rivialities therefore layer the text with meaning. The narrative technique employed is insightful and revealing. An omniscient 3rd person narrator operates, yet an objective and exterior narrator does not consistently narrate the novel. There are elements of free indirect speech, focalization, manipulation, and unreliability present in the narration. In this chapter, I would like to examine the narrative technique Tyler employs in The Accidental Tourist- in particular how the narrator exploits narrative time and chronology. I also wish to explore the significance of structure in the novel, and evaluate the novel's overall style and genre; does it lean towards 'realist' narration, or stream of consciousness, or is it a genre of its own?
             In this section, I would like to examine the aspects of narrative in the novel. The novel is a narrative; in so much as it is a story involving characters, character's speech and actions, and events. Over the years there have been many theories of narrative, beginning with Aristotle's Poetics. French Structuralism, Russian formalism, and Anglo-American narrative studies are examples of a few different approaches to narrative; I will later discuss the narrative of The Accidental Tourist with reference to these narrative theories.
             Narratives as simplistic as these, however, are few and far between. The Accidental Tourist is an example of one such less simplistic narrative. All narrative theorists agree that there are two elements to narrative. This is a tradition that has descended from Aristotle's Poetics:
             "For Aristotle, the imitation of actions in the real world, praxis, was seen as forming an argument, logos, from which were selected (and possibly rearranged) the units that formed the plot, mythos." (Story and Discourse, 1978, Cornell University Press)
             All narrative theorists agree with this 'narrative duality' to a certain extent. Russian ...