Indledning
The short story “The Dutiful Daughter” by Saadat Hasan Manto, takes the form of a story within at story. By that it contains an outer story and an inner story.
It was published in 1990 in English, but the original was published in 1948. The text is written by Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) and he was a Pakistan author, born in what was then the British India.
His writing includes both short story’s and play and many of his stories are about the division between India and Pakistan, which happened as a continuation of the British Empire releasing their Indian colonies.
Indholdsfortegnelse
Narration + point of view
Setting
Characters
Composition
Language and style
Theme and message
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Uddrag
Narration + point of view
If you look at the narrator of the text in both the outer and inner story it is a first-person narrator throughout the whole story, even though the identity of the narrator chances.
In the outer-story, the narrator talks about India after the separation from Britain. We do not know the identity of the person, but it is properly a Pakistani person, as it seems like he is having a conversation with the liaison officer, who is from Pakistan.
In the inner-story, the narrator chances to a different person who is in the story, to be exact, the narrator chances to the liaison officer.
The liaison officer takes the command of being the narrator, as he use direct speech to the reader to tell the story, about an old Pakistani woman who was searching for her missing daughter, who was told by the unknown person.
Because of the first-person narration we have to guess what the other characters think. We only know what the liaison officer has to say and his statements.
Throughout the story, the narration of the story is highly explicit, with the events and ideas being given clearly and understandable, such as “There wasn’t enough food to go around and basic facilities were almost non-existent.
Epidemics and infections were common”. There are places in the story where the narrator is implicit, as an example where he claims that the “abducted” girls fear is facing their parents.
Another one is in the ending of the story where he has an implied saying “I swear on God your daughter is dead”.
If we look at the reliability of the text, we can see that it is mostly reliable. It gives reliability because of the outer-story in the start, telling about the situation in the two counties at that time, and then the inner-story gives us and idea of what I could be like.
The text also comes with good descriptions of place and people which gives more life to the story and more trust for the reader.
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