also can be a result provided to the particular
event—the sickness again depicted with the following narrative clauses:
(w) The old man drew a bottle of medicine from his pocket
(x) and gave Pansy a spoonful.
(y) She got well immediately.
(1953: 1046)
But there is no full resolution for the whole story. The narrator did
not say any thing about the consequence of John Smothers’ wife who had
80
remarried after three months following his disappearance. The reader might
possibly ask further questions, “What did John Smothers do about his ex-
wife?” for instance.
4.1.6 Coda
In ‘A Strange Story’ there is no obvious coda. The narrator ends the
story without bringing back the reader to the point where first s/he entered
into the story. At the end, when the story is over, the reader does not feel
any change that takes him/her back to the present time, as usually a coda
does. The last direct quote may sound like a coda:
car.” (1953: 1046)
But there is no one to one correspondence between a coda’s function, which
wards off any further questions about the narrative events, and this
statement. So, ‘A Strange Story’ is open ended.
Finally this short story, which has been under scrutiny throughout
this section, contains only the orientation, the complication action and
evaluation sections in their full forms. Though there are abstract and
resolution, they are incomplete according to Labov’s model. Accordingly
there is no coda supplied at the end of ‘A Strange Story’.
4.2 ‘The Robe of Peace’

4.2.1 Abstract
At the very beginning of the story the narrator provides a preface to
the narrative. S/he explains that there was a man called Johnny
Bellchambers who suddenly disappeared. The narrator declares that s/he is
going to relate the mysterious story of Bellchambers, after it has been
81
resolved as the narrator states. Formally the first paragraph, as shown
below, is devoted to provide the abstract section:
Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading
public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel
at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This
particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so
credence.
(1953: 1521-22)
A thorough look at the clauses in this paragraph will indicate that the story
of Bellchambers is no longer a mystery at the present time, as the tense of
the verbs of the clauses, present perfect (alongside with simple present),
marks the current relevance of the events. Celce-Murcia and Larsen-
Freeman (1999: 167) argue that the present perfect tense is used to either
introduce or to sum up a narrative. They also conclude that the present
perfect tense can often be used instead of past simple to mean essentially
the same thing (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman 1999: 174).
4.2.2 Orientation
In ‘The Robe of Peace’, information about person, place, time and
situation concerning the narrative events, is provided precisely in two
paragraphs—in the second and third ones. A detailed description of the
main character, Bellchambers, whose name has been mentioned in the first
paragraph, has been given to the reader. The narrator depicts the image of
the main character, Bellchambers, in detail:
Johnny Bellchambers, as is well known, belonged to the intrinsically

inner circle of the élite. Without any of the ostentation of the
fashionable ones who endeavor to attract notice by eccentric display of
82
wealth and show he still was au fait in everything that gave deserved
luster to his high position in the ranks of society.
Especially did he shine in the matter of dress. In this he was the

despair of imitators. Always correct, exquisitely groomed, and possessed
of an unlimited wardrobe, he was conceded to be the best-dressed man in
New York, and, therefore, in America. There was not a tailor in Gotham
who would not have deemed it a precious boon to have been granted the
privilege of making Bellchambers’ clothes without a cent of pay. As he
wore them, they would have been a priceless advertisement. Trousers
were his especial passion. Here nothing but perfection would he notice.
He would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked a
wrinkle. He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing his ample
supply. His friends said that three hours was the limit of time that he
would wear these garments without exchanging.
(1953: 1522)
The motive behind this elaboration given to the depiction of
Bellchambers, especially his social class, the way he dressed up and his
luxurious life in general before launching the narrative proper, is to prepare
the reader for the coming narrative events after Bellchambers’ “vanishing”.
Orientational clues found in the above extracts are the friends of Johnny
Bellchambers; Johnny Bellchambers, a man (person), in New York,
America, his apartments (place) and the manner he was dressing described
above (manner). This lengthy description is necessary before involving into
relating the main narrative events. More orientation markers are provided
alongside with the narrative line. Embedding the orientation into the
narrative clauses is to add the information which the reader needs to
understand and interpret the significance of the events (Schiffrin 1981: 48).
Here are some examples:
brought no alarm to his friends, and then they began to operate the usual
methods of inquiry. [...]
In May, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam, two of Bellchambers’ old
friends, went for a little run on the other side. While pottering around
in Italy and Switzerland, they happened, one day, to hear of a monastery
83
in the Swiss Alps that promised something outside of the ordinary
tourist-beguiling attractions. (1953: 1522)
All the underlined items signal the persons involved in the story, the time
and location when and where narrative events occurred and the manner or
the situation in which the events happened.
Some elements are repeated here that have been discussed earlier, but
some others are new, i.e., this is the first time they are to be referred to in
the story. They are related to the orientational elements according to the
Labovian model. For instance, the adverb ‘suddenly’ in the first narrative
clause sets the manner of the first event that occurred in the story, the
prepositional phrase ‘in May’ sets the time when the two friends of
Bellchambers’, Tom Eyres and ‘Lancelot Gilliam, meet Bellchambers at the
monastery. They also orient the reader to the persons who are involved in
the anecdote of Bellchambers. The prepositional phrase ‘on the other side’,
functioning as an adverb of place, sets the location where the two went
during their journey.
There are other examples of the orientation elements in ‘The Robe of
Peace’, such as: It took them two days with the aid of two guides (persons)
to reach the monastery of St. Gondrau. [...], and at three o’clock on the
afternoon (Henry 1953: 1523) (time adverbial) etc.; but what has been
mentioned is sufficient to answer the hypothetical question “who, what,
where, when?” in the orientation component in the Labovian model for
narrative structure. As mentioned above, the placement of orientation,
which Labov considers to be the most interesting thing about orientation
(1972: 364), is divided into two parts in the narrative structure of the
present short story: one before the commencement of the narrative events in
84
the first three paragraphs in the short story, and the other alongside with the
progress of narrative line within the complicating sections.

