Posted by Jeremy Kriewaldt on May 18, 2004 at 07:01:24 from 192.195.49.10 user JeremyKriewaldt.
One of the perennial observations made on Tarboard is how, when re-reading a book that one thinks one knows well, a passage hits you for the first time. In this case, I was re-reading SA and came across the following sentence (Ch 12):
"With so many look-out men Captain John might have been content, but just once he looked round for himself and saw the two lights one above the other like the stop called a colon, which I am just about to make: there, like that."
This is a striking example of the narrator of a story intervening directly and making it clear that he (in this case) is present as the means through which the story is mediated to the reader. What is so striking here is teh use of the first person singular pronoun, "I" and that the example is one which shows that the story is being created by being written, not told, and is meant to be read by the audience, not read aloud to it.
Can anyone recall any other examples of these points in the 12? They show that AR was taking the story-telling techniques that he had learned in Russia and adapting them to the particular medium of a book meant to be read.