A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: In depth analyzes between narrative structure and imagery in prose fiction
Imagery means the use of words to describe ideas or situations while narrative means the telling of story from a series of events.[1]By looking at A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, we can see that there is a strong relation between narrative structure and imagery in prose fiction.
In a prose fiction, there are five common narrative processes. First, there is an equilibrium which forms the setting of a scene. Second, there is a disruption that forms a problem and complication. Third, there is an opposing force which tries to resolve the problem. Fourth, there is a unification where everything seems to resolve. Fifth, there is a disequilibrium which leads to a more complicated problem. Lastly, a new equilibrium is formed where the conflicts are finally solved and it signifies an end. In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, a disruption was formed at the beginning of the story. A child was having a temperature and a very old man suddenly took up residence in its house. The story did not give the exact location of the village, nor the purpose of the old man’s sudden arrival nor where he had come from. But the author had used a series of adjectives to describe the old man. He was a mute stupor. He had bald skull, faded hairs, was dirty and had half-plucked wings. He dressed like a rag-picker and he was moving and groaning at the rear of the courtyard. The author gave a vivid description which created a strong image in the reader’s mind and immediately aroused the reader’s interest. It would be common to link the old man with enormous wings as an angel, but the descriptions told us that his appearance and condition was just a common mortal, and his circumstances were even worse than ours. At the beginning of the fiction, the author used a third-person narration of “he”, “she”, “it”, “they” while conveying the introduction of the