Perspectives

Literary period

Alice Munro’s short story “Gravel” fits the Postmodernist literary movement. This movement experienced a rise in the post-World War II era and gained popularity all throughout the late twentieth century. Although the story was published in 2011, Postmodernism is still a popular literary style used by many authors of the twenty-first century. Postmodernist works can be recognized through themes, context, and narrative techniques.

In the short story “Gravel,” Alice Munro describes a post-World War II society which matches with a postmodernist context.

In terms of postmodernist narrative techniques, “Gravel” focuses on the narrator’s perception of the world around her and translates her psychological reality into symbolic actions. The subjective first-person viewpoint gives readers access to the narrator’s inner thoughts. Alice Munro uses the narrative technique of fragmentation to convey the narrator’s state of mind and to illustrate h...