Monday, February 4, 2008
Functional Details
After reading Structural Analysis of Narratives and The Adventure of the Speckled Band consecutively, I was surprised to find that the ideas of Barthes were not only included in the work by Doyle, but also that in the application of Barthes seemingly clouded ideas, all became much clearer. For example, when Barthes was discussing his idea of detail in a story as a ‘functional unit’ (pg.91) the theory seemed somewhat vague and confusing. However, when reading the Doyle, the presence of these functional details began to reveal itself. The best example of this is the woman in the beginning of the narration with the description of being, “…dressed in black and heavily veiled…”(pg.108) These brief details are provided not only as a physical description of how the woman is dressed but also provides the reader with deeper insight into the woman’s character. The statement that she is heavily veiled implies this woman is a character who has experienced a great deal of grief and possibly is someone very secretive, perhaps should not even be trusted.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Even another example of Barthes' "functional unit" appears on page 110 of the Holmes story. Ms. Stoner describes Dr. Roylott and offers some details about him that could be seen as functions or even indices (in Barthes' terms) of the Dr.'s propensity towards violence. She says, "...violence of temper approaciong to mania has been hereditary in the men of the family... he is a man of immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger..." This passage is one of the first functions or indices that may cause the reader to suspect Dr. Roylott.
These functionist details can also parallel the idea of horizantal and vertical meanings. As Barnes point out that reading is not just merely reading a bunch of words and then summarizing each sentence. instead the horizantal and vertical meaning look at an analyical cause why this sentence is structured. In sean's thread, he looked at the color black and what it signified to the text and Helen overall.
Another functional detail about Helen Stoner was that though she is only thirty-two her hair has already, "begun to whiten," indicating as Sean had said that she has experienced a great deal of grief and hardship.
I completely agree with sean on the fact that as you read "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" you see the ideas that Barthes was trying to explain to us. I see that the the details in the story are a mere way of revealing the functional details of the tale as I stated in my blog.
Post a Comment