Chapter 4 author breaks in

The Egyptian magician used a drop of ink to make a mirror, which could reflect the scene of the past years.And that's exactly what I'm going to do for you, Mr. Reader.With a drop of ink on the tip of my pen, I will give you a picture of the spacious workshop of Jonathan Boggie, then a carpenter and bricklayer in the village of Hay Slope, on the 18th of June, 1779, in the era of Jesus. George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859) From Margaret's point of view-and I hope this does not offend the reader-King's Cross Station has always meant infinity.In front of the station is the magnificent Pancras Street, which seems to be a commentary on the materialization of materialism in life.The two great arches were dark and inexorable; the great clock hanging high between them was even more hideous.The arch is like the exit of some kind of eternal adventure. As long as you go out, it probably means prosperity, but it is definitely not an ordinary word of prosperity.If you think this idea is ridiculous, please remember that it is not Margaret herself who is talking to you.Let me hasten to add that they had plenty of time and were too early to leave the train.Mrs. Mount was already in a comfortable seat, facing the locomotive, but not very close.Margaret, on her return to Wickham Place, received this telegram:

It's over.I regret not writing.Please keep it private—Helen. But Aunt Zhu Lei has already set off—irreversible, no force can stop her. E.M. Forster, Howard's Abbey (1910) The easiest way to tell a story is in the voice of a narrator, such as the voice of the anonymous, often used in fairy tales ("Once upon a time, there was a fair princess"), or the voice of an epic singer (as in Virgil's "My Praise of God"). Our Armies and Heroes"), or in the kindly, believable, aphoristic, didactic tone of the author in classic novels from Henry Fielding to George Eliot.

At the beginning of "Adam Bede", George Eliot cleverly used a rhetorical technique, that drop of ink is both a mirror and a medium, thus turning written writing into oral conversation, talking directly and kindly to readers Get up, thus inviting us to "step over the threshold of the book", which is actually equivalent to stepping over the threshold of Jonathan Borgie's workshop.She contrasts, by allusion, her delicate, deeply conventional storytelling with the dubious revelations of magic and superstition.The precious information that Egyptian magicians used to confuse people is not valuable in terms of narrative function, but it is interesting in itself.After all, we read novels not just to read a story, but to expand our knowledge and enhance our understanding of the world.Telling the story in the author's voice is a great way to incorporate some encyclopedic knowledge and some proverbs of wisdom.

However, at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, this author's intrusive narrative tone gradually fell out of favor.This is so, in part, because this approach tends to call the reader's attention to the act of narrative, thus depriving one of the full immersion in the realistic fantasy world created in the book, and it also dilutes the emotional density evoked by the characters' experiences.There is also an air of authority, a God-like omniscience to this approach, which the modern man, who is skeptical of everything and regards everything as relative, disapproves.Modern fiction tends to mute or cancel the author's voice, by either showing plot development through the characters' consciousness or by handing the narrative task directly to the characters.Modern fiction occasionally uses the author's narrative tone, but usually with a certain wry self-awareness, as in this excerpt from Howard's End.This paragraph is the end of the second chapter of the original book.In the second chapter, Brucebury Margaret Schlegel hears that her sister Helen is in love with the youngest son of Henry Wilcox, an industrial tycoon and upstart, and promptly dispatches her aunt (Chiba Mrs. Te) to investigate the matter.

"Howard's Abbey" is a novel set in England.The book sees Britain as an organic whole: its rustic past is rich and inspiring; its future is shadowed by commerce and industry and perilous.All this gives a typical meaning to the characters and their relationships in the book.This theme culminates in chapter nineteen of the book, where the author, standing on the vantage point of the Purbeck hills, asks whether Britain belongs to that part of the people for which wealth and power have been created, or … These people had the opportunity to witness the entire British Isle, and witnessed her like a pearl lying quietly in the sea, like a ship of spirits, surrounded by the bravest fleet in the world and sailing to eternity.

Obviously, the author and Margaret belong to the group full of fantasy.Margaret's imagining of King's Cross Station as infinite, fits perfectly with the vision of the Ship of England sailing into eternity.And the utilitarian prosperity that stands in stark contrast to King's Cross belongs to people like Wilcox.Both the author and the heroine are sentimentalists, and the commonality is evident in style: the difference between what Marguerite thinks and what the author confesses is only grammatical, that is, past tense and present tense time conversion.Forster's tendency to be protective of his heroine is clear—some might say excessive.

"In Margaret's opinion—I hope that saying this will not offend the reader..." "If you think this idea is absurd, please remember that it is not Margaret who is talking to you Myself." These words are quite risky, and they can have the effect of "breaking the box" as Irving Goffman put it-that is, violating a certain rule or convention.What these words point to is exactly what the realist hallucinationist seeks to suppress or dismiss—the perception that we are reading a novel in which the characters and their actions are fabricated. This technique is favored by postmodern writers, who abandon their naive faith in traditional realism and lay bare all the technical mechanisms by which fiction is constructed.For example, in the middle of the book "A Good Man Is Gold" (1980), Joseph Heller inserts a passage from the author, which is straightforward and jaw-dropping:

Gold once again finds herself getting ready for lunch with someone else - Spouty Weinrock.I also suddenly remembered how much time he spent eating, drinking and chatting in this book.There is really nothing to do with him.I let him sleep with Anfall many times, and at the same time kept his wife and children from showing up for convenience... Of course, he will soon meet a female teacher with four children and fall in love, love so much Crazy; I'd also wish him to be the nation's first Jewish Secretary of State, a promise I'm not going to keep. Forster does not go so far as to destroy the illusion created by the story, or talk about the characters and their fates as if they were real people, in order to arouse the reader's interest or sympathy.To what purpose, then, does he draw the reader's attention to the difference between Margaret's experience and his account?I think he speaks of his creative technique in such a humorous, paradoxical way, in order to obtain a license to express some profound academic views on history and metaphysics at will (for example, standing on the Purbeck Mountains Overlooking England) makes these insights pervasive throughout the novel, and he considers them essential to its thematic tenor.The most effective way to divert or remove this kind of negative effect on readers that may be caused by the author's intrusion is to be polite and humorous.Forster also makes a joke when he interrupts the narration: an apologetic "take your time" to bring us back to the story, and at the same time, a cleverly designed suspense to bring the chapter to an end.

But the question of suspense is another matter.