Different Voices in 'Wuthering Heights' and 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' Alysia Jackson 11th Grade

In both ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ the writers use different narrative voices to portray their story. Within ‘Wuthering Heights’ Bronte uses Lockwood as the outer narrative and Nelly as the inner narrative to further present the plot, whilst in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ Hosseini takes advantage of an alternating narrative between Mariam and Laila to give a wider and more direct view of the story. In both texts the narration contributes strongly to the true presentation of their respective times, for instance Bronte expresses the social justices and expectations in the Georgian period through ‘Wuthering Heights ‘ whilst Hosseini is able to tell the story of those oppressed women within Afghanistan through ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’.

By Bronte using both outer and inner narrative voices it reflects the readers own introduction to the story of the family affairs, mirroring Lockwood’s own experience. Thus by Lockwood’s first person diary format it enables the overall structure to be created and sets the character up as the main source of narration. Also, Bronte can be seen to use Lockwood specifically as he is portrayed to be a neutral figure to the story, with no distinct knowledge of the characters,...