ABSTRACT
Characters and events are the building blocks of narratives, as we saw in Unit 20. In narratives (as in life) characters leave home, fall in love, wake and sleep, live and die. However, characters also speak: they argue, seduce, cajole, flatter and entertain each other; and storytelling – whether in the novel or in the everyday anecdote – reflects this: it relies on the expressive and dramatic potential of speech and quotation. The spoken narrative has specialized strategies for capturing the speech of characters. The storyteller, for instance, can mimic tones of voice and pitch to convey emotion and even to distinguish between one speaker and another. Here, for instance, is a fragment of anecdote told by a young casualty doctor:
They come bustin’ through the door – blood is everywhere on the walls on the floor everywhere [raised pitch] It’s okay Billy it’s okay we’re gonna make it [normal voice] What’s the hell wrong with you? We look at him. He’s covered with blood y’know? All they had to do was take a wash cloth at home and go like this [pause for wiping action] and there’d be no blood . . .
