Oranges: AO2 Methods Flashcards
Bildungsroman, Coming-of-age novel
A literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood, in which character change is important.
Fictional Autobiography
A story that uses made-up characters and events to represent an author’s actual experiences.
Roman à clef
(French: “novel with a key”) novel that has the extraliterary interest of portraying well-known real people more or less thinly disguised as fictional characters.
Spiral Narrative
Repeating a story’s thematic meaning by taking occurrences in the foreground — in plot, dialogue and characters — and mirroring them in the background: in symbols, imagery, and suggestions.
Narrative Digression
A stylistic device authors employ to create a temporary departure from the main subject of the narrative, to focus on apparently unrelated topics, explaining background details.
Storytelling, fantasy, invention
Though most of the novel closely tracks the “realism” of her own childhood, several interludes—fairy tales, parables, and stories of King Arthur’s knights—explore the cruelty of Jeanette’s circumstances through her escapist fantasies of knights, sorcerers, and princesses.
Interludes
Breaks in the main narrative. Shift away from the main narrative axis - E.g, Deuteronomy.
Parable
A simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson, as told by Jesus in the Gospels.
Vague Chronology
Ambiguous unclear sequences of events, hard to tell when narrative is set.
Perspective/Voice
The use of an ambiguous perspective means it is unclear when the narration is told from the point of view of adult Janette, or Janette in her childhood - Shifting between adult and childlike language.
Comedic bathos
Comedic anti-climax used to undercut. Rhetorical, an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one
Foreshadowing
Seen in the gypsies prediction and the repeated images of Oranges. Foreshadowing of Jeanette’s future Lesbianism runs subtly through the whole novel.
Irony
Narratively, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is built on a particular irony - a contradiction in which it takes some sly delight. It can be simply stated. The Bible is the all-controlling authority to which the narrator’s fundamentalist mother makes her defer, yet it is also the book on which the novel is based.
Biblical References
Structure of the novel is based on the Octateuch, or the first 8 books of the Old Testament. The language itself is also peppered with Biblical references, which link to Louie’s dogmatic religious views.
Tone
The tone varies according to the protagonist’s state of mind and circumstances being related. Generally speaking, the mood of the novel is a kind of sardonic wistfulness.
