“With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the
author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the
beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed--he has developed
with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a
novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's
story, The Lady with the Dog.” ― Graham Greene
When Saptarshi Mallick requested me to write an essay
on narratology of novel, I hesitated most to accept his request, because as a
student and teacher of literature what I would write may not be believable for
me as a creative writer. This may seem to be contradictory for a critic, but
this is the fact for which I had to add the second part in this essay. First
part may appear to readers as more academicals, more clumsy and more a word
game, as it bears so many references, quotations and frankly speaking the
portion is over burdened with other’s opinion. Those, who are not interested in
theorists’ word game may skip it voluntarily. But I can assure, the words of
second part of this essay ascend from my experience and conviction and Graham
Greene’s quotation from which I have started second part of my essay, seems to
me as my own words coming down from Greene’s pen.
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Writing a novel is a very complex process, where an
author has to practice two contradictory actions at a time. One is alienation
and other is penetration. In alienation, the author has to alienate the
characters from himself with a sense of objective correlativity, restricting
his own emotions, considering the character as an outward object, predetermined
to correspond to the preexisting idea in its living power. The other way is to
penetrate at the same time and assimilating author’s own experience, feelings
and emotions in to the characters. In this way creating an emotion through
personal factors (penetration to character) and evidence linked together with
forming an objective correlative (alienation) should produce an author’s
detachment from the depicted character and unite the emotion of the literary
work. Thus a character develops an identity, which can construct a significant
characterization for a novel.
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