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To: Eleutheria5

By my definition, then, you can’t have a true animal first-person narrative in fiction; only a third-person with insights into the animal’s thinking, who explains him for the reader. A first-person turns into an anthropomorphised human whose concerns have been altered due to his form. We can’t know an animal that intimately without entering an alien world of urges and primal drives. Since that would be alien to us, we must make the animal articulate, which is to make him human.


487 posted on 04/27/2007 9:20:39 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
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To: Eleutheria5
Traveller was done in a first person narrative. Still it was very well done. But, Blake (I hope that is the author's name) did not go overboard. Traveller only really knew what was happening right in front of him. He did not have an expansive thought process. He thought in "horse" terms and related to what was going on around him in "horse" terms.

For example: Being Lee's horse, he loved the General, so at Appomattox, he believed Lee was there to receive the Yankees' surrender. That kind of limited awareness made the book wonderful in my opinion.

492 posted on 04/27/2007 9:30:36 AM PDT by carton253 (I've cried tears and stayed the same.)
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