Her er vores study guide til novellen "The Raft" af Peter Orner, som du blandt andet kan læse i tekstbogen Texting - 1st Year Fiction (s. 123). I analysehjælpen dækker vi alle de væsentligste elementer, som det er værd at tage fat på i en analyse af novellen: Indhold, opbygning, personer, temaer, sprog og meget mere!
Presentation of the text
Titel: “The Raft”
Forfatter: Peter Orner
Udgivelsesår: 2000
Genre: novelle
Peter Orner er en amerikansk universitetsprofessor og forfatter af essays, noveller og romaner. De fleste af hans værker er udgivet i litterære magasine. Orner har vundet adskillige priser og ærebevisninger for sine fiktive værker.
Herunder giver vi en lille smagsprøve på vores analysehjælp:
However, at the end of the story, he makes a remark which is implicit, suggesting that he is traumatized by the wartime story and he imagines he is being touched by a Japanese refugee who has most likely dumped in the waters of the Pacific: “I don't imagine anything, not even a hand that feels like a fish yanking my ankle.” (p. 127, ll. 1-2)
You should also observe that, in the story, Seymour the grandfather also plays the role of the narrator when he tells his grandson the story of how he killed the Japanese refugees in the Pacific during World War II. As a narrator, the grandfather is interactive with the boy because his story is oral: “"We'd been warned in a communiqué from the admiral to be on high alert for kamikaze flotillas. Do you have any idea what a kamikaze flotilla is?"” (p. 125, ll. 18-20)
Also, although he already knows the denouement of his story, he presents it from the perspective of his younger self, from the time he was a captain. This suggests that as a narrator, Seymour tries to engage and capture his listener’s attention by displaying seemingly limited knowledge and creating suspense: “"So I waited. It took about a half hour on auxiliary power for us to get within a quarter mile of the thing -- then I could see it with the search."” (p. 125, ll. 25-27)
Lastly, note that each story is presented from each narrator’s perspective. The main story and the conversation with the grandfather are rendered from the little boy’s perspective, while the wartime story is conveyed from Seymour’s point of view.
