Country Lovers

The narrative elements of literature are crucial when writing a story as they are what raises the story above being a line of strung together sentences and give the story meaning. It is especially important to have a clear idea of these elements when wring short stories because, unlike novels, the writer is only given a small amount of space to get his/her point across. By reading literature and searching for these narrative elements one can get a true feeling for their importance to the story and improve their own writing. Recently I have had the pleasure of reading the short story “Country Lovers”, by Nadine Gordimer and in this paper I will explain how she used the narrative elements of plot, theme and point of view to enhance her story and make it a richer experience.
The story “Country Lovers” written by Nadine Gordimer is a story about love and race. This story starts with a childhood love and grows into adulthood. “Country Lovers” is a story that deals with a forbidden love between a black woman named Thebedi and a white man whose name is Paulus. Thebedi gets pregnant by Paulus which is not allowed in the 1900’s and Paulus did not know about this pregnancy. Thebedi decides to get married after Paulus leaves for collage and the man she marries accepts the child as his own. After Paulus returns and finds out about the pregnancy the child mysteriously dies. In W.R. Clugston’s book, The Journey Into Literature he defines plot as “a dynamic element in fiction, a sequence of interrelated, conflicting actions and events that typically build to a climax and bring about a resolution” (Clugston, 2010, p. 5.1). This is a story of a romance between a white man and a black woman who discover their love is restricted by the law, which is troublesome for them both because they love each other deeply and in the end this restriction ends in tragedy.

In W.R. Clugston’s book, The Journey Into Literature, he also describes how to identify the theme in a story: “To identify a story 's theme it 's necessary to look beyond the plot. The plot tells you what happens in a story, but the theme tells you what the story is about” (Clugston, 2010, p. 7.1). The theme of the story helps the story evolve and come to life. The theme of this particular story is love and race and as I pointed out earlier the race part of the theme is a white man falls in love with a black woman. Even though there is so much going on in this the overall theme to this story is love, specifically a forbidden love.
Now let talk about the point of view of the story “Country Lovers”. Cluston defines point of view as, “Point of view refers to who tells the story—how the action is presented to the reader. When you read a story, you are sensing everything in it through the eyes of the narrator. It 's important to remember that the narrator, whether a character inside the story or one looking on from outside the action, is a voice invented by the author for the purposes of the story” (Clugston, 2010, p. 5.1). The point of view in this story is third–person omniscient. This means that the narrator is not a character in the story and we are reading the story from the narrator’s and not the character’s view. The omniscient part of the point of view is the narrator is helping us to experience the feelings of the characters. Point of view has so much impact on the story because it gives us the feeling of the story. The article “Country Lovers” explains why the third person narrative is essential to this story: “It […] used third person because then we get a neutral point of the story, and we don’t natural[y] take side[s] with one of them”( "Country Lovers", 2012,). If someone writes a story in a first person you are getting everything from the character s point of view and a person reads what they see, feel, and hear. This will change the story dramatically because people don’t know if what they see is real or not. It is the character who makes people feels the way someone does. As for third person the narrator tells us what is really going on in the story. People know what the truth is and what is not. When someone gets to read a story in third person they get the whole perspective.
All of the literary elements help a story come together. If someone does not have all the parts of the story such as plot, theme, tone and point of view then the story will be lacking. The plot of the story lays everything out what is going to happen, the theme of the story tells you what kind of story it is going to be, the tone determines how the story will be told (Clugston, 2010, p. 5.3), and the point of view can change everything. These elements are all critical in turning words on a page into literature and if you take even one piece away even the great works of history would be reduced to nothing. I.B. singer said it best when he said, “A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises” (Singer, 2001).

References
Clugston, W. R. (2010). Short Story: Theme and Symbolism. In Journey into Literature. (pp. 7.1-7.6). San Diego, Ca: Bridgepoint Education.
Singer, I. B. (2001). Plot Quotes. Brainy Quotes. Retrieved March 19, 2012, from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/plot.html
Country Lovers. (2012). 1STA English . Retrieved March 18, 2012, from http://1staenglish.wikispaces.com/Country+Lovers

References: Clugston, W. R. (2010). Short Story: Theme and Symbolism. In Journey into Literature. (pp. 7.1-7.6). San Diego, Ca: Bridgepoint Education. Singer, I. B. (2001). Plot Quotes. Brainy Quotes. Retrieved March 19, 2012, from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/plot.html Country Lovers. (2012). 1STA English . Retrieved March 18, 2012, from http://1staenglish.wikispaces.com/Country+Lovers