Narrative Techniques in Modern Novel

INTRODUCTION
Modern Age or the Age of Anxiety started right from the beginning of the twentieth-century and it followed the Victorian Age. In previous century the scientific inventions and theories presented by Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud held sway. They hit people’s shattering beliefs badly. They progressed materially, but went astray. The young people during the first decade of the present century regarded the Victorian Age as hypocritical, and the Victorian ideals as mean, superficial and stupid. This rebellious mood affected modern literature which was directed by mental attitudes, moral ideals and spiritual values diametrically opposed to those of Victorians. The twentieth-century minds did not take anything granted; they questioned everything, as they did not consider anything as certain, fixed and final. As H.G.Wells spoke of the flow of things and of “all this world of ours being no more than the prelude to the real civilization”. Money, material prosperity and consciousness of social life became the priority of the age. So modern man became more of social being than spiritual. Moreover the destruction caused by the two World Wars cast menacing shadows on thoughts and it gave a last stroke to the disintegration of values and the generation was named as the Lost Generation.
The one thing which stands out prominently in the history of English novel is its immense popularity in the modern era. It has eclipsed poetry and the drama and also competed successfully with the radio and the cinema. Wars, morality, sex etc., were the same themes in Shakespearean times but in this century they became the real issues. In the novels we find discussion on colonialism, psychology, values, politics, religion, women’s issues, free sex etc. It made the novel complex in nature. As a result writers had to cultivate a fresh point of view and also fresh techniques. Thus the standard of artistic workmanship and aesthetic appreciations also underwent radical changes. Below is the description of some of the techniques used by the modern novelists to portray their themes.
Omniscient Narrator
In a novel written from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, the reader knows what each character does and thinks. The reader maintains this knowledge as the plot moves from place to place or era to era. An omniscient narrator can also provide the reader with direct assessment of action, character, and environment. For example, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by American writer Carson McCullers opens with this description:
“In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early every morning they would come out from the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the street to work. The two friends were very different. The one who always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it was colder he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater. His face was round and oily, with half closed eyelids and lips that curved in a gentle, stupid smile. The other mute was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He was always immaculate and very soberly dressed.”
First-Person Narration
With the first-person point of view, one of the novel’s characters narrates the story. For example, a sentence in a novel in the first person might read, “As I waited on the corner, I remembered the last time I had seen her.” The first person provides total subjectivity and all the immediacy, intimacy, and urgency of a single individual’s conflicts. It also shows a character’s awareness at telling a story. For example, in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, it is Marlow who tells us the story; but Marlow himself has to be looked at by us not only through his experiences in Congo but also through the eyes of the first narrator who introduces Marlow to us. Some novelists use the first person in more complex ways. For example, in The Sound and the Fury (1929), American novelist William Faulkner tells the story of the Compson family from four points of view, three of which are first person. The narrative begins from the point of view of a developmentally disabled man, Benjy. It then moves to the point of view of his intellectual brother, Quentin, and then to the point of view of another brother, Jason. The final section is told by an omniscient narrator.
Two narrators
Novels cannot do without a narrator’s voice and point of view. The story may be frankly and unashamedly told in the author’s voice as it is in many Victorian novels. This voice may be very quiet and unobtrusive. The author may speak very discreetly, directing our attention to characters and actions but not openly addressing us as readers, nor openly speaking of the characters as fictitious creations the author may move outside the characters and speak about life in general and we find many examples of this enlarging of the fictional world of Fielding and George Eliot. The author may speak in an invented voice, using a mask as Chaucer and George Eliot did. The author may choose to speak in the person of one of the characters. But in some late Victorian novels or in modern novels, for instance in many novels by Joseph Conrad, the author can speak directly in the voice of a subordinate character, a spectator of an action, like Marlow and Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. But every reader is not a great scholar and deep study is required for the understanding of meaning and significance in a novel having two narrators, because two narrators complicate the novel.
Symbolism
Many novels have two layers of meaning. The first is in the literal plot, the second in a symbolic layer in which images and objects represent abstract ideas and feelings. Using symbols allows authors to express themselves indirectly on delicate or controversial matters.
English novelist Joseph Conrad felt that the novelist must search for the “image,” meaning “the outward sign of inward feelings.” In Heart of Darkness (1902) he uses symbols extensively. The story is about a seaman, Marlow, who travels from England to Africa to work as a trader. While there he encounters another European, Kurtz, who has withdrawn from society and is living in a remote area up the Congo River. The following passage from the book suggests the jungle’s decay. Symbolically, Marlow’s voyage into the wilderness represents his spiritual exploration of his own soul:
Going up the river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. … The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish … The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks, hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. … I turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good as buried. And for the moment it seemed to me as if I was buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.