Most of the narrative parts are occupied by the clauses which belong
to the essential portion—the complicating action section, in the narrative
structure of the present short story. The narrator begins to relate the exact
anecdote of Bellchambers’ surprise ‘evaporation’ with the first narrative
clause at the very beginning of the fourth paragraph. This narrative clause is
also followed by a number of other narrative clauses which are
interconnected in the sense that they are all chronologically ordered:
(a) Bellchambers disappeared very suddenly.
(b) For three days his absence brought no alarm to his friends,
(c) and then they began to operate the usual methods of inquiry.
(d) All of them failed.
(e) Then the search for a motive was instituted,
(f) but none was found:
(g) He had no enemies,
(h) he had no debts,
(i) there was no woman.
(j) There were several thousand dollars in his bank to his credit.
(1953: 1522)
As it is obvious, these narrative clauses have a simple syntactic structure.
They are also marked by simple past tensed narrative heads—the finite
verbs of the narrative clauses. There is, as in the previous short story, a
temporal juncture between each pair of these clauses; (a) happened first,
then (b); the same is true for the rest.
85
It is worth noting that there are some restricted clauses within the
scope of the complicating action section of the present narrative. Though
the clauses (e)-(j) are reckoned as being narrative clauses, they can also be
considered as restricted clauses. Their sequential arrangement can be
reshuffled without triggering any change in the semantic interpretation of
the temporal sequence of the events. There are also other restricted clauses:
(k) He had never showed any tendency toward mental eccentricity;
(l) he was of a particularly calm and well-balanced temperament.
(1953: 1522)
The restricted clauses all together make up a collection of semi- moveable
clauses known as “displacement set” (Labov & Waletzky 1997: 21).
At the fifth paragraph the direction of the narration turns to two old
friends of Bellchambers, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam. They travel to
Italy and Switzerland. They visit a monastery for they are being told that no
English men have ever stepped into the place. When they reach there they
witness surprises—they happen to meet Bellchambers among the priests of
the monastery. The narrative course resumes with the following narrative
clauses:
(m) In May, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam, two of Bellchambers’ old
friends, went for a little run on the other side.
(n) While pottering around in Italy and Switzerland, they happened, one day,
to hear of a monastery in the Swiss Alps that promised something outside of
the ordinary.
(o)Eyres and Gilliam decided that these three reports called for investigation3
(p) It took them two days with the aid of two guides to reach the monastery
of St. Gondrau.
86
(q)They were hospitably received by the brothers whose duty it was to
entertain the infrequent guest.
(r) They drank of the precious cordial, finding it rarely potent and reviving.
(s) They listened to the great, ever-echoing bell,
(t) and learned that they were pioneer travelers, in those gray stone walls,
over the Englishman whose restless feet have trodden nearly every corner of
the earth.
(u) At three o’clock on the afternoon they arrived, the two young Gothamites
stood with good Brother Cristofer in the great, cold hallway of the
monastery to watch the monks march past on their way to the refectory.
(v) They came slowly, pacing by twos, with their heads bowed, treading
noiselessly with sandaled feet upon the rough stone flags.
(w) As the procession slowly filed past, Eyres suddenly gripped Gilliam by
the arm.
(x) “Look,” he whispered, eagerly, “at the one just opposite you now--the
one on this side, with his hand at his waist—if that isn’t Johnny
Bellchambers then I never saw him!”
(y) Gilliam saw and recognized the lost glass of fashion.
(z) Eyres and Gilliam went into the dining hall
(aa ) and pointed out to Brother Cristofer the man they had seen.
(bb) They saw his face plainly now, as he sat among the dingy brothers,
never looking up, eating broth from a coarse, brown bowl.
(cc) Permission to speak to one of the brothers was granted to the two
travelers by the abbot,
(dd) and they waited in a reception room for him to come.
(ee) When he did come, treading softly in his sandals,
(ff) both Eyres and Gilliam looked at him in perplexity and astonishment.
(gg) He shook hands with his visitors with his old ease and grace of manner.
87
(hh) the room had no seats;
(ii) they stood to converse.
(jj) “Glad to see you, old man,” said Eyres, somewhat awkwardly.”Wasn’t
expecting to find you up here. Not a bad idea though, after all.
Society’s an awful sham. Must be a relief to shake the giddy whirl and
retire to--er--contemplation and--er--prayer and hymns, and those
things.”
(kk) “Oh, cut that, Tommy,” said Bellchambers, cheerfully. “Don’t be afraid
that I’ll pass around the plate. I go through these thing-um-bobs with
the rest of these old boys because they are the rules. I’m Brother
Ambrose here, you know. I’m given just ten minutes to talk to you
fellows. That’s rather a new design in waistcoats you have on, isn’t it,
Gilliam? Are they wearing those things on Broadway now?”
(ll) “It’s the same old Johnny,” said Gilliam, joyfully. “What the devil--I
mean why-- Oh, confound it! what did you do it for, old man?”
(mm) “Peel the bathrobe,” pleaded Eyres, almost tearfully, “and go back with
us. The old crowd’ll go wild to see you. This isn’t in your line, Bell.
I know half a dozen girls that wore the willow on the quiet when you
shook us in that unaccountable way. Hand in your resignation, or get a
dispensation, or whatever you have to do to get a release from this ice
factory. You’ll get catarrh here, Johnny--and-- My God! you haven’t socks on!”
(nn) Bellchambers looked down at his sandaled feet and smiled.
(oo) “You fellows don’t understand,” he said, soothingly. “It’s nice of you
to want me to go back, but the old life will never know me again. I
have reached here the goal of all my ambitions. I am entirely happy
and contented. Here I shall remain for the remainder of my days. You
see this robe that I wear?”
(pp) Bellchambers caressingly touched the straight-hanging garment: “At
last I have found something that will not bag at the knees. I have attained-”
(1953: 1522-24)
88
The structure of the above narrative clauses is some how more
complex than those of the previous short story, ‘A Strange Story’, though
they are marked by simple past verbs. Like the other short story, there is a
cause/effect relation beside the temporal one among many narrative clauses
in this short story. (hh) and (ii), for instance, have a causal relation between
them, i.e., because of (hh), (ii) happened. Again the narrative clauses (r)-(t)
can also be regarded as restricted clauses since we can replace each of them
with any other two clauses without changing the semantic interpretation of
the narrative events. Then they can make a displacement set.
It should also be observed that many of the narrative clauses are in
terms of direct quoted speeches. Schiffrin (1981: 46) argues that “an entire
direct quote forms one complicating action clause”. This is why a lengthy
direct quote like (jj) and (kk) are treated as single narrative clauses. During
the complicating action some points about some clauses have been
overlooked, because they will be discussed in the section of evaluation
below.
4.2.4 Evaluation
The narrator of ‘The Robe of Peace’ has utilized various means and
devices to make the point of the story clear. The narrator has used both
external and internal evaluation.
The dense area of the evaluation in the present short story is after
complicating action section and the beginning of the resolution mainly in
the quoted speeches of Bellchambers’ when talking to his two old friends.
But generally speaking, evaluation is spread throughout the story, from the
very beginning up to the coda section, as shown on p.111. 4 Because the
external evaluation statements are less in number as usual, we will refer to
89
them first. At the first paragraph the narrator comments directly on the story
as being strange and unbelievable:
This particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so
credence.
(1953: 1521-22)
This is before launching into the exact narrative events, but during narrating
the events, the narrator stops relating the anecdote and comments on the
events in the story, as in:
Every means of tracing the vanished man was made use of, but without
avail. It was one of those cases--more numerous in late years--where men
seem to have gone out like the flame of a candle, leaving not even a trail
of smoke as a witness. 5 .
(1953: 1522)
Again when the narrator comments on the case of the two friends of
Bellchambers’, s/he states that Englishmen travel much as in the following
excerpt:
They listened to the great, ever-echoing bell, and learned
that they were pioneer travelers, in those gray stone walls, over the
Englishman whose restless feet have trodden nearly every corner of the
earth.
(1953: 1523)
There are also, as stated above, indirect evaluation examples in the
present short story. The lengthy orientation information given at the start of
‘The Robe of Peace’ can signal for indirect evaluation. Black (2006: 39)
says that such lengthy orientation, by analogy to the narrative, sets the
scene psychologically as well as literarily. The narrator prepares the reader
for the coming events. To show and comment on the big change that
occurred in the life style of Bellchambers after he becomes a priest, the
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narrator has depicted the full image of the Bellchambers in the orientation
before the emergence of the narrative events, as discussed earlier.
Other examples of embedded evaluation are realized in terms of
different syntactic devices. Intensifying evaluation in the present narrative
has been realized in terms ritual utterances. Ritual utterances, as evaluative
devices, are typically found in oral narratives, and since the literary
narrative originates from ordinary language, it is not strange to find
common features of both (Black 2006: 40). Examples of ritual utterances in
the current narrative are in the direct speeches of the main characters. When
Gilliam sees Bellchambers within the monastery, Gilliam is surprised and
astonished. The narrator shows this in the following direct quote:
“What the deuce,” said he, wonderingly, “is old Bell doing here? [...]”
(1953: 1523)
Again in Gilliam’s speech to Bellchambers, there is another ritual utterance:
“It’s the same old Johnny,” said Gilliam, joyfully. “What the devil--I
mean why-- Oh, confound it! what did you do it for, old man?”
(1953: 1524)
Another instance of ritual utterance is found in the speech of Eyres’ when
he asks Bellchambers to leave the monastery and go home with them. He
shows his surprise when he realizes that Bellchambers has no socks on in
the chilly weather condition shown in the sentence of (mm), mentioned
earlier:
“[...].You’ll get catarrh here, Johnny--and—My God! you haven’t socks on!”
(1953: 1524)
Comparator evaluation has been realized in terms of negative, modal
auxiliaries and hypothetical constructions as in the following extracts:
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“Look,” he whispered, eagerly, “at the one just opposite you now—the one
on this side, with his hand at his waist--if that isn’t Johnny Bellchambers then
I never saw him!”
“What the deuce,” said he, wonderingly, “is old Bell doing here? Tommy,
it surely can’t be he! Never heard of Bell having a turn for the
religious. Fact is, I’ve heard him say things when a four-in-hand didn’t
seem to tie up just right that would bring him up for court-martial
before any church.”
“It’s Bell, without a doubt,” said Eyres, firmly, “or I’m pretty badly
in need of an oculist. But think of Johnny Bellchambers, the Royal High
Chancellor of swell togs and the Mahatma of pink teas, up here in cold
storage doing penance in a snuff -colored bathrobe! I can’t get it
straight in my mind. Let’s ask the jolly old boy that’s doing the
6
honors.”
(1953:1423)
The underlined items, in the above extract, function as comparator
embedded evaluation. It should also be stated that, beside negative and
modal verbs, questions and imperatives can serve as evaluative devices
since they “are all comparators and involve in comparison” (Labov 1972:
7
386). In the following passage the narrator comments on the event by
throwing questions to the reader:
Brother Cristofer was appealed to for information. By that time the
monks had passed into the refectory. He could not tell to which one they
referred. Bellchambers? Ah, the brothers of St. Gondrau abandoned their
worldly names when they took the vows. Did the gentlemen wish to speak
with one of the brothers? If they would come to the refectory and
indicate the one they wished to see, the reverend abbot in authority
would, doubtless, permit it.
(1953:1523)
There are imperatives in the present narrative as in (x), “Look,” he
whispered, eagerly..., and (mm), “peel the bathrobe ...Hand in your
resignation, or get a dispensation [...]. Employing future form is another
means by which comparator evaluation is made (Labov 1972: 386), which
is also found in ‘The Robe of Peace’. Bellchambers’, (or Brother
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Ambrose’s, as a priest), speech, Here I shall remain for the remainder of
my life (1953:1524) is in future tense (or time as some grammarians prefer).
There is also explicative embedded evaluation when the narrator refers to
the reasons why the two men are eager to visit the monastery, albeit almost
inaccessible, on a high mountain. The reasons are shown in three restricted
clauses. They are in the following extract:
The attractions it possessed but did not advertise were, first, an exclusive and
divine cordial made by the monks that was said to far surpass benedictine
and chartreuse. Next a huge brass bell so purely and accurately cast that
it had not ceased sounding since it was first rung three hundred years
ago. Finally, it was asserted that no Englishman had ever set foot within
its walls.
(1953:1524)
So far, nothing has been said about the title, ‘The Robe of Peace’. There is
a metaphor in the title. The narrator wants to say that the simple robe that
Bellchambers wears after being a priest has brought him peace. So the
word ‘robe’ stands for religion, and ‘peace’ for spiritual peace and
tranquility of sole. A peace that ordinary man can not understand as it is
emphasized by Bellchambers in (oo) and (pp), referred to earlier.
4.2.5 Resolution
One paragraph before the last one in the short story can provide an
answer to “what finally happened?” The narrator approaches the last
moments of the unexpected meeting between Bellchambers and his two old
friends. The narrator depicts the situation in the following narrative clauses:
(qq) At that moment the deep boom of the great brass bell reverberated
through the monastery.
(rr) for Brother Ambrose bowed his head,
(ss) turned
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(tt) and left the chamber without another word.
(uu) A slight wave of his hand as he passed through the stone doorway
seemed to say a farewell to his old friends.
(vv) They left the monastery without seeing him again.
(1953:1523)
Through all the aforementioned clauses, the narrator declares the result of
the narrated meeting. S/he has closed the narrative clauses by these clauses
in the resolution section. This fact is also another support for the relevance
of Labov’s model to written narratives in general, and short story in
particular. The proper end of the story can be fully felt in the last clause in
‘The Robe of Peace’, to be discussed in the next sub-section.
4.2.6 Coda
The narrator, after providing a well-formed resolution for the complicating
action section, ends up the story by bringing the reader to the present time.
This has been fulfilled by stating the source of the story. The narrative
closes off with the last free clause representing the coda in Labov’s term:
And this is the story that Tommy Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam brought back
with them from their latest European tour. (1953: 1523)
The expression “this is the story” matches with most of codas in the
narratives analysed in Labov (1972). There is also a one to one
correspondence between the tense of this clause, which is present, and
Labov’s tense for a coda.
4.3 ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’

