A Comparative Study of the Narrative Function in Two Short Stories by Tayeb Salih and Mostafa Mastoor: Genette's Theories

The way the element of time is used in some modern stories, has turned them into a far-fetched process for the recipient. Today the dominant chronology in classical stories are substituted by chaos in modern stories. Some of the fiction writers have used memories, dreams, human nightmares, as new kind of techniques which destroys the boundaries of time. This in turn, alters the pace of the stories and the repetition of some of the events. Gérard Genette, a French famous critic, has suggested three important sides of time, order, speed, and iteration, as the famous theory of order, duration, and frequency. It is considered as the most comprehensive theory in the area of analyzing time in narrative. This paper aims to shed light on the way this element has been employed in the short story of “A Handful of Dates” by Tayeb Salih, a famous Sudanese novelist; and “Love on the Pavement” by Mostafa Mastoor, an Iranian novelist based on Genette’ narrative theories. Both writers are similar in terms of applying the games of narrative. The findings show the order of events narrated is chaotic to signify the chaos in human’s spirit in a modern society. Among the techniques of pace-increasing and pace-decreasing factors, both the writers use descriptive pause which causes longer fractions and suspense in the story; and though repetitive narrative, they highlight the events.