Helen Garner My Hard Heart
Helen Garner, in her short story collection, My Hard Heart, uses a wide variety of different narrative perspectives. Each type of narration is closely linked with, and special to, the story or experience being told. Susan Hosking, describes Garners writing style as an 'ability to refine subject matters that meaning emerges from accumulated detail rather than exhaustive explanation or description. 'The life of Art' is a story meant to tell of a life, of the length of a friendship and does so by appearing in disjointed little snippets of events that happen throughout that life, in first person and mostly beginning with "my friend." 'Postcards from Surfers' uses a normal conversational type of narration, with the story told in first person again, immediately centering the tale around the main character speaking and illumination the struggles of the protagonist. Their view of the people around them is shown by the replies made to questions or the type of conversation made by surrounding characters. Different again, is 'All Those Bloody Young Catholics." Brilliant use of narration here immediately sets the scene for the story and tells the reader about its characters, the constant ramble of words.
Well and hows the world going Watto me old mate. ' This further shows the variety of Helen Garner's narrative style and how this is used to great effect in telling the reader more about the story being told. Each one is unique and every one contributes a great deal to the story, adding extra depth to the lives of the characters. For example, we find out a lot of what has happened in the speaker's own life when he is getting around to telling Watto about Gerry,"So I says goodbye to the Christian bloke, I days here, have some money. " In 'All those bloody young Catholics' it is a constant rambling of words, an entire conversation written from one mans point of view. 'All those bloody young Catholics' belongs to the noticeably special forms of narration, as this story is not guided by a usual kind of storyteller, but direct speech only. For example, when the speaker asks a counterpart "Who's your mate?" The reply is not known until the speaker repeats what was answered to him "Jan. " The above shows how Helen Garner's unique writing style and narration techniques are centrally related to the story being told, and also inform the reader of many important things about the story. "The road takes a sudden swing around a rocky outcrop, Miles ahead of us, blurred in the milky air, I see a dream city, its turquoise towers thrust in a cluster from a distant spit. he rounds it up with a large, dramatic scooping movent and a sympathetic grimace of the lower lip. It is a story of her relationship with this friend over the many years of their life, from high school to middle age.
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Acceptance Essays