4.3.1 Abstract
The narrator of the present narrative opens his story with a statement that
evokes the attention of the reader and whets her/his ‘appetite’:
94
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. (1953: 1144)
Here, the narrator addresses his speech to the narratee or the reader. This
proposition makes an announcement that the narrator is going to tell the
reader about a story. The gist of the story, which is declared in the second
free clause in the first paragraph, is about a kidnapping that he (the narrator
himself) and his friend, Bill Driscoll, performed:
We were down South, in Alabama--Bill Driscoll and myself--when this
kidnapping idea struck us. (1953: 1144)
So, the first three clauses in the first paragraph constitute a preface to the
whole narrative. Herman (2009: 49) states, in his analysis of Beowulf’s
opening statement “Hwat” which means “Listen”, that such imperatives
can serve as means by which the narrator can claim the floor of speech.
Accordingly the “floor space” 8 taken by the narrator is said to be, as
Pratt (1977: 199-200; cited in Simpson 2004) states, identical to what
Labov labels as abstract. Therefore, it is true to say that the imperative but
wait till I tell you, which is repeated once again before launching the story
proper, is a very fruitful syntactic proof of an abstract. The noun phrase this
kidnapping idea can be considered as another syntactic cue, according to
Herman, for the abstract. He claims that the opening statements which
contain NPs introduced by definite article, such as the hill, and
demonstratives; as in “this kidnapping idea”, can be abstracts (2009: 49).
4.3.2 Orientation
The first paragraph, in addition to providing abstract cues, contains
orientational markers as well. There are place, person and situation
indicators. They provide the necessary and fundamental background for the
deictic and circumstance hints regarding the current narrative:
95
We were down South, in Alabama--Bill Driscoll and myself--when this
kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a
moment of temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out
till later.
(1953: 1144)
All the underlined items refer to orientation elements. “We” represents
persons—Bill Driscoll and the narrator himself. The name of the narrator is
not mentioned here but later it comes out that his name is Sam. The
prepositional phrase “down South” and its apposition “in Alabama” set the
location where the stated event occurred. The adverbial subordinate clause
“when this kidnapping idea struck us” functions as a temporal adjunct. The
free clause “It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a
moment of temporary mental apparition” refers to the situation. 9
Further references are made to other elements of person, time and

place in the clauses following the one mentioned above:
There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called
Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and
self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a
Maypole. (1953: 1144)
The noun phrase “a town”, which is called “Summit” (where the kidnap
operation happens), and the prepositional phrases “down there” function as
markers of orientation section referring to the places where the event
happened. The other clause gives information about the people living in
Summit as being harmless and content farmers.
There are other cues to the persons, time and place related to the
main event in the narrative:
We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named
Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage
fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and foreclose.
The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the
96
colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you
want to catch a train. [...] About two miles from Summit was a little
mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this
mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after
sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the
street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.
(1953: 1144)
Here, the captive child is introduced who is the son of Ebenezer Dorset’s.
The name of the child is not mentioned here, but later the boy calls himself
“Red Chief” (Henry 1953:1145), while his name is “Johnny”, as his father
writes in a letter to the two kidnappers (1953:1151). A complete detail is
given about Red Chief and his father. Information is also provided
concerning the hideout of the kidnappers; the cave in the mountain. The last
two restricted clauses in the previous extract, “The kid was in the street,
throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence”, function as orientation
markers of place and situation which are realized in terms of past
progressive tense.
Finally, it can be said that, like the narratives examined in the
previous sections, most orientational elements are provided by the narrator
before the narrative begins, but some other orientation examples can be
seen alongside with the complicating action section. “After dark” and “the
little village” in (k); and “at day break” in (dd), for example, all give
information about the place and the time related to the events in the story.

