In this piece, Asch’s narrator provides several of what Booth describes ‘Inside Views’ into the everyday lives of the characters that are met. By supplying these examples, it allows readers to learn and understand the struggles of working America. Booth states in “Types of Narration” that narrators can “provide inside views [that] differ in the depth and the axis of their plunge” (163). This allows Asch to focus in on particular aspects of characters lives that he deems most important and that will draw adequate sympathy from readers. It is the narrator’s goal to present enough information regarding the lives of the lower class that readers will sympathize with them and hopefully, “make people so mad they’ll have to do something about it” (Asch 288). Asch’s narrator explores the lives of the people he meets, while simultaneously providing the reader with detailed knowledge of their daily lives and exploiting the truth about American working conditions.
In addition to the ‘Inside Views’, Asch also utilizes Booth’s method of ‘Variations of Distance’. It is stated in “The Rhetoric of Fiction” that the narrator “may differ morally, intellectually, and temporally” from the characters in the story (156). In Asch’s piece, it is clear that the narrator is distant from other characters temporally and in some cases intellectually. At one point, the narrator states that he misses the “pleasant mornings in New England” (Asch 289). Not only does this show geographical distance, but also that the narrator never stays with the characters he meets for a long period of time. The sole purpose for the narrators visits to the squalors of working America is to research and report about their lives, not because he, himself, is struggling for work. The distance between Asch’s narrator and the characters in the story allow for more detailed reflections about the unseen way of life.
Aspects of Mr. Booth’s narrative techniques are clearly at work in “In Search of America” and undoubtedly add to the complexity and understanding of the piece.
I don't think that he is unable to stay with them for a long period of time, but he is unable to truly connect with them because of his differences. The fact that he is from New England is one thing that will keep him separate from his characters, as his upbringing will have changed his outlook on life dramatically from the others, but there are several other elements in the story that better illustrate the narrator's distance. Probably the most striking example is when he is walking in the forest with the lumber jacks and is having a hard time keeping up with them because of his shoes.
ReplyDeleteBut what sort of message are all of these details telling us as an audience? The most obvious answer is that we can never truly understand the plight of the Mexican immigrant to the lumber jack. But then why draw our attention to it so starkly? Maybe it's to try and draw our attention to the fact that we thought we could understand them, and show us that there is actually a huge difference in the way that live and understand the world.