Narrative and Interpretation

Narrative interpretation examines both the events of a story and the way they are told. James Phelan's Narrative as Rhetoric approaches storytelling as a relationship among an author, a text and audiences. It asks how narrative choices invite judgements, emotions and ethical responses.

This gives another route into Stories and literature alongside comparing plots, motifs and mythical patterns. A journey can be examined not only for its stages, but also for who tells it, what they disclose and how their account develops.

Story and discourse

In Phelan's terminology, story concerns characters, events and settings; discourse concerns the devices through which the story is presented. Voice, perspective, pace and repetition affect the telling. Progression includes both the developing narrative and the changing responses it invites from its authorial audience.

Consider two invented openings:

• “I left the gate open. By morning the horse had disappeared.”
• “By morning the horse had disappeared. Only later did I admit that I had left the gate open.”

Both include an open gate and a missing horse. The second also makes delayed admission part of the telling. A reading can ask when responsibility becomes visible, what the narrator knew, and how the disclosure changes an earlier judgement. This is an illustrative comparison, not a claim about measured reader reactions.

Who speaks, and to whom?

Phelan distinguishes the narrator, the narratee addressed by that narrator, and the authorial audience the text is designed for. These are analytical roles, distinct from the actual people reading a book. In his account, unreliable narration can involve disagreement between a narrator's judgements and the norms implied by the work, as well as problems in reporting facts.

A first-person sentence therefore need not state the author's own view. When a narrator calls someone “a burden”, useful questions include whether other voices challenge that image and whether later events revise it. Identifying the metaphor is one step; locating its speaker and its role in the story is another.

Character as person, idea and construction

Phelan distinguishes three components of character: mimetic (resembling a possible person), thematic (contributing to ideas or representative meanings), and synthetic (functioning as part of a constructed work). They can operate together rather than naming three separate kinds of character.

For an invented story about a gatekeeper, these perspectives might suggest different questions:

Perspective	Question for a reading
Mimetic	What might explain this person's hesitation or fear?
Thematic	Does the character contribute to a discussion of authority, belonging or exclusion?
Synthetic	Why does the writer place this encounter at this point in the story?

The gate need not have one meaning across all three questions. Evidence from the particular text should decide which reading is useful.

Reading a metaphor within a narrative

For a phrase such as “I finally crossed the threshold”, retain the teller and the passage. A close reading can ask whether a physical threshold is crossed, whether the phrase also organises a change in status or understanding, and whether subsequent events confirm or complicate that change.

Comparative frameworks such as The Hero's Journey can suggest patterns worth examining. Narrative analysis adds questions about the particular telling. Neither a shared plot shape nor a recurring image removes the need to identify the version, speaker and context.

Related pages

• Stories and literature
• Metaphor in Literature and Creativity
• Joseph Campbell
• The Hero's Journey
• Metaphor Research Library