Does Isak Dinesen narrate well? Of course she does; she is one of the greatest storytellers ever. For instance, her novel, Out of Africa, begins, “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” The first sentence tells the entire story: of owing and working a farm, of beautiful and dangerous Africa, and of the significant things that happen to her during the telling of this story. Hence the “I” in the first sentence; the narrator of the novel is ultimately the one changed in the course of the story.
In one sentence, she incorporates all the components of successful narrative described by Richard Cohen in Writer’s Mind © 1995. She does as well with her stories in Winter’s Tales. She demonstrates most strongly the characteristics of narrative Cohen describes in two of these tales: “The Sorrow-Acre” and “The Pearls.”
The Sorrow-Acre
In “The Sorrow-Acre,” Dinesen presents an idealistic young man returning to his boyhood home and witnessing the death of a peasant woman working on his uncle’s farm. I definitely cared about the young man because he is a likable character, youthful, idealistic, and is faced with an enormous moral dilemma: whether to stay and be complicit in the woman’s death or to leave for places unknown, abandoning his family and happy memories of his youth.
The youthful idealism is shocked out of him as he chooses to stay and witness the circumstances of the woman’s death. Dinesen makes these circumstances seem very real and necessary. The moral dilemma is gut wrenching--our gut tells us one thing, but the uncle’s moral logic makes sense. In the end, the reader looses some of his or her idealism too, witnessing the inevitable death of the woman and the natural reactions of people to the circumstances surrounding her death. This story is a profound and inevitable morality tale that resonates with the reader.
The Pearls
In “The Pearls,” the protagonist is a young woman, newly married. She is frustrated by her husband whom she feels is too carefree in and unworried by the world. She spends her honeymoon trying to induce fear into him, but doesn’t suceed. He gives her a strand of pearls during their honeymoon. The pearls have sentimental value for him and the number of the pearls is significant to the memories of his grandparents. She snags the pearls and they break apart. She counts them out one by one for a local tradesman who repairs them and, when she gets them back, she refuses to open the package and count them again; she doesn’t want to give her husband the satisfaction of knowing she checked (though she is sure they are lighter than they were before).
On returning home from their honeymoon, she counts the pearls and discovered there is one more than before. She writes to the tradesman who describes how he added a pearl to her necklace that he had accidentally left out of a necklace he repaired the previous year. The young woman is at a loss to know how to survive in this world filled with people who “neither care not fear” about such things as the loss and ‘theft’ of a pearl. In the end, she seems to ‘lighten up’ and give in to the ways of her husband’s world.
This story is an excellent example the narrative process Cohen describes. It definitely climaxed in a surprise with the additional pearl, valued at more than all the rest of the pearls in the necklace. I felt changed along with the young woman as I read the story and experienced with her an awareness of seeing the world from her husband’s win some/lose some perspective.
Cohen describes the narrative process very effectively and this work by Dinesen contains strong examples of telling stories where a sequence of events happen to a character we care about, what happens is significant to that character, events unfold naturally and seem real and appropriate for the circumstances, and, somehow, the reader is changed.
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