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Maryse Condé's Crossing The Mangrove

Decent Essays

How do authors made the decision to use a voice in which to speak to their readers? There are many different perspectives available such as a first-person narrative, third-person, or even second person point of view. Maryse Condé’s novel, Crossing the Mangrove utilizes multiple voices to tell its story. In this paper, I will briefly characterize the way Condé takes on the traditional notion of point of view, then I will discuss the literary advantages and disadvantages of Condé’s novel, and conclude with how the end result is satisfying to the reader. Traditional notions of point of view often consist of a single narrator who remains the same throughout the story. Condé chose to drastically move away from the traditional narrator and chose …show more content…

An advantage of this style is that the author can play with different perspectives that add to the complexity of the story. I feel that this is the main advantage that Condé used in writing her novel because she used the complexity and intertwined characters as a theme that is in congruence throughout the story of Francis Sancher’s wake, as well as the title of the novel, Crossing the Mangrove. If Condé had chosen a single perspective, then she would not have been able to maintain such a complex structure between characters. Condé was able to eloquently keep the story flowing by having distinct and unique voices telling their memories and perspective about Francis Sancher. Multiple perspectives really opened up the lives of the islanders and allowed insight on daily living conditions and situations that are not widely told. Condé also used a strong narrative voice for all of the women in the story, including Sonny, a weak-minded boy, giving them time to develop their thoughts and tell their thoughts first hand. Condé also chose to give the strong men in the story a different narrative voice, a much more passive third-person narrator. For me, another positive is that each chapter provided me a new and interesting perspective on the situation. This, for me, kept the novel

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