‘There is much more to the telling of a story than simply listing what happens.’ Compare and contrast the narrative methods of any two modernist and/or postmodernist texts Sophie Hunt College

Stories are never told by simply listing what happens, and in fact narratives are produced using a wide combination of literary techniques such as time fragmentation, intertexual references and metaphorical imagery. Here, it is necessary to discuss the modernist short story ‘The Mark on the Wall’ by Virginia Woolf as well as Jackie Kay’s postmodernist autobiography ‘Red Dust Road’. Not only will these texts demonstrate that a number of narrative methods are needed within differing genres, but also will provide evidence that these methods are also used within various time periods. Therefore by the end of this essay it shall be clear that purely listing events is not the way in which these authors form stories – much more thought and process is required to produce a narrative.

The construction of Woolf’s ‘The Mark on the Wall’ clearly demonstrates how stories are told differently than that of just listing events. A small event such as a snail on the wall forms a text explores issues such as war, marriage and the process of thinking. Woolf is able to do so through methods used throughout literary history, one of which is the several uses of similes. For instance, Woolf uses the comparison “Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel...