Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Sara Rodriguez-Fiction Critique 7: The Story of Our Life



Sara Angela Rodriguez
A415-002/Chambers
Fiction Critique 7: The Story of Our Life
13 March 2013

The title of this piece suggests that the piece will be written as a first person narrative chronicling the life of the narrator and someone whom they are closely related to. The ‘Our’ in the title is ambiguous and it can be taken to mean family, friend, acquaintance, distant relation, etc. really just any personal connection. But, when you read into the story it is actually third person omniscient and it has no reference to the ‘I’ or ‘them’ that constitutes the ‘our’ until the very last section that is presented as dialogue. When I first read the piece I found the structure and presentation very confusing. I couldn’t imagine how all the parts in the pieces would connect. You see I saw this piece being divided into six different parts with the first being the short ‘fairy tale’, the second was the chapter listings, the third was the story about the man and the woman who had “porridge and morphia” as the center of their lives, the fourth was the two news, the fifth the owls, and the last was the dialogue section. It was not until I realized that all the sections related back to the story of the narrator (‘our’) that I began to appreciate the piece. I really enjoyed reading this piece, it reminded me a little of the technique used in The Triumph of Narcissus and Aphrodite another story that I really enjoyed.

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