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:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature, work and live, work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer are one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)