Quick questions on Narrative method in prose - OCR A-Level English Language and Literature

Free indirect style blends the narrator's third-person, past-tense report with the character's own idiom and thought, without quotation marks or a "she thought" tag, so the reader inhabits a consciousness while a narrating distance, often ironic, remains. Analyse it linguistically: the slip from neutral narration into the character's evaluative lexis, their exclamations or rhetorical questions, the deixis ("now", "here", "today") that anchors to their moment.

In prose, character is built through narration, so analyse how the telling constructs it: the narrator's evaluative lexis, the transitivity that makes a character active or acted upon, the access (or denial of access) to their thoughts, and the speech presentation that gives or filters their voice. A character is a construction of the narrative, so read the means that build them, not their psychology as a person.

"The narration slips into free indirect style at the character's moment of hope: the neutral report gives way to her own idiom, an exclamatory 'surely he would come', the deictic 'tonight', so the reader is suddenly inside her longing while the third person holds a faint irony, because we suspect what she will not." Free indirect style read linguistically.

"The first-person narrator's self-justification, the evaluative lexis flattering his motives and the modality that admits no doubt, builds a voice we distrust, and the novel's meaning lives in the gap between his account and what the language lets us infer." The narrating voice read as unreliable.

What is free indirect style, and what does it achieve? [2 marks]

Why is focalisation a powerful narrative tool? [2 marks]

Explore how the writer uses voice and free indirect style to present a character's inner life, considering contexts. [32 marks]