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:
“To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“That the mere matter of a poem, for instance—its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture—the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape—should be nothing without the form, the spirit of the handling, that this form, this mode of handling, should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter;Mthis is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different degrees.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)