Narrative Interpretive Centers in Ray Bradbury’s Cistern: Exposing Internal and External Human Conflicts
Abdullah H. Kurraz
Affiliation: Al-Azhar University – Gaza
Keywords: Ray Bradbury, human conflicts, narratology, narrative-stylistic centers, characterization.
Categories: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
DOI: 10.17160/josha.5.8.474
Languages: English
In the light of the inevitable twinning of linguistic theory and literary critical interpretation and appreciation, Ray Bradbury's narrative techniques constitute his thematic and aesthetic discourse. Bradbury’s stylistic narrative discourse evokes a set of narrative tools through which characters communicate ideas, thoughts, and feelings, creating aesthetic effects that appeal to readers. These blended artistic elements are interpreted in the light of the theoretical fictional context of narratorcharacter, character-character, narrator-reader interactions. Exploring a web of narrativecharacterization centers in Bradbury’s story Cistern, the paper sheds light on the centers of the point of view, dialogic narrative technique, and thematic concerns that include internal and external conflicts. Meantime, the paper draws on Gérard Genette’s analytical method of study of narrative discourse, among others. Moreover, Bradbury's themato-narrative techniques offer a modern interpretative community for understanding his characterization centers and serve as a receptionist case study for scholars and critics of modern literary criticism.