Topic 10 (session A) - Prose analysis > Bilgewater: General > Task B > Our answer

Bilgewater: General

Task B - Our answer

It is pretty clear that, although we don't yet know her name, the interviews are presented to us mainly from the viewpoint of the candidate. In other words, she is the focalised character. We are given her perceptions (sentences 2-4 and 43-4, for example, describe the scene as it would appear to her (she sees the Principal outlined against a window behind her), not the Principal. And she is the only character whose thoughts are presented.

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We are given a sense of what it in like to be in a Cambridge interview from the perspective of the candidate. She is hyper-aware, as people often are in stressful situations (cf. the details, seemingly irrelevant to the 'push' of the story, about what she sees in the room and perceives about the qualities of the chair she is sitting in). She is in a state of apparent indecision at the end of the prologue, though it looks as if she will probably decide to take up the offer of a place (and, given the apparently good relations between her and the Principal, we may infer that she probably got the scholarship too, even though we are not explicitly told this.

The passage begins with 3rd-person narration (with the candidate as the focalised character). All the characters, including the candidate, are referred to using 3rd-person pronouns. But from sentence 33 onwards, the discourse structure of the passage changes. The narration switches to 1st-person, and so is entirely presented through the eyes of the (still un-named) candidate. The slide from 3rd- to 1st-person narration is achieved seamlessly (did you notice it when you first read the passage?), via a brief use of the 2nd-person in sentence 15, a series of elliptical sentences (which often omit pronominal reference altogether) and the interspersing of the narrative sections of the text with character speech in the direct speech (DS) form.

Sentences 1-13 (i.e. the first part of the passage describing the third interview) are in the past tense, the default tense for fictional narrations. But as with most 3rd-person narrations, this past tense is used to encapsulate what is the present fictional time for the candidate. Sentence 14 switches to past perfect (pluperfect), and, although a lot of the sentences are elliptical and so have no verbs (and hence no specified tense), this form is the base form when the first and second interviews are being described. The switch to the past perfect refers to what, for the candidate is the recent past (interviews 1 and 2). The direct speech of the characters (and the thoughts of the candidate in the second interview) is dominated by the present tense, as normal. But after the speech in the second interview the switch to 1st-person narration, which we have already noticed, coincides with a switch to the present tense. In other words, at the point we move to the sole viewpoint of the character, the tense switch to the present tense increases the feeling that we are involved in the character's present reality.

All that said, we are only given a series of 'snapshots' of the final interview and what happens after it (this is why we have to infer so many things). This is part of Jane Gardam's strategy of manipulating our perception of what happens so that we feel close to the candidate but are not told all that she knows (indeed, we are not TOLD what appear to be the most important things for the story - whether she was offered a place or not, for example). This experience should lead us to be aware of viewpoint manipulation in the rest of the story, including the odd surprise created by the narrator withholding information from us.

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