PART 3 活学活用

Read the excerpt of War and Peace to experience the tension by omniscient narrator. Here, in Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869), the narrator describes the character Pierre visiting his father. We’ve just read that Pierre was expelled from the city of St. Petersburg for tying a policeman to a bear:

.“Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father – who were never favourably disposed towards him – would have used it to turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went to his father’s part of the house.

[…]

‘Pierre was received as if he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the second assumed precisely the same expression; while the youngest, the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she foresaw.’ (pp. 55-56)”

A: Tolstoy increases the tension of Pierre’s return by first telling us about the frosty reception he expects. After this, Tolstoy shows the response of each character without favoring one specific viewpoint.

This builds tension and suspense since we wonder how each character will react to Pierre’s return. Like Tolstoy, use the omniscient narrator’s ability to describe what each character is feeling to build anticipation and suspense.