An Analysis of the Concept of Time in Bina Shah’s “The Optimist”: A Narratological Study

Main Article Content

Rafique Ahmed Memon
Muhammmad Hassan Khoso
Syed Razaque Amin Shah

Abstract

This paper primarily aims at applying Gerard Genette‘s narratological framework of time to the study of Bina Shah‘s The Optimist. This study focuses to highlight the time shift processes in the short story to know how the writer presents her characters‘ events of several years in a short space of the text with non-linear approach of time. Time is one of the several components of narratology like mood, voice, narration, focalization, etc. The present study comprises of three main sections. The first section deals with introduction of the study. The second section deals with the elaboration of the categories of time used as the theoretical framework, based on Genette‘s narratological model related to time (Tense). The third section deals with analysis of the short story understudy aspire to identify the elaborated categories. Genette divides time into order, duration and frequency. The order is further subdivided into analepses and prolepses. Duration is divided into summary, scene, pause and ellipses. Frequency is divided into singulative, repetitive and iterative. Hence, after the analysis, the present study shows that Bina Shah‘s The Optimist is employed with non-linear concept of time where writer has presented events of several years of Adnan‘s and Raheela‘s lives in a short space of the text.

Article Details

Section
Articles

Most read articles by the same author(s)

Obs.: This plugin requires at least one statistics/report plugin to be enabled. If your statistics plugins provide more than one metric then please also select a main metric on the admin's site settings page and/or on the journal manager's settings pages.