The Study of Existents in Sandpiper Essays -- Ahdaf Soueif Sandpiper I

The Study of Existents in SandpiperIn a compact story like Sandpiper, where the protagonist does little except move around in her beach-ho manipulation in an uneventful afternoon, thinking her thoughts, readers must look for an haulage alternative to the plot. Indeed, the writer, Ahdaf Soueif, has chosen to offer to us an interesting array of existents, in place of the story line, as the chief(prenominal) focus of this narrative. In the side by side(p) essay, I shall discuss how existents--the collection of sheaths and orbit--are used to invoke feelings of dispossession and excision in the story Sandpiper, which are essential in raising the main issue of the story, which is the question of ones identity. Having agreed that the event itself, a summer afternoon spent at a beach-house, is rather inconsequential, we go on to understand that the actions of our characters, since they do not contribute to the plot, are actually reflections of their personality. This is what French structuralist, Tzvetan Todorov proposed as a characteristic of psychological narratives, narratives which place their main focus on the development of their characters (Chatman 114). We can therefore, identify distinctive traits belonging to the characters by law-abiding their actions.The characters in this narrative are few namely the protagonist, I her remove husband (she refers to him as her lover) her daughter, Lucy and her husbands old nanny, Um Sabir. Since it is only the protagonist that appears most(prenominal) often and to whom the readers interact directly, I shall focus most of my discussion ground on her development . Our protagonist, I, can be further differentiated into the narrator, I-now and the character, I-then. I-now is the pose figure that has ... ...his narrative is such that we follow the chain of thoughts of our protagonist I as she considers the repercussions of her broken marriage. Since we only interact directly with her, we become persuaded to requ ire her point of view, thus her problem becomes our problem too. In its effective use of character, by focusing the essay on one specific character and endowing her with specific traits relevant to bring out the issues concerned and by setting up the story in an environment that can both pot responses from the protagonist as well as clearly portray her feelings to us, Sandpiper has successfully raised the question on ones identity. Works CitedSoueif, Ahdaf. Sandpiper. Sandpiper. London Bloomsbury, 1997 23 - 36.Chatman, Seymour. Existents. narrative and Discourse Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, N.Y. Cornell UP, 1978 107 - 145.