The following two sentences, extracted from the third paragraph, seem to
contain three narrative clauses:
Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed
just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent
97
town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the
front steps of the hotel.
(1953: 1144)
But they are not narrative clauses. These clauses could be regarded as
restricted ones because they can be moved elsewhere in the narrative, but
not freely. Besides this, there is no clear temporal relation between any of
them. The first narrative clause in the present short story is the following:
(a) We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named
Ebenezer Dorset.
This clause is surrounded by a number of free clauses. That is why the

second narrative clause comes after several non-narrative clauses in the
story, as shown below in:
(b) One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s
house.
(c)”Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy
and a nice ride?”
(d) The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.
(e)”That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill,
climbing over the wheel.
(1953: 1144-45)
The clauses (a)-(e) are all narrative clauses. They are all narrating what
happened between the abductors and the abductee before the start of the
operation. What one can notice here is the shift of the tense from past to
present tense. Clauses (a) and (b) are in past simple tense while (c) and (d)
are in present simple tense.
Using simple present in relating past events is very typical in both
oral and written narrative texts. In this case present simple is known as
“historical present” (Gramley & Pätzold 1992: 142; Dahl 1985: 113).
Historical present, as Schiffrin holds, is “a simple replacement of the past
tense in stories—a mere stylistic device.” The historical present is one of
98
the grammatical resources which narrators use to present their experiences
(Schiffrin 1981: 61). Generally, historical present tense “makes the past
more vivid because it moves the past events out of their original time frame
into the moment of speaking.” In addition to this, past events “come alive”
with the historical present because it is formally equal to a tense which
indicates events whose reference time is not the time of experience but the
moment of speaking (Schiffrin 1981: 46).
In the present narrative, the narrator shifts from past to present and
again from present to past several times in clauses (a) - (e). After (e), again
the tense shifts to past:
(f) That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear;
(g) but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy
(h) and drove away.
(i)We took him up to the cave
(j) and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake.
(k) After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where
we had hired it,
(l) and walked back to the mountain.
(1953: 1145)
One can notice that there is a temporal juncture between each of (f) and (g),
and (g) and (h). Reversing the sequence of these clauses will distort the
semantic interpretation of the events, while (i) and (j) can be exchanged
with each other without such a distortion.
After (l) there come some clauses which explain the situation and the
scene about Bill, the fire burning and the child:
Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his
features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance
99
of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with
two buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair.
(1953: 1145)
In this passage there are some restricted clauses which are important
because they help the narrator to make the reader pursue the storyline
especially after the kidnap operation. From hereon, the child harasses the
kidnappers:
(m) He points a stick at me when I come up,
(n) and says: “Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red
Chief, the terror of the plains?”
(1953: 1145)
In these clauses, the narrator shifts the tense to present simple. In the
following clauses, he returns to past again:
(o) He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy,
(p) and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to
be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.
(q) Then we had supper;
(r) and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy,
(s) and began to talk.
[...]
(t) “Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to go home?”
(u) “Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to
go to school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again,
Snake-eye, will you?”
(v) “Not right away,” says I. “We’ll stay here in the cave a while.”
(w) “All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all
my life.”
(1953: 1145-46)
100
In the above narrative clauses there are direct quotations whose ordinate
clauses have verbs in simple present. Accordingly, it can be deduced that
most of the direct speeches have a present tense verb for their matrix
clauses. 10 This is to make these speeches seem and sound alive, as if the
characters were living here in the present moment. This also gives vividness
to the speeches reported. When the narrator is narrating the action scenes of
the characters, he uses simple past tense in most of the cases:
(x) We went to bed about eleven o’clock.
(y) We spread down some wide blankets and quilts
(z) and put Red Chief between us.
(aa) He kept us awake for three hours...
(bb) At last, I fell into a troubled sleep,
(cc) and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a
ferocious pirate with red hair.
(dd) Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from
Bill.
(ee) I jumped up to see what the matter was.
(ff) Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair.
(gg) In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon;
(hh) and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp,
according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening
before.
(ii) I got the knife away from the kid
(jj) and made him lie down again.
(kk) But, from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken.
(ll) He laid down on his side of the bed,
(mm) but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with
us.
(1953: 1146)
All the clauses mentioned above are in past simple tense except (ff) and
(hh), which are in past progressive tense. In Labov (1972), past progressive
is not included in the narrative clauses. So, this can be added to it that a
101
narrative clause can be in progressive tense. Past progressive is used to
describe a past action coincident with some other events that is usually in
the past simple (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman 1999: 117).
In the forth coming clauses there is again a shift from past to present
simple:
(nn) After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped
around it out of his pocket
(oo) and goes outside the cave unwinding it.
(1953: 1147)
Sam, the narrator, describes his action accurately during the time when he
picked up the letter from Red Chief’s father through the following narrative
clauses:
(pp) I waited an hour
(qq) and then concluded the thing was square.
(rr) I slid down the tree,
(ss) got the note,
(tt) slipped along the fence till I struck the woods,
(uu) and was back at the cave in another half an hour.
(vv)I opened the note,
(ww) got near the lantern
(xx) and read it to Bill.
(1953: 1151)
Throughout the complicating action, the tense of the narrative clauses

switches from past to present even the historical present occurs at the last
clauses in the complicating action part in ‘The Ransom of Red Chief.’ After
the kidnappers receive and read the letter from the kid’s father, Dorset, the
narrator quotes what he and Bill said at that situation but again in present
tense, followed by past tense clauses:
(yy) “Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent--”
(zz) But I glanced at Bill,
102
(aaa) and hesitated.
(bbb) “Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all?
We’ve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in
Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a
spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let the
chance go, are you?”
(ccc) “Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has somewhat
got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom and make our
get-away.”
(1953: 1151)
The complicating action section ends with the above shown

temporally ordered narrative clauses. The clauses (a) - (ccc) provide the
core ingredient of the narrative. These clauses together supply an answer to
the “What happened?” question.
4.3.4 Evaluation
In the present narrative, miscellaneous means is followed by the
narrator to evaluate and suggest the significance of the events in the
narrative. Both, external and internal, evaluations can be found. In this
subsection we will refer to the most outstanding evaluation examples. It is
worth pointing out that there is no separate part provided in which the
evaluation is dense, but it is rather spread over the whole narrative
commenting on the narrative events. So, evaluation is found from the
beginning up to the end of the story, as (Fig. 7), on p.111, depicts
The opening free clause, “It looked like a good thing,” in the first line
of the narrative is an example of external evaluation. The narrator, Sam,
says that the kidnapping seemed good and advantageous. This statement is
103
repeated another time when the narrator is explaining why they chose to
commit the kidnap in Summit: “So, it looked good.”
The narrator directly comments that the love for one’s children—
“Philoprogenitiveness”, is strong in semi-rural areas like Summit. This
again can be considered as another example of external evaluation.
In the night when the kidnappers put the kid between themselves on
the bed, the narrator says that they were not afraid that he would run away:
We went to bed about eleven o’clock. We spread down some wide

blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren’t afraid
he’d run away.
(1953: 1146).
This is to comment on the fact that the child liked to stay with his
abductors. This is emphasized throughout the story, as the child himself
expresses his desire in the following quotes:
“Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to go home?”
“Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to
go to school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again, Snake-
eye, will you?”
“Not right away,” says I. “We’ll stay here in the cave a while.”
“All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all
my life.”
(1953: 1145-46)
The most obvious evaluation of the external type found in the story is in the
following extract:
Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from
Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps,
such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs--they were
simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit
when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a
strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.
(1953: 1145-46)
104
Here, the narrator suspends the storyline to explain that the cry and scream
Bill made was very unpleasant and terrifying. Fairclough (2003: 172) says
that evaluation is a statement of desirability—whether something is
desirable or undesirable to the speaker. So the narrator states that it is an
undesirable thing to hear such scream and cry at this time. The examples
mentioned above are enough for the external evaluation; now let us
demonstrate the embedded or the internal ones.
The number of embedded evaluations exceeds the number of the
external ones. In the present narrative, all the four types of embedded
evaluative devices are present. The intensifying evaluation is expressed by
different linguistic devices: quantifiers, repetition, and ritual utterances. The
use of the quantifier “all” in the following statements by the narrator
emphasize the cases in which it occurred:
He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot
water for washing the dishes. (1953: 1147)
“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent--”
(1953: 1151)
The repetition of “gone” in following quote by Bill shows that he is
hesitated and worried:
“But he’s gone”--continues Bill--”gone home. (1953: 1150)
In some situations either the narrator or the characters expressed some ritual
expressions which give special significance to the coincident events or
statements. Here are some of them:
“.....By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard,” (1953: 1145)
“Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet been discovered that
the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven
help the wolves!” says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast. [...]
105
“For Heaven’s sake,” says Bill, “hurry back as soon as you can....”
(1953: 1149)
In the above extracts, Bill swears that Red Chief can kick hard. Sam also
supplicates God to help them in the kidnapping project. Bill is nervous and
afraid of being left alone with Red Chief. Therefore, he begs Bill to be back
soon.
The comparator evaluation has been fulfilled in the present narrative
by different devices: negatives, modals, imperatives and comparatives
(expressions containing comparative and superlative adjectives; similes and
metaphors). Examples of negative constructions are shown bellow:
It was, as Bill afterward expressed it,” during a moment of temporary mental
apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later.
(1953: 1144)
What is implied by the negative, “didn’t”, is that if they knew the
consequences of the kidnapping they would not have done it. Again, the
narrator tries to say that Bill was frightened by the kid—he was a coward,
but he (the narrator) was brave:
[...] he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that
boy was with us. [...]
I wasn’t nervous or afraid... (1953: 1146)
The modal verb in the following hypothetical clause serves as an
evaluative device that shows the failure of the kidnappers in their goal
what is going on is opposite to their expectations:
It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door. Just at
the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars
from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was
counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.
(1953: 1151)
106
The imperative clause “but wait ...” implies that something different will
happen:
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.
The imperative entails that, though it looked good, it will be bad rather than
good. The same implication can be made below:
Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two
thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.
(1953: 1144)
They thought that Ebenezer would consider the $2,000 they demanded as
the ransom for the return of his child, as if it were a cent. But the reverse is
the case. Not only does he pay the ransom but he takes $250 from the
kidnappers in return of taking his son off their hands.
The narrator describes Summit town with the help of a simile; “as
flat as a flannel-cake”. This indicates that it was a very flat town. There is
also another comparison between the “war-whoop”, the shouting Red Chief
makes when he goes out of the cave with a sling around his head and the
shouting David made when he killed the champion Goliath: 11
Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted
when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had
pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.
(1953: 1147)
Again Red Chief is compared to a leech when he fastens himself to Bill’s
leg and his father takes him away from it like an adhesive plaster at the end
of the story:
When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a
howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg. His
father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
(1953: 1152)
107
The narrator comments that the child was enjoying the time being with his
kidnappers. Through these two comparisons, he evaluates that Red Chief
had a strong tendency to stay with them rather than his own father.
There are also some evaluations made through metaphors. The
narrator quotes his own speech that contains three metaphors:
“Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet been discovered that
the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help
the wolves!” says I...
(1953:1147)
“The wolves” stands for the kidnappers, “the tender lambkin” for the kid,
and “the fold” for the parents and the people of Summit. Again Bill
compares the kid to a wildcat in the following quote:
“...it ain’t human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-
pound chunk of freckled wildcat...”
(1953: 1147)
Bill expresses that he is fed up with the child’s wild behaviour. Examples of
correlative evaluation are expressed with progressive in “be...ing” that
indicates that one event is occurring concurrently with another event which
is in simple past or present, as in:
One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house. The
kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.
(1953:1144)
In the verb phrase “throwing”, the tense marker “was” is deleted because
the clause is aligned with the previous one, which is “the kid was in the
street...” This clause serves as an indirect evaluation that the child was very
naughty and bad.
108
Explicative evaluation is obvious in the following extract when the
narrator explains why he and his friend, as kidnappers, decided to operate
the kidnapping project in Summit:
Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore

and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the
radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk
about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything
stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a
diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers’ Budget. So, it looked good.
(1953: 1144)
Finally, the use of historical present in the narrative clauses, referred to
throughout the complicating, “is really an ‘internal evaluation device’,
focusing on the events that really ‘make’ the story” (McCarthy 2005: 61;
Schifrin 2006: 9).
4.3.5 Resolution
The resolution or the result of the complicating action is declared
through one single narrative clause:
(ddd) We took him home that night. (1953: 1151)
(ddd) is the continuation of the last clause of the narrative clauses identified
at the end of the complicating action after Sam and Bill agree upon taking
the child home and paying the amount of money Ebenezer Dorset asks in
return.
It is worth mentioning that there is a series of chronologically
ordered narrative clauses through which the narrator gives the detail of the
events happened when they took the child home. The details provided in the
109
following narrative clauses are important in equipping the narrator with a
full answer to the “what finally happened?” question:
(eee)We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-
mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt
bears the next day.
(fff) It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door.
(ggg)Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen
hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original
proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into
Dorset’s hand.
(hhh) When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he
started up a howl like a calliope
(iii) and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg.
(jjj) His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
(kkk)”How long can you hold him?” asks Bill.
(lll) “I’m not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I can
promise you ten minutes.”
(mmm) “Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I shall cross the Central,
Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for
the Canadian border.”
(nnn) And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner
as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could
catch up with him
(1953: 1151-52)
In reality, only the italicized clauses are considered to be narrative clauses
in those examples which contain non-narrative clauses. 12 The clauses (eee)-
(nnn) can make up a separate narrative—a short narrative within a longer
110
one. So, we can speak of the suitability of analysing short narratives within
longer ones according to Labov’s model.13
4.3.6 Coda
In ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’, there is no explicitly provided coda
that brings the reader or the narrator to the point from where s/he first
started. The narrative ends when the narrator states that he and his co-
kidnapper ran away out of Summit. Thus, the reader is left alone in the past.
The only possibility for a coda is present in that when the narrator says
(nnn) “and as good a runner as I am....” because the narrator says that he is
a good runner at present. But one can say that “I am” is like the historical
present examples discussed earlier. So, it can be said that this narrative, like
‘A Strange Story’, is open-ended, as shown in the following figure:
(Fig. 7) The Narrative Structure

