A Sorrow Beyond Dreams Literary Analysis

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A Sorrow Beyond Dreams can be classified as either a metaliterature, or even a metafiction piece in the sense that it is writings which explores the process of making literature. Metafiction is defined as being fiction that discusses, describes, or analyzes a work of fiction or the conventions of fiction, and both self-reflectively, asks the reader to think about what literature is and does. I think the fact that the novel begins not with the mother’s life story or any general information about her, including her name but with the narrator’s discussion of his reasons for writing this story makes the reader intensely aware that the narrator’s account is his version of events. “I know more about her and how she came to her death than any outside investigator who…show more content…
Nonetheless, he worries that the very conventions of storytelling will discredit his story: “‘it began with...’; if I started like this, it would all seem to be made up.” (pg. 6) When, in the following sentence, the narrator writes, “Well then, it began with...,” he seems to suggest that all stories are made up, even true ones. Throughout the novel, the reader sees the Handke’s process of making up the story, which he presents as a series of fragments separated by asterisks (or other marks) and interrupted by explanations of his method. This whole separation by asterisks or even his use of dashes, which can be used to indicate an interruption, particularly in recorded speech not only makes the biography as a whole seem choppy and elongated but it actually serves as a means of coherence in that this entire piece is from a first-person point of view (Handke’s) and it shows his thought process and how things may have correlated or even linked despite the fact that it may have seemed totally irrelevant to what was previously being stated by the
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