The Great Gatsby - Chapter One

The Great Gatsby - Chapter One

Setting:

• North America, east of New York
• Western, Long Island
• West Egg: less fashionable
• East Egg: more fashionable
• Gatsby's mansion: contrasts Nick small house
• Daisy's house: luxuriously big.

Characters mentioned in Chapter One:

• Narrator - Nick: bombarded with opulence and luxury.
• Daisy: childish, innocent, naive and simple.
• Tom: strong, aggressive, powerful, in control, arrogance of wealth. A physical character - "hulking". 

Expected story from Chapter One:

• Societies roles being challenged 
• Social affairs

Themes presented:

• Aspirations and the American Dream
• The power of money
• Appearance and reality
• Artificiality
• Identity
• Love and desire
• The nature of the good life
• Betrayal
• Male and female expectations
• Loneliness

The Great Gatsby - Nick Carraway

The Great Gatsby - Nick Carraway

• Fitzgerald tries to make Nick seem like a reliable narrator, "I'm inclined to reserve all judgements", though he is a target of "veteran bores" and "abnormal minds", which foreshadows how, though he says he is to "reserve all judgements", he will go on to judge the characters we are introduced to.
• Although the war ended in 1918, Nick didn't move until 1922, which shows he's not an impulsive person - prudence.
• Nick has had a privileged upbringing - "whenever you feel like criticising anyone...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had".
• Nick has a fascination with Gatsby - he says he wont judge anyone, though it is impossible not to, and any judgements of Gatsby are exempt.

The Kite Runner - Structure, Form and Language

The Kite Runner - Structure, Form and Language

Structure
The story is told from a chronological end point. Through this, the narrator is allowed to foreshadow future events. This narrative structure also allows Amir to undercut current events by revealing their ending, for example, at the end of chapter five, "that was the winter that Hassan stopped smiling", and tension can be built - "I never got to finish that sentence. Because suddenly Afghanistan changed forever" (page 30).
As the novel progresses, there is less foreshadowing to future events, instead, memories of earlier times are inserted, so that central events (the rape) shapes the current event/atmosphere etc.
It is at the moment of Hassan's rape that the structure and style change. The chapters leading up to the rape are told in a straightforward narrative. Stories unfold chronologically. However, at the moment of the attack, the narrative structure fractures and does not fully resume the linear narrative of the previous chapters. Witnessing the rape, Amir's narration veers to other stories at other times, suggesting that his subconscious is trying to avoid dealing with the present. In the chapters that follow, events are presented out of order, with gaps, and needs the readers own interpretations.

Form

• A fable:

The Kite Runner could be seen as a fable - a story which conveys a moral lesson. This novel does this by reinforcing moral ideas of what is good and what is bad through Amir's guilt and journey of looking for redemption and atonement.

• Allegory:

The Kite Runner could also be seen as an allegory - a story in which a metaphor is expanded out into a whole story that a smaller narrative stands for a larger one. In The Kite Runner, Amir's journey of redemption becomes an accompaniment to a description of the trials of the Afghan people; his search for reconciliation can be seen as representative of their search for peace and self-determination.