of the Three Short Stories
(Adapted from Labov 1972: 369)
111
Notes to Chapter Four
1. In the analysis of the clauses I only lettered the narrative clauses as Labov
(1972) and Schiffrin (1981) did in analysing narrative discourse.
2. Halliday (2004: 363) also points out that there is a temporal relationship
between the clauses of a narrative which are usually marked by relators (such
as and, then, yet etc.). He further explains that when the relation is not marked
explicitly, the listener or reader can infer that the relation “is one of temporal
sequence—or possibly one of cause” (Halliday 2004: 363-64).
3. “these three reports” refers to the motives which moved Eyres and Gilliam
to visit the monastery regardless to all the difficulty they would face on their
way to there. The three reasons are mentioned later in the evaluation section.
4. It should also be noted that whenever the evaluative clauses are embedded
into the narrative clauses, they, as Schiffrin (1981: 48) remarks, add
information which the reader needs to understand and interpret the
significance of the reported events.
5. There is an internal evaluation in this extract too. The simile, “like the flame
of a candle” and the metaphor, “leaving not even a trail of smoke as a
witness” can serve as evaluative keys, according to Labov (1972: 392) and
Black (2006:41).
6. It should also be said that the bold face items, without a doubt, etc., which are
known as “stance adverbials” (Biber et al. 1999: 853), can be regarded as
indirect comments on the events with which these items are used.
7. Fowler (1981 cited in Black 2006: 42) thinks that any question, as well as
imperative, has the effect of drawing the reader into the (narrative) discourse.
This is because each of them “creates emphatic involvement” (Black 2006:
13).
8. The term “floor” is used to refer to the right of speaking an interlocutor can
have when participating in conversation. This is used primarily in the “Speech
Act Theory” and it can also be said that when a participant takes the floor s/he
is titled his/her turn. So, floor space is equal to “turn-taking”.
112
9. This free clause, to a degree, resembles the free clause in one of the
narratives analysed by Labov, when the narrator relates: “and we didn’t have
nothin’ to do..” (Labov 1972: 355). He counts this as being a reference to the
situation in which the event, say a fight for example, happened (Labov 1972:
364).
10. A matrix clause is the clause which tells us about the person who is doing the
speaking or thinking in a direct quotation (Toolan 1998: 106). In “I’m tired,”
says Jack; “she may refuse her uncle’s demand,” her aunt thought, says Jack
and her aunt thought, for instance, are matrix clauses. Toolan also calls it a
“frame” clause (1998: 106).
11. Here, the narrator likens the whoop made by Red Chief to the whoop David
(God’s Peace and Blessings be upon him) made when he killed Goliath. This,
besides being a simile, in literary terms, is a religious allusion as Delahunty et
al. relate the story in their The Oxford Dictionary of Allusions (2001: 91).
This allusion can also serve as an internal evaluation key emphasizing the
influence and force of the sound of the child on Bill and Sam. It also attracts
the attention of the reader by making him/her to wait for the consequence, i.e.
striking Sam or Bill with the pebble as David did to Goliath, which later
targets at Bill as narrated in the short story.
12. I have not excluded the non-narrative clauses here just for the sake of
maintaining the full meanings they express in context.
13. There is also another short narrative within the present narrative. Bill narrates
to Sam what had happened to him and the child during the time when Bill and
Red Chief played a game in the absence of Sam (O. Henry 1953: 1150). In
this short narrative, surprisingly, all the elements Labov (1972) discusses are
present.
113
Chapter Five
Conclusions and Suggestions for further Studies
5.0 Introduction
This chapter is devoted to pointing out the most outstanding
concluding points and findings of the study. It also makes some
suggestions for further research.
5.1 Conclusions
(1) There is a common point found in the two structuralist models. Each of
them makes much use of grammatical terms, which are originally used in
the analysis of sentences, for the analysis of narrative structure. Subject and
object, for instance, are syntactic terms used for describing the noun
phrases (or Arguments) a verb may require in a sentence, while, in
Greimas’ model, their meanings have been employed to mean other things,
as explained in chapters two and three. The same is true of Genette’s voice,
mood and tense. Again, Labov’s model, like the other two models makes
use of syntactic terms and concepts but there is one remarkable point in it.
In Labov’s model, unlike the previous models, the terms which are used to
distinguish the different elements of the narrative structure are not of
syntax or grammar. But one can say that the whole model depends highly
on syntactic explanations for elements of the narrative structure. Each
element in the scheme has a linguistic form which distinguishes it from the
other elements. Another common point among the three is that all of them
can be traced back to the formalist’s division for narrative structure.
‘Fabula’ and ‘syuzhet’ can be compared to Genette’s ‘story’ and
‘discourse’. The six actants of Greimas’ have been taken from Propp’s
seven spheres of action. Moreover, Labov’s ‘orientation’, ‘complicating
action’ and ‘result’, alone, can correspond to ‘fabula’ while ‘abstract’,
‘evaluation’ and ‘coda’ (of course, with the other three elements) to
‘syuzhet’.
(2) As stated earlier, Greimas’ model deals only with the deep narrative
structure in terms of the semantic roles of sentence elements: ‘subject’,
‘object’, etc. The other two models, on the contrary, study both, the deep
and surface narrative structures alike.
(3) Despite these general points, conclusions can be made concerning each
model employed in the analysis of the short stories of the present study. In
the implementation of the actantial model developed by Greimas, it has
been noticed that the model is applicable to the short stories as far as their
structures are concerned. All of the six actants are found in each narrative;
this can be considered an advantageous point about the schema. There are
some disadvantageous aspects in it, too. The model is too general, not only
narrative texts but also non-narrative texts, a descriptive text, for instance,
can be analysed with the model. Another negative point is that in the
structure of each short story, there are more than one or two possible
actantial groups. Such shortcomings have not been encountered in the other
structural schemas—Genette’s model, for example.
(4) As noticed throughout the structure analysis of the three short stories in
the perspective of Genette’s framework (see chapter three), neither the
stretched nor scenic narrative has been seen. The reasons for these
shortcomings can be condensed in the following points:
(a) Short stories, as the word short implies, are short accounts of the
events. That is why; the narrator does his best to shorten the
narrative rather than stretch the events. So, it is not strange to find
acceleration but not deceleration in the speed of narrating in the
level of discourse of the short stories.
115
(b) Concerning scenic narratives where story duration and discourse
duration are identical, the most typical form of scene is said to be
dialogue. Considering, for instance, the duration of the dialogue
between Bellchambers and his two friends, in ‘The Robe of
Peace’, we can say that dialogues are not scenic, too. In the
discourse level this dialogue can be read in less than the duration,
“ten minutes”, mentioned by Bellchambers.
(5) One more point concerning order of events in Genette’s terms is that
displacement of events can be compared to the displacement of word order
in English sentence structure. The transition of a sentence constituent to
“the front of the sentence, as in: “The money I’ll pay you in a minute”,
(which is known as topicalization or left dislocation), can be compared to
prolepsis and analepsis in the narrative structure. The concepts Genette
uses for the analysis of narrative structure are originated, as stated earlier,
from grammatical concepts but through the analyses of the short stories, it
has come out that his terms have little to do with their origins.
(6) In chapter four, it has been noticed that the important elements of
Labov’s model are found in all the three short stories. In ‘A Strange Story’
and ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’, all the six elements have been seen except
the last one—coda. The absence of coda at end of the short stories shows
that these two narratives are open-ended; this is why coda has been
enclosed in parentheses in (Fig. 7) on p. 111. In ‘The Robe of Peace’ all the
six elements have been found. Concerning evaluation, it has been noticed
that the events and speeches of ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ have been more
evaluated. This shows that the model can work better in personal
experience narratives rather than vicarious experience (i.e., third person)
ones.
(7) Throughout the three narratives, it has been assessed that ‘evaluation’
has no specific location in the narrative structure. It has been scattered over
116
the different elements of the narrative. This is why the evaluation has been
divided over the remaining elements as ‘e-va-lu-a-tion’ (it has been cut into
its syllables) in (Fig. 7), (see p.111).
(8) The model of Labov’s, as hypothesized, is applicable to the structure of
written short stories, as it was so for the oral narrative structure. It is more
applicable than Genette’s model. For, as noticed in chapter four, Labov’s
model treats the narrative texts in terms of clauses; it analyses the whole
narratives into clauses from which the texts have been built. Another
positive feature noticed in Labov’s model is that it has taken the titles of
the short stories into consideration; the titles have their place in the model.
But in Genette’s model titles are neglected. Finally, because of these
reasons, Labov’s model is the most successful one with which short stories
can be analysed.
5.2 Suggestions for further Studies
The area of narrative discourse is very fertile. Many facets of

narrative discourse can be analysed in the field of discourse/text analysis,
pragmatics, stylistics, psycholinguistics, narratology and sociolinguistics.
The researcher suggests the following topics for further studies:
(1) The structure of English narrative poetry.

