Genre
Novel
Setting and Context
The text is set in the 19th century.
Narrator and Point of View
A bachelor narrates using the first person voice.
Tone and Mood
Rhythmical, contemplative, and deep-thinking
Protagonist and Antagonist
The bachelor is the protagonist.
Major Conflict
There is no explicit conflict; the bachelor merely ponders on a myriad of issues.
Climax
The reveries do not result in a climax because they do not follow a plotline.
Foreshadowing
An example of foreshadowing in the text is: “But the time is coming, and very fast when you must not only do but know what to do. The time is coming, when in place of your one master, you will have a thousand masters.” The prediction underscores the duties which an individual must undertake while alive.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
The bachelor alludes to religion (God, Hell, and Heaven). Additionally, the bachelor alludes to literary figures (Wordsworth and Shakespeare).
Imagery
The bachelor spends most of his time ruminating in various settings. The ruminations depict imageries of the bachelor's present and past lives, forecasts about the future, and his ideologies about life.
Paradox
The bachelor summarizes the paradox of the present: “the great Now, so quick, so broad, so fleeting, is yours;-in an hour it will belong to the Eternity of the Past.” The paradox underscores the temporality of the present.
Parallelism
The narrator commences most of the sentences with the pronoun “I.” For example, the bachelor recounts, “I Loved Bella. I know not how I loved her…I always loved her…I would tell her of all my grief.”
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
Souls are personified: “our souls, indeed, wander to it (the future), as to a homeland; they run beyond time and space.”
