Burnt Shadows The Similarities And Trauma Caused Using...

Shanaz Rahim USSY 288K – Hiroshima Mark Pedretti, 30 April 2012 Reality and Fiction: The Similarities and Trauma Caused Using the Narrative Form in Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie Narrative Forms, Reality, and Trauma The narrative forms of the â€Å"hermeneutic and proairetic codes† proposed by Roland Barthes Peter Brooks highlights the two ways a fictional novel creates suspense (qtd. from Brooks 18). The hermeneutic code is caused by unanswered questions in the plot, while the proairetic is the anticipation the reader feels. In a sense, we can see these two devices as working together to create a narrative as a whole. As readers, we keep reading the natural sequence of actions (proairetic) to understand the overall plot of the novel (hermeneutic). The plot â€Å"might be best thought of as an overcoding of the proairetic by the hermeneutic, the latter structuring the discrete elements of the former into the larger interpretive wholes, working out their play of meaning and significance† (Brooks 18). The consciousness of an ending signifies a desire to understand the meaning of the novel on both a plot level and a cosmic level. In Tzvetan Todorov s â€Å" Narrative Transformations,† Todorov advances structural narratology using works of Victor Scholovsky and Vladimir Propp to understand the meaning of a novel, its â€Å"wholeness† (qtd. from Brooks 91): Narrative operates as metaphor in its affirmation of resemblance, in that it brings into relation different actions, combines them