Page 142 - 2023-bfw-FLL-2e

5
/
activity Opening
Write a few different openings for your narrative, always trying to grab the reader’s
attention with a hint or two about what the narrative will focus on without directly
Narrative
stating it.

Step 8. Your Narrative — Theme and Reflection

In reading any of the narratives in this chapter, you will have noticed that a key part of just
about every narrative or memoir is a reflection, a conclusion that the writer draws about
the meaning of the experience. An example of this occurs at the end of “La Gringuita,”
in which Julia Alvarez explains what she has learned about her relationship to her native
Spanish language as she began speaking more and more English:

The truth was I couldn’t even imagine myself as someone other than the person I had
become in English, a woman who writes books in the language of Emily Dickinson
and Walt Whitman, and also of the rude shopper in the grocery store and of the boys
throwing stones in the schoolyard, their language, which is now my language. . . . My
husband had ordered Spanish-language tapes a while back from the Foreign Service
Institute so that he could keep up with my family in the capital. Recently, he had dusted
them off and started listening to them to prepare himself for our land hunt. I had decided
to join him in these lessons, in part to encourage him, but also because I wanted to
regain the language that would allow me to feel at home again in my native country.
Sometimes the reflection is a very straightforward “this is what I learned” from the
experience, and sometimes it is implied rather than directly stated. What most
reflections have in common is that the narrator, older now, is looking back and trying
to understand or explain the event with the benefit of age and experience. Oftentimes,
but not always, the reflection occurs at or near the end of the narrative. When writing
yours, you can certainly place it wherever you think it best fits your needs. Additionally,
your reflection does not need to appear only once in one big block. You can spread the
reflection and your awareness of the importance of the event throughout your piece.

activity
Reflection
Why does the event that you have been thinking about writing for your narrative matter
to you? What did you learn, or what are you still trying to learn from it? What lesson or
idea do you think other people who did not experience the event might draw from it?
Thinking about what you did for the activities about “Structure” above, where in your
narrative might this reflection fit the best?

240
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

06_SheaFLL2e_40926_ch05_130_243_6PP.indd 240 28/06/22 8:58 AM