Narrative Mode
The novel is told from an alternating third-person subjective point of view that generally shifts by chapter, briefly focusing on the personal thoughts and experiences of various individual students at Trinity School. The two most common perspectives are those of Jerry Renault (the putative protagonist) and Archie Costello (the putative antagonist), which much of the time alternate back and forth between chapters, though there are many exceptions, in which others' perspectives are depicted as well. Obie's, The Goober's, and Brian Cochran's viewpoints also appear relatively often, and numerous minor characters' third-person subjective perspectives are portrayed in one or more chapters. The book sometimes even (albeit rarely) conveys multiple students' perspectives within the very same chapter.
Read more about this topic: The Chocolate War
Famous quotes containing the words narrative and/or mode:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The character of the logger’s admiration is betrayed by his very mode of expressing it.... He admires the log, the carcass or corpse, more than the tree.... What right have you to celebrate the virtues of the man you murdered?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)