Impact of First Person Narration with Reference to Select African Writers’ Autobiographies: A Study of Narrative Techniques

Abstract

Storytelling is an art. Every successful story teller has his/her own strategy to hold the readers. Writers use their imagination or blend imagination with real life incident/events/history to not only attract the readers but also to send strong messages to the society. The world has seen great novelists such as Charles Dickens, Chinua Achebe, Mark Twain, Mulk Raj Anand etc. These writers are successful in their career because they had their own style of writing. Moreover, they had different stories/ messages to tell the world. The present article discusses the narrative techniques and the uses associated with them especially in creating impact on readers. The impact writers try to create among their readers using various narrative techniques is a common one in literature. Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom and Maya Angelo's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings are the two autobiographies taken for the study.