(2) It might also be possible to analyse Kurdish narrative texts in terms
of the models adopted in the present work.
117
118
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‫ِ‬ ‫ﻣوﺳوﻣﺔ ﻫذﻩ اﻟدارﺳﺔ ﻫﻲ "ﺗﺣﻠﯾ ُل اﻟﺑﻧﺎ ِء اﻟﺳـردي ﻟِ َﺑﻌْض‬
‫ﻗﺻص ﻗﺻﯾرٍة ﻟـ)أو ﻫﻧري ‪O.‬‬
‫ٍ‬ ‫ﯾل اﻟﺑﻧﺎ ِء اﻟﺳـردي ﻟﺛﻼث‬
‫اﻟﺧطﺎب اﻟﺳـردي وﺗﺣﻠ َ‬
‫ِ‬ ‫ﯾف‬
‫ﻬدف اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ ﺗَﻌر َ‬
‫ﺗـﺳﺗ ُ‬
‫ﺻﺔٌ ﻋﺟﯾﺑﺔٌ' )‪ ،(A Strange Story‬و 'ﻋﺑﺎءةُ اﻻطﻣﺋﻧﺎن' ) ‪The Robe of‬‬
‫‪ ، (Henry‬ﺑﻌﻧﺎوﯾن‪ِ ' :‬ﻗ ّ‬
‫‪ (Peace‬و 'ﻓدﯾﺔ رﯾد ﺟﯾف' )‪ .(The Ransom of Red Chief‬ﺗﻧﻘﺳم ﻫذﻩ اﻟدراﺳﺔ إﻟﻰ ﺧﻣﺳﺔ‬
‫ﻓﺻول‪.‬‬
‫ٍ‬
‫ﯾﺎت‬
‫ﻔرﺿﯾﺎت و اﻟﻧظر ِ‬
‫ِ‬ ‫ﻫداف و اﻟ‬
‫ّن اﻟﻣﺷﻛﻠﺔَ و اﻷ َ‬
‫اﻟﻔﺻل اﻷول ﻫو ﻋﺑﺎرة ﻋن ﻣﻘدﻣﺔ‪ ،‬ﺗﺗﺿﻣ ُ‬
‫اﻟﻣطﺑﻘﺔ واﻟﺗﺣدﯾ َد واﻹﺟراءات وأﻫﻣﯾﺔَ اﻟدراﺳﺔِ‪.‬‬
‫اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟﺛﺎﻧﻲ ﯾﻘدم ﺧﻠﻔﯾﺔ ﻧظرﯾﺔ ﻟﻠﺧطﺎب اﻟﻘﺻﺻﻲ‪ ،‬وﯾﻧﻘﺳم اﻟﻰ أرﺑﻌﺔ ﻣﺑﺎﺣث‪ .‬ﻓﻲ اﻟﻣﺑﺣث‬
‫اﻟﺧطﺎب‬
‫ِ‬ ‫ﺎﻟﺧطﺎب)‪ (discourse‬و ﺗﺣﻠﯾل‬
‫ِ‬ ‫اﻟﻣﺻطﻠﺣﺎت اﻟﻣﺗﻌﻠﻘ ِﺔ ﺑﺎﻟدراﺳﺔ‪َ :‬ﻛـ‬
‫ِ‬ ‫ْض‬
‫ف َﺑﻌ ُ‬
‫اﻷول‪ُ ،‬ﻋﱢر َ‬
‫)‪ (discourse analysis‬و اﻟﺳرد )‪ (narrative‬و ﻋﻠم اﻟﺳرد‪ ،‬أي ﻧﺎرﺗوﻟوﺟﻲ )‪(narratology‬‬
‫واﻟﻘﺻّﺔ اﻟﻘﺻﯾرة )‪ .(short story‬وأﻣّﺎ اﻟﻣﺑﺣث اﻟﺛﺎﻧﻲ ﻓﻬو ﻋﺑﺎرة ﻋن ﺗﺻﻧﯾف أﻧواع اﻟﺳرد وأدوارﻩ‬
‫ِس اﻟﻠﻐوﯾ ِﺔ َوﻣﻧﺎ ِﻫﺞ اﻟﻧﺎرﺗوﻟوﺟﯾﺔ‪ .‬واﻟﻣﺑﺣث اﻟﺛﺎﻟث ُﯾﺳﻠِط اﻟﺿو َء ﻋﻠﻰ ﺧﻠﻔﯾ ٍﺔ ﺗﺎرﯾﺧﯾ ٍﺔ‬
‫واﻟﻌﻼﻗ ِﺔ ﺑﯾن اﻟﻣَدار ِ‬
‫اﻟﻣﺑﺣث اﻟراﺑﻊ اﻟﺑﻧﺎ َء اﻟﻘﺻﺻﻲ)أو اﻟﺳردي( ﺣﺳب اﻟﻧظرﯾﺔ اﻟﺷﻛﻠﯾﺔ ﻟـِ‬
‫ُ‬ ‫ﻠﺳرد و اﻟﻧﺎرﺗوﻟوﺟﻲ‪ .‬وُﯾ َدﱢر ُس‬
‫ﻟ ِ‬
‫ﺑروب )‪ (Propp 1928‬و اﻟﻧظرﯾﺎت اﻟﻣطﺑﻘﺔ اﻟﺛﻼﺛﺔ‪ :‬ﻧظرﯾﺗﻲ ﺟرﯾﻣﺎس )‪ (Greimas 1966‬و ﺟﯾﻧﯾت‬
‫)‪ (Genette 1972‬اﻟﺗرﻛﯾﺑﯾن اﻟﻔرﻧﺳﯾﯾن و اﻟﻧظرﯾﺔ اﻟﻠﻐوﯾﺔ ﻟـِ ﻟَﺑوف )‪.(Labov 1972‬‬
‫ـص اﻟﻘﺻــﯾرةُ اﻟﻣــذﻛورة‪ .‬ﺛــم ﺗ ـ ّم ﺗﺣﻠﯾ ـ ُل ُﻛـ ﱟـل ﻣﻧﻬ ـﺎ ﺑطرﯾﻘﺗــﻲ‬

‫ﺻ ـ َرت اﻟﻘﺻـ ُ‬
‫ـث أُﺧﺗُ ِ‬
‫وﻓــﻲ اﻟﻔﺻــل اﻟﺛﺎﻟـ ِ‬
‫ـث ﺑ ـ ــﺄن ُﻛـ ـ ـﻼً ﻣ ـ ــن اﻟﻔﺎﻋ ـ ــل)‪ (subject‬واﻟﻣﻔﻌ ـ ــول‬
‫ﻼت‪َ ،‬وﺟـ ـ ـ َد اﻟﺑﺎﺣ ـ ـ ُ‬
‫ﺟرﯾﻣ ـ ــﺎس و ﺟﯾﻧﯾ ـ ــت‪ِ .‬ﺧـ ـ ـﻼل اﻟﺗﺣﻠ ـ ــﯾ ِ‬
‫ـﺎرض)‪،(opponent‬‬
‫ـﺎﻋد)‪ (helper‬واﻟﻣﻌـ ِ‬
‫ـﺗﻠم)‪ (receiver‬واﻟﻣﺳـ ِ‬
‫ﺑــﻪ)‪ (object‬واﻟﻣرﺳــل)‪ (sender‬واﻟﻣﺳـ ِ‬
‫ـﺗﻌﯾر ﺟﯾﻧﯾـت‪ ،‬ﻛـَﺟرﯾﻣﺎس‪،‬‬
‫ـص‪َ .‬ﯾﺳ ُ‬
‫ُـل ﻣـن اﻟﻘﺻ ِ‬
‫)وﻫؤﻻء ﻋﻧﺎﺻر أﺳﺎﺳﯾﺔٌ ﻟﻧظرﯾﺔ ﺟرﯾﻣﺎس(‪ ،‬ﻣوﺟوٌد ﻓـﻲ ﻛ ﱟ‬
‫اﻟﻣﺻطﻠﺣﺎت اﻟﻧﺣوﯾﺔ ‪ ،‬ﻣﺛل‪:‬ﺻﯾﻐﺔ اﻟﻔﻌل‪،‬ﻣن ﻧﺎﺣﯾﺔ اﻟﻣﻌﻠوم أو اﻟﻣﺟﻬول )‪ ،(voice‬و أزﻣﻧﺔ )‪،(tense‬‬
‫اﻟﺗرﻛﯾب اﻟﺳردي‪.‬‬
‫ِ‬ ‫ﻟﺗﺣﻠﯾل‬
‫ِ‬ ‫وﺣﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﻔﻌل‪ ،‬ﻣن ﻧﺎﺣﯾﺔ اﻷﺧﺑﺎري أو اﻷﻣري‪ ،‬أو اﻹﻧﺷﺎﺋﻲ )‪،(mood‬‬
‫واﻟﻔﺻ ُل اﻟراﺑﻊُ ﻫو ﻋﺑﺎرة ﻋن ﺗﺣﻠﯾل ﻋﻧﺎﺻر اﻟﺳﺗّﺔ‪ :‬اﻟﻣﻠﺧص )‪ (abstract‬و اﻟﺗوﺟﯾﻪ‬

