Narration and stylistic devices in Leonard Kibera's voices in the dark

Abstract

This is a study of narration and stylistic devices in Leonard Kibera' s Voice in the Dark and the aim has been to analyse how narrative techniques and stylistic devices affect communication. To achieve this aim, the study relies on textual analysis conceptual framework, a framework that views literary texts as self-contained entities. Accordingly,the study focuses on the primary text but refers to Kibera's short stories for the purpose of discussing comparable techniques. A further implication of the conceptual framework is that the study was library based and used print sources and the Internet. The study analyses the handling of the story, the setting, characterisation, the point of view, the plot, the structure, the pattern and style and demonstrates that these aspects imply each other; therefore Voices in the Dark is an artistically constructed work of art. Further the study argues that the overall strategy underlying the artistic conception of Voices in the Dark is communication through contrast. The result of this artistic conception is a compressed narrative which communicates more through inference than through direct authorial statements