Rabu, 21 November 2012

NARRATIVE TEXT IN ENGLISH


A narrative is a meaningful sequence of events told in words. It is sequential in that the events are ordered, not merely random. Sequence always involves an arrangement in time (and usually other arrangements as well). A straightforward movement from the first event to the last constitutes the simplest chronology. However, chronology is sometimes complicated by presenting the events in another order: for example, a story may open with the final episode and then flash back to all that preceded it.

A narrative has meaning in that it conveys an evaluation of some kind. The writer reacts to the story he or she tells, and states or implies that reaction. This is the "meaning," sometimes called the "theme," of a story. Meaning must always be rendered. The writer has to do more than tell us the truth he sees in the story; he must manifest that truth in the characters and the action.

Characters and action are the essential elements of any story. Also important, but not as essential, is the setting, the place where the action occurs. Characters are usually people—sometimes actual people, as in history books or newspaper stories, sometimes imaginary ones, as in novels. Occasionally characters are animals (as in an Aesop fable), and sometimes a dominant feature of the environment functions almost like a character (the sea, an old house).

The action is what the characters say and do and anything that happens to them, even if it arises from a nonhuman source—a storm, for instance, or a fire. Action is often presented in the form of a plot. Action is, so to speak, the raw material; plot, the finished product, the fitting together of the bits and pieces of action into a coherent pattern. Usually, though not invariably, plot takes the form of a cause-and effect chain: event A produces event B; B leads to C; C to D; and so on until the final episode, X. In a well-constructed plot of this kind we can work back from X to A and see the connections that made the end of the story likely and perhaps inevitable.

Stories can be very long and complicated, with many characters, elaborate plots, and subtle interpenetration of character, action, and setting. In writing that is primarily expository, however, narratives are shorter and simpler. Most often they are factual rather than imaginary, as when an historian describes an event. And often in exposition an illustration may involve a simple narrative. Being able to tell a story, then, while not the primary concern of the expository writer, is a skill which he or she will now and again be called upon to use.

Referensi :

Kane, Thomas. S. 2000.The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing. New York: Barkley Books.

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