Depiction of the discourse of life in a literary text

Abstract

The topic of life is one that is brought up frequently in literature. That leads us to believe that such a concept as discourse of life exists and can be studied. In order to confirm this belief we will analyze a literary piece that is centered on this topic and that piece is Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain. What separates this novel from others is its narrator, who is a dog. As he tells the reader his story, in fact he tells the stories of multiple people that he interacts with on the daily basis, thus giving us many different perspectives to explore.

The problem revolves around the fact that very few studies have been done on the novel we will be covering or the author's writing in general. It is as surprising as it is disappointing, but we hope this article will inspire more people to study Garth Stein's work.

Before moving on to the matter at hand, we will outline basic terminology (discourse and discourse analysis), give a brief summary of Garth Stein's biography and dwell on F. Jinnah’s “Postmodern world through the lens of “Enzo” – Narrator of Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain””.

The next step is to outline our goal. After some consideration, we decided we would select a number of quotations that describe the different points of view in the story and compare their attitudes to life.

Following our goal, we sum up the perspectives of three most prominent characters – Denny, Eve and Enzo. Although they seem very different on the surface, (especially since one of them is a dog) we have found them to share quite a few similarities. We recount their personal qualities and dwell on how they feel about each other and their family in general. This process is rather straightforward with Denny and Eve, but we go into more detail when discussing Enzo, as expected of the main character. For his profile, we also talk about his desire to be human and his analytical abilities.

The conclusion we have drawn from this, life in Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain is characterized first and foremost by the main characters’ tendency for self-sacrifice, all in different measures. This quality that makes even our canine narrator akin to a real human being, even though he starts to doubt his ability to be one.