Retrospective Narrative

     
      In this blog post, you will learn the retrospective narrative through a brief introduction and use what you have learned in the following activities.

      First, take a look at the pictures below and try to guess what the retrospective narrative is.

Time to Learn

      Written using past-tense, first-person narration, a 

retrospective narrative is told from the point of view of a character looking back on past events.  

 

      The character narrating the story is sometimes an older person recalling when they were younger, while other retrospective narrators may be relating events from the recent past. 

      Retrospective narrators often speak directly to readers to offer their side of the story or explain the reasons for their actions, creating a confessional tone. 

 Time to Read

      Read the text below carefully and explain how the author uses the retrospective narrative in this text by giving examples from the text.

      They came to us with the mean December wind, three cars in all. We lived on a desolate country road where approaching sounds could be heard before things happened. There was the muffled rumble of their exhaust reverberating off mounds of snow, then the moaning of their engines. I rushed to the front living room window, pulled the drapery back, and pressed my nose to the pane. My breath fogged the glass and I could taste dust on my lips. Soon, boxed shadows appeared from around the bend. They turned into our long drive in a systematic order, each bumper connecting to the next. Their tires crunched the frozen ground in a slow, torturous grind.
Daddy told me they were relatives coming to pay their respects. We, my two brothers and I, didn’t need to bathe or put on school clothes. “They’re not that kind of company,” Daddy said. His voice quivered with anger.
It was the day after Christmas, 1956. I was only twelve years old, and I didn’t understand Daddy’s coldness towards our visitors. What I did understand was the fact that my mother had died, in the morning hours of Christmas Eve from what was described to me as “woman cancer.” The nurses at the hospital whispered it behind the shield of their hands, as though it was a dirty secret and by speaking the words out loud they too would be cursed with the same kind of cancer that claimed Mom.
  

Time to Write

      Write your own life experiences or memories in a story format using the retrospective narrative and publish them in the comment section.