Andrew Ghobrial 12/23/08
English Essay C
"A chronological sequence is only one way of telling a story," is a quote that many novels support; however, there are novels that are not told in chronological order. Telling a story in chronological order is a powerful way to show the meaning of the story. I read throughout this school year a few novels that were told in chronological sequence and a couple that were not, but the stories that were told in chronological order had a greater affect on me than those that were not.
An example of a novel that that is told in chronological sequence is Things Fall Apart and a novel that is not narrated in chronological sequence is The House of the Spirits.
In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, the main character, was a great man in his home of Umuofia, a group of nine villages in Nigeria. Okonkwo despised his father and did everything he can to be nothing like the man. As a young man, Okonkwo began building his social status by defeating a great wrestler, pushing him into society's eye. He was hard working and showed no weakness, emotional or otherwise, to anyone. He was wealthy, courageous, and powerful among his village. He was a leader of his village, and this place in society is what he has struggled for his entire life.
Okonkwo was then selected by the elders to be the guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy taken prisoner by the tribe as a peace settlement between two villages. Ikemefuna stayed with Okonkwo until the Oracle instructs the elders on what to do with the boy. For three years the boy lived with Okonkwo's family and they grew fond of him, he even considered Okonkwo his father. Then the elders decided that the boy must be killed, and the oldest man in the village warned Okonkwo to have nothing to do with the murder because it would be like killing ...
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Okonkwo was then selected by the elders to be the guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy taken prisoner by the tribe as a peace settlement between two villages. Ikemefuna stayed with Okonkwo until the Oracle instructs the elders on what to do with the boy. For three years the boy lived with Okonkwo's family and they grew fond of him, he even considered Okonkwo his father. Then the elders decided that the boy must be killed, and the oldest man in the village warned Okonkwo to have nothing to do with the murder because it would be like killing his own child. Rather than seem weak and feminine to the other men of the tribe, Okonkwo helps to kill the boy despite the warning from the old man.
Shortly after Ikemefuna's death, things began to go wrong for Okonkwo and when he accidentally killed someone at a funeral ceremony, he and his family were sent into exile for seven years to appease the gods he has offended with the murder. While Okonkwo was away in exile, white men began coming to Umuofia and they peaceably introduced their religion, Christianity. As the number of converts increased, the grip of the white people grew beyond their religion and a new government was introduced.
Okonkwo returned to his village after his exile to find it a changed place because of the presence of white men. He and other tribal leaders tried to reclaim their hold on their native land by destroying a local Christian church that has insulted their gods and religion. In return, the leader of the white government took them as prisoners and held them for payoffs for a while, further humiliating and insulting the native leaders. The people of Umuofia finally gathered for what could be a great revolution, and when some messengers of the white government tried to stop their meeting, Okonkwo kills one of them. He realized with despair that the people of Umuofia are not going to fight to protect themselves because they let the other messengers escape and so all was lost for the Ibo tribe.
When the local leader of the white government came to Okonkwo's house to take him to court, he found out that Okonkwo hanged himself, ruining his great reputation.
One could see from this brief overview of the novel that it could influence the reader as it is narrated in chronological order: it is easy to understand, the meaning of the story is easy to figure out and how the meaning was achieved made a difference on how fine and smoothly told the novel is. I liked the novel as it is based on a true story and because it is a powerful novel that is based on the conception of humans as self-reflexive beings and a definition of culture as a set of control mechanisms and talks about the social changes that occurred when the white men first arrived on the African continent. This all could be figured out as the chronological sequence of the book depicted how things, such as culture and people, changed over time.
This other novel, The House of the Spirits, is not told in chronological order. It begins with a priest accusing Clara of being possessed by the devil and that her Uncle Marcos's body was delivered to her house accompanied by a puppy, Barrabás; Clara del Valle began keeping a journal. Fifty years later, her husband, Esteban, and her granddaughter, Alba, refer to these journals as they start writing together the story of their family.
This novel is not narrated in chronological order as it starts off with Alba, who is not born until later in the novel, reading the journals of her grandmother, Clara, who is still a young child in the very next chapter. Then Clara grows and marry's Esteban Trueba and then gives birth to three children, a girl and two boys, and the girl gives birth to Alba. Then Clara dies and then we return to the beginning of the novel as Esteban and Alba refer to Clara's journals as they start writing the story of their family.
One could see that the novel is not as powerful as Things Fall Apart since it is not narrated in chronological order. At this point, not being told in chronological order, made it difficult for the reader to understand what is going on, as the first chapter begins off by Alba reading Clara's journal after Clara passed away and the next chapter moves on by talking about Clara's childhood. It made it hard for the reader to understand the novel as a novel being told in chronological sequence eases out for the reader what is going on. Also meaning of the story was hard to tell as the way it was told, not in chronological sequence, made it hard for the reader to receive any messages that were trying to be sent by Isabelle Allende.
As both novels, one told in chronological order and the other was not, were compared, one could see that telling a story in chronological sequences can make a powerful influence on the reader, as it did on me.