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The Pool Critical Analysis

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Application of a Literary Theory to a literary work helps in analyzing the different modalities involved in the creation of a text. A critical approach enables learners to appreciate the textual content and abets their proficiency both in theory and analysis. This exercise throws the literary text into a new light, where different interpretations result in better understanding. Gerard Genette a Structuralist has given a comprehensive outlook on the three major typologies of narratology like story, narrative and narration. In the present paper, the authors have attempted to read Somerset Maugham’s short story The Pool by rigorously applying Gerard Genette’s categories, namely mood and voice. Under mood, ‘distance’ and ‘perspective’ have been analysed in depth. …show more content…

“As fine autumn darkened into winter”,
“The summer came”,
“And in six months he found himself….”

So, we can surmise that Lawson’s catastrophic marriage lasted roughly four years. This temporal interval and the other events in between significantly enliven the story in The Pool. Thus, it is apparent that the narrating is generally subsequent to what it tells. From the ‘point of view’ of temporal position, Genette differentiates four types of narrating:
1. Subsequent – this is the most frequent and is employed as classical past tense narrative
2. Prior – a narrative, which predicts an act generally in the future tense and is also conjugated in the present.
3. Simultaneous – narrative is concurrent with the action.
4. Interpolated – occurs in between the incidents of the action. Genette identifies that the first type ‘subsequent narrating’ extends over the entire genre of narratives produced till now in literature. In The Pool, the narrative subsequent is predominant with the use of the past tense but the elapse of time between the time of narration and the moment of the story, is not indicated

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