The Valley of the Shadow of Text Kayla Kibbe College

The introduction of the novel – or long form narrative prose in general – granted the writer a unique, widened canvas on which to blend rhetoric and art. Here, the writer is invited to both persuade and entertain, sometimes veiling one with the other. On this canvas, a writer has the ability to create an image of a world with a depth and breadth so like that of our own the two may appear indistinguishable. After establishing this image of verisimilitude, the writer – aided by a multitude of masks in the form of characters, voices, and various narration perspectives – is free to repaint the world according to their own vision, illustrating it as it truly is, should, or regrettably may come to be. That is not to say, however, that a writer’s re-imagined portrait of the world contains the entirety of their message. On a canvas as broad as that granted narrative prose, it is not uncommon for a writer to make extensive use of negative space. That is, what an author says may be defined implicitly by what is not said.

Two elements commonly manipulated in order to achieve this balance – or lack thereof – between positive and negative space are the perspective and identity of the narrator, as well as the chronology of the narrative....