Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Judit Kádár: Hugh MacLennan's Complex Narrative Technique in His Last Novel

traditional narrative method with the chronological order; the linear timeaspect, especially when the subnarrators Qohn Wellfleet and Conrad Dehmel) talk about the events and their effects on others' lives and actions. However, there is another dimension of time which is vertical in the sense that it recalls the personal memories and deep reflections of the characters following their free association, a typical element of modern fiction, going back in their subconscious into their past. This step is rather forced, for instance John Wellfleet suffers from shock when André mentions keywords and figures of his by-gone happier life and Conrad Dehmel is also pushed to think about his life when Timothy attacks him with aggressive questions on TV. Perhaps the author projects his own feelings towards the question of searching for the past, going back on the memory traces, looking for the sense of this painful artistic process and finally finding it in his other important artistic concern i.e. the sequence of generations. Consequently the stream of storytelling is complex. In the framework, the stories narrated by the characters sometimes overlap each other. These voices in time can reinforce or oppose the 'personal truths' of those partaking in the storytelling; the same event can appear different from a new aspect. The narrated parts not only talk about identical events and periods of time in the different characters' lives and human history, but also continue the story by adding a next step to the chain of events in the main line: the story of World War II is an example easy enough to understand because of its closeness to the reader in time. The retrospective shifts also help us understand the characters, especially Conrad Dehmel, whose character developed out of the shadow of John Wellfleet (since he was Wellfleef s step father) to an independent individual character who is driven, by his fate, his instincts and the surrounding world, and whose feelings and actions are convincingly explained in the book. There is another element in MacLennan's narrative technique which is important in the retrospective narration, namely flashback panorama. Roger Hyman, one of MacLennan's critics, gives a strong criticism of his technique saying that 68