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Anne Dalke's picture

using the second person

Submitted by Anne Dalke on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 10:01pm.

I'm reading Ahab's Wife with my CSem class right now, and today we spent some time with a passage that had been written in the second person. The students were totally creeped out by its presumptiveness. The narrator, Una, says,

But do you know me? Una? You have shipped long with me in the boat that is this book. Let me assure you and tell you that I know you, even something of your pain and joy, for you are much like me. The contract of writing and reading requires that we know each other....I try on your mask from time to time...become a reader, too, reading over what I have just written....I am also your comrade. Feel me now, standing beside you, just behind your shoulder?

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Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)

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