Symbols are not necessarily limited to one or two easy-to-identify meanings. For example, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Irish author James Joyce uses birds symbolically. One interpretation is that the birds represent the concept of escape, but this interpretation oversimplifies Joyce’s intentions. The symbol of the birds is also connected to the Greek mythological figure Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun wearing his artificial wings; the wings fall apart, and Icarus is plunged into the ocean. In addition, the birds are connected with the ideas of beauty, imagination, religion, and sexual desire. Similarly “The Oldman and The Sea” by Ernest Hemingway and “A Passage to India” by E.M.Forster are also symbolical novels.

The Stream-of-Consciousness
The term “Stream-of-consciousness” is borrowed from modern psychoanalysis and describes the “free association” of ideas in the human mind. Just as floating objects are carried along somewhat haphazardly by the current of a stream or river, so do thoughts and images travel through our minds in an apparently unorganized, illogical succession.
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were the first writers to transfer mental phenomenon to English literature and exploit it as a literary technique. Instead of simply stating what the character is thinking, the author writes as though he were inside the mind of the character. The result is an “interior monologue” or “direct quotation of the mind”.
The ‘action’ takes place and the plot develops through the mind of the characters. For example, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, the adventures of Stephen Dedalus are of an emotional and intellectual nature. The real struggles take place in his mind, and so, thought becomes ‘action’. What he does and sees is not so significant as what he thinks as he is doing and seeing. The actual conflicts are not usually dramatized. An external event or situation along with all the associations and recollections which it arouses in Stephen’s mind are presented more or less simultaneously.
In this connection it should be noted that there is an uncommon amount of walking done in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is the principal action of the story. Stephen says at the end on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “The past is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future”. Joyce was ever concerned with the past’s impingement on the present. One cannot escape the past; it determines the present. Other twentieth-century writers have developed this theme, notably William Faulkner. Stephen Dedalus has a sense of history and though he says, “I am not responsible for the past”, he sees the consequences of the past all around him in the present. This merging of past and present in Joyce’s writing is expressed by means of the stream-of-consciousness technique.
Flashback
A flashback is a psychological phenomenon in which someone remembers a past experience. The term is usually used only when the memory is recalled involuntarily, and/or when it is so intense that the person "relives" (especially if a memory is stored in the procedural memory mainly) the experience, unable to fully recognize it as being a memory. For example, in A Passage To India by E.M.Forster we witness the same technique used by the writer for trial scene. Dr. Aziz was charged by Miss Adela Quested that Aziz had assaulted her at one of the Marabar Caves, during their picnic and now she was to record her statement. In the court she was questioned, whether she was followed by the prisoner (Aziz) and she was confused as she was recalling in her mind the previous incidents to know, what actually happened in the Caves. Forster states:
Her vision was of several caves. She saw herself in one, and she was also outside it, awtching its enterance, for Aziz to pass in. she failed to locate him. It wa the doubt that had often visited her, but solid and attractive, like the hills. ‘I am not—‘ Speech was more difficult than vision. ‘I am not quite sure’.
In this way we are told about the inner working of the character. Adela recalled in her mind the previous incidents and discovered the truth. Another example can be cited in this regard form “The Oldman and The Sea” by Ernest Hemingway. Santiago tried to increase his self-confidence by one of his youthful exploits. When his left hand was cramped, he remembered the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had defeated the huge Negro from Cienfuegos at hand-wrestling. The competition prolonged for more than twenty four hours. For a long time after his victory over the Negro, everyone called him the champion. Then he played a return match with the Negro and had again defeated him. He had also discovered that his real strength lay in his right hand. His left hand had always been a traitor, and he did not trust it.
The Epiphany
An epiphany is a sudden spiritual revelation or manifestation which the character experiences usually at a moment of crisis. It is as if a veil is lifted and one is able to see the essential quality or unity of some idea, event, or person. Such a spiritual breakthrough could be triggered by something as insignificant as a sound or a gesture.
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, Stephen’s major epiphany occurs at the end of Chapter IV as he stands on the sea shore gazing at an unknown girl. Stephen suddenly sees himself clearly for the first time and he knows what he must do. There is no turning back after this point.
Impressionism
The term very probably derives from Claude Monet’s painting Impression: Soliel Levant. It has been used to describe the novelist’s technique of concentrating on the inner life of the main character rather than on external reality. Abundant examples on this technique are to be found in the work of James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf.
CONCLUSION
The pith and marrow of above said is that the modern novelists in order to portray the complexity and various issues of the age made a frequent use of the above mentioned techniques. Besides they used many other literary devices, including imagery and irony. By using these devices, writers avoid the need to state every piece of information they wish to convey. Instead, the literary devices give readers the opportunity to discover themselves the layers of meaning in a novel.