‫)‪ (orientation‬واﻟﺣﺎدﺛﺔ اﻟﻣﻌﻘّدة )‪ (complicating action‬و اﻟﺗﻘﯾﯾم )‪ (evaluation‬واﻟﻧﺗﯾﺟﺔ‬
‫ﺗرﻛﯾب اﻟﺳردي ﻟﻠﻘﺻص اﻟﻘﺻﯾرة اﻟﺛﻼﺛﺔ‪ .‬وﻛ ّل ﻣن‬
‫)‪ (resolution‬واﻟﻧﻬﺎﯾﺔ )‪ ،(coda‬ﻟـِ) ﻟَﺑوف( ﻓﻲ اﻟ ِ‬
‫أ‬
‫اﻟﺣرة واﻟﻘﺻﺻﯾ ِﺔ‪ .‬واﻟﻣﻘﺻود ﻣن ﻫذا اﻟﺗﺣﻠﯾل ﻫو ﺑﯾﺎن ﻗﺎﺑﻠﯾﺔ‬
‫ﻫذﻩ اﻟﻌﻧﺎﺻر ﯾﻌﺑّر ﺑﺎﻟﺟﻣل أو ﺷﺑﻪ اﻟﺟﻣل ّ ِ‬
‫ﺗطﺑﯾق ﻫذﻩ اﻟﻧظرﯾﺔ ﻟﺗرﻛﯾب اﻟﺳرد ﻟﻠﻘﺻص اﻟﻘﺻﯾرة اﻟﻣﻛﺗوﺑﺔ‪ ،‬ﻛﻣﺎ ﻫو ﺣﺎﻟﻬﺎ ﻣﻊ اﻟﺳرد اﻟﺷﻔوي اﻟذاﺗﻲ‪.‬‬
‫ﺑﻌض اﻹﻗﺗراﺣﺎت ﻟﻠدراﺳﺎت اﻷُﺧرى‪ .‬ﺗَﺳﺗﻧﺗ ُﺞ‬

‫َ‬ ‫اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟﺧﺎﻣس ﯾﺗﺿﻣن ﻣﻠﺧص اﻻﺳﺗﻧﺗﺎﺟﺎت و‬
‫وﺟدﯾر ﺑِﺎﻟذﻛر أن‬
‫ٌ‬ ‫ﺳب ﺑﻌض اﻟﻘواﻋد اﻟﺧﺎﺻﺔ‪.‬‬
‫ب َﺣ َ‬
‫ﺗرﻛﯾب اﻟﺟﻣﻠﺔ‪ُ ،‬ﯾرﱠﻛ ُ‬
‫ﺑﺄن ﺑﻧﺎء اﻟﺳرد‪ ،‬ﻛ ِ‬
‫ﻫذﻩ اﻟدراﺳﺔُ ّ‬
‫طرﯾﻘﺔ ﺟﯾﻧﯾت ﻗﺎﺑﻠﺔ ﻟﻠﺗطﺑﯾق أﻛﺛر ﻣن طرﯾﻘﺔ ﺟرﯾﻣﺎس‪ ،‬ﺑﯾﻧﻣﺎ طرﯾﻘﺔ ﻟَﺑوف أﻓﺿل ﻣن ﻫذﻩ اﻟﻧﺎﺣﯾ ِﺔ‪ .‬و‬
‫ﻠﻣﺻﺎدر و اﻟﻣراﺟﻊ‪.‬‬
‫ِ‬ ‫ﺗﻧﺗﻬﻲ اﻟدراﺳﺔ ﺑﻘﺎﺋﻣ ٍﺔ ﻟ‬
‫ب‬
 

 

 
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



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
2007   
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
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143127102010

         
    
     
           
     
    ‘The Robe of Peace’   ‘A Strange Story’
  ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’
             

    

discourse
 
narrative discourse analysis 
short storynarratology —



Propp 1928
  Genette 1972Greimas 1966
Labov1972
 
.
         actant
 receiversenderobjectsubject 
opponenthelper

        

 tense voice    verb
 mood
a
 
          
abstract1
          orientation  2
  4  complicating action   3   
    coda   6  resolution  5  evaluation
            
         


           
  
         


b
 

–


 



2007   
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
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14312710 2010

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Kurdistan Region-Iraq

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

An Analysis of the Narrative Structure

A Thesis Submitted to the Council of the College of Languages, Salahaddin

Supervised by Dr. Suhayla Hameed Majeed

March AD 2010 Nawroz 2710 K Rabi‘a Althany 1431 H

(Fig. 4. a) Actants of ‘A Strange Story’ ...................................................... 40

1.2 The Aims of the Study

(1) Narrative can be treated like an extended sentence, sharing elements

1.6 The Models Adopted

(1) Linguistic stylisticians who are interested in studying the relation

The term ‘discourse’ has become a widespread concept in a

Crystal (2008:148) defines ‘discourse’ as a term referring to “a

Widdowson’s (2007:129) definition to ‘discourse’ is that it is “the

Finch (2000:219-20) states that the most distinctive aspect of

2.1.2 Discourse Analysis

Generally, newspaper reports, history books, novels, films, gossips,

Montague (2007) gives a complicated description which states that

Narrative: The recounting [. . .] of one or more real or fictitious EVENTS

(Prince 2003a: 58; quoted in Fludernik 2009:5)

Finally, Labov’s (1972: 359-60) definition of a narrative is that,

(1) Jane got married and had a baby.

Harmon (2003:329) defines narratology as “the sophisticated

Despite this, older studies of narrative, as far back as Aristotle’s

2.1.5 Short Story

Baldick in his The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms

Though there is no exact limit to the length of short story, Edgar

2.3 A Historical Overview of Narrative and Narratology

“All mythology is a narration of events, either past, present or to come [...].

2.4 Narrative Structure: The Approaches

In 1925 the Russian formalist Boris Tomashevski sought to find the

(1) One of the members of a family absents himself from home

Table 1 Propp’s seven part narrative model

Initial Situation Section

It is placed prior to the development of the tale itself (represented by the

Spatial transference between two kingdoms or Guidance (G), Struggle (H),

(Louchart & Aylett 2004:510-1)

2.4.2 Structuralists’ Approach

Under the influence of the linguistic models, the structuralists

2.4.2.1 Greimas’ Model

2.4.2.2 Genette’s Model

(Fig.2) Genette’s Narrative Structure levels

Genette makes a distinction between voice and mood: voice is

(adapted from Fludernik 2009: 99)

2.4.3 Labov’s Model7

(1) (a) This boy punched me

2.4.3.3 Complicating Action

Labov and Waletzky (1997: 28) define evaluation as “that part of

Another important point about evaluation is its placement in the

Resolution is defined as the “portion of the narrative which follows

In short, a complete narrative is summarized in the abstract, begins

Moreover, narratives with the aforementioned elements tend to be a

3. Proppian approach is regarded a morphological model in some narratological

4. Crystal (2008: 202) states that in a narratological perspective the word

7. It is also known as Labov and Waletzky’s model or a Sociolinguistic model as

8. This is also known as “story-preface” (Gramley & Pätzold 1992: 218).

9. This is such a question that the interviewer asked the interviewees as an

10. Berman (2001: 1) has mentioned three alternative terminologies for

3.1 Greimas’ Model and the Short Stories

Sender Object Receiver

Helper Subject Opponent

(Fig 4. a) Actants of ‘A Strange Story’

Sender Object Receiver

Helper Subject Opponent