Narrative Drive

Narrative Drive

The narrative drive in the stories “Home” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” are different for a couple of reasons, although both still effective. “Home” is a much shorter, more concise story about returning to the town you grow up in. Since it’s so much shorter, it is easier to stay focused the whole time you’re reading it, and uses quirky characters and wild situations to keep the story flowing. The dialogue, much of it drunken or violent (or both), adds a comical aspect that makes “Home” an interesting read.
“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is much longer, and contains much more dialogue. The first half of the story is a telephone conversation between a far too overprotective mother and her married daughter. The comedy behind the mother’s over-anxiousness and her daughters frustration helps keep the plot moving along, until the story suddenly switches to a young man playing on the beach with a little girl, Sybil Carpenter. It becomes clear that the young mans intentions with Sybil are increasingly inappropriate, and she runs away from him. The addition of these new characters after an extended phone call also contributes to the advancement of the story, which ends on a sad note with the young man shooting himself.

Crime Fiction

According to Ian Rankin, there are several reasons why reading crime fiction is good for you. It takes you out of your own world and into that of someone else’s, in a completely different situation. In the history of Western literature, the main ingredients of crime fiction (violence, mystery, deception, etc.) haven’t changed. However, people have been confused about the basic identity of the crime novel, which ultimately is designed to entertain. By the end of the story, the reader should know who the murderer is, why they did it and how it was achieved, although often the reader is tricked by false clues and a battery of suspects. English writer Raymond Chandler claimed that the “detective” novel (another form of crime fiction) must “baffle a reasonably intelligent reader, and the solution must seem inevitable once revealed”. Rankin claims crime fiction is capable of tackling the bigger contemporary issues in a community in its plot or themes (Rankin uses those in Great Britain as his example), and makes the reader think. In fact, his own novels are all set in Edinburgh, with an intention to show a side of the city the tourist never sees. In all, crime fiction deals with the uglier side of human nature, something Rankin says the human race has been “obsessed” with, which is why we enjoy it so much.
In regards to his story “The Hanged Man,” a lot of his points used in “Why Crime Fiction is Good for You” relate to the story in some way or another. Murder, deception and violence are all ingredients to “The Hanged Man,” seeing as how the main character is a hit man about to finish a job. If the objective of the story is to entertain, as Rankin claims that all crime novels do, this one is successful. Although it isn’t long enough to introduce a series of new suspects or false clues, there are several clever indications of what will happen in the end that Rankin is able to weave into the story. The final characteristic of crime fiction that this story directly relates to is the “uglier side of human nature”. The hit man is sent to kill a woman who works as a mind reader, who turns out to be his mother. Whether or not he completes the job is left to the imagination of the reader, however the line of work this man is in seems to support Rankin’s point.