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    How Does The Writer of Night Show The Varied Mental States of The Narrator

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    Sam Shohet
    The document analyzes how Alice Munro depicts her varying mental states as a child in her short story "Night". It discusses how due to lack of sleep after surgery, Munro has dark thoughts of murdering her sister and hears demons in her head. She feels like a visitor in her own home and separate from her sleeping family. Her illness causes her family to coddle her and she doesn't remember household chores from before, showing an inability to accept change. The analysis suggests Munro may exaggerate details and events, making her an unreliable narrator of her own mental fragility and experience at that time.

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    How Does The Writer of Night Show The Varied Mental States of The Narrator

    Uploaded by

    Sam Shohet
    1K views1 page
    The document analyzes how Alice Munro depicts her varying mental states as a child in her short story "Night". It discusses how due to lack of sleep after surgery, Munro has dark thoughts of murdering her sister and hears demons in her head. She feels like a visitor in her own home and separate from her sleeping family. Her illness causes her family to coddle her and she doesn't remember household chores from before, showing an inability to accept change. The analysis suggests Munro may exaggerate details and events, making her an unreliable narrator of her own mental fragility and experience at that time.

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    How does the writer of Night show the varied mental states of the narrator

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    The document analyzes how Alice Munro depicts her varying mental states as a child in her short story "Night". It discusses how due to lack of sleep after surgery, Munro has dark thoughts of murdering her sister and hears demons in her head. She feels like a visitor in her own home and separate from her sleeping family. Her illness causes her family to coddle her and she doesn't remember household chores from before, showing an inability to accept change. The analysis suggests Munro may exaggerate details and events, making her an unreliable narrator of her own mental fragility and experience at that time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    1K views1 page

    How Does The Writer of Night Show The Varied Mental States of The Narrator

    Uploaded by

    Sam Shohet
    The document analyzes how Alice Munro depicts her varying mental states as a child in her short story "Night". It discusses how due to lack of sleep after surgery, Munro has dark thoughts of murdering her sister and hears demons in her head. She feels like a visitor in her own home and separate from her sleeping family. Her illness causes her family to coddle her and she doesn't remember household chores from before, showing an inability to accept change. The analysis suggests Munro may exaggerate details and events, making her an unreliable narrator of her own mental fragility and experience at that time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    How does the writer of Night show the varied mental states of the narrator?

    Night is a semi autobiographical short story about the early years of Alice Munro;
    who was born in 1931 in Canada. It describes how Munro had her appendix
    removed and also a growth. Munro then describes how she was treated
    afterwards and her decline in her mental state due to her lack of sleep. In this
    essay I will discuss: her thoughts and feelings, her family relationships, and her
    fragility.

    Munro talks about how she could not take her mind off of her dark thoughts. “I
    must not even think of it but I did think of it,” she remembers. This portrays how
    she was scared of her own mind and that the more she tried to forget her
    thoughts the more she fed them and gave them power. Alice Munro talks about
    having murderous thoughts about strangling her little sister. “Why not. Why not
    try the worst?” this shows that as Munro’s sleep declines so does her mental
    stability and her ability to think rationally. The repetition of “why not”
    emphasizes Munro’s blasé attitude to abhorrent acts, as she is almost not corpus
    mentis due to lack of sleep. Munro talks about “demons” plaguing her head and
    her thoughts. This conveys the negativity of her mind. One can infer that Munro
    is talking about voices in her head, showing the extent of her sleep deprivation,
    as many people who suffer moderate to severe lack of sleep often start to
    hallucinate.

    Munro felt like a visitor in her own house when she couldn’t sleep. She used to
    “wander[ing] about like a visitor.” Munro was given many freedoms. This is
    because of her illness and prolonged recovery. The word “visitor” implies that
    Munro does not feel like she truly belongs in her family. The word “wandering”
    shows that she could not sit still. From this one can infer that Munro was uneasy.
    Munro continues to feel the divide between her and her family, as she was “wide
    awake with the rest of the household asleep,” this established a clear divide that
    she felt between her and her family. However this divide may be in her mind as
    her father had not only “heard me [her] getting up … just this one night” showing
    that she may not be as aware of other peoples actions as they are of hers both
    because she is a young child but also because of her lack of sleep, and varied
    mental capacity, thus showing how many of these events may be hyperbolized as
    she is not a very reliable narrator.

    Lastly, growing up post Munro’s surgery she “don’t [doesn’t] remember... any of
    the jobs” that she would normally have done. This shows how her family coddled
    her and pitied her, as she was sick. It also conveys her inability to accept change
    and the fact that she was growing up as she was still in some respects treated as
    a child. Munro’s writes in a story like way as she includes lots of detail and the
    use of a conversational tone. From this one can infer that Munro is hinting that
    she herself is not a reliable author as many stories are often embellished.

    In conclusion Alice Munro shows the varying mental state of herself as a child by
    showing her inner dialog with herself, her familial relations and how her illness
    caused others to treat her throughout her young adult life.

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