Frame Story - Use of Frame Stories

Use of Frame Stories

As with all literary conceits, the frame tale has many variations, some clearly within the confines of the conceit, some on the border, and some pushing the boundaries of understanding. The main goal of a frame tale is as a conceit which can adequately collect otherwise disparate tales. It has been mostly replaced, in modern literature, by the short story collection or anthology absent of any authorial conceit.

To be a frame narrative, the story must act primarily as an occasion for the telling of other stories. If the framing narrative has primary or equal interest, then it is not usually a frame narrative. For example, Odysseus narrates much of the Odyssey to the Phaeacians, but, even though this recollection forms a great part of the poem, the events after and before the interpolated recollection are of greater interest than the memory.

Another notable example that plays with frame narrative is the 1994 film Forrest Gump. Most of the film is narrated by Forrest to various companions on the park bench. However, in the last fifth or so of the film, Forrest gets up and leaves the bench, and we follow him as he meets with Jenny and her son. This final segment suddenly has no narrator unlike the rest of the film that came before it, but is instead told through Forrest and Jenny's dialogues.

This approach is also demonstrated in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire (adapted from the 2005 novel Q & A), about a poor street kid Jamal coming close to winning Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) and then being suspected of cheating. Most of the story is narrated at a police station by Jamal, who narrates how he knew the answers to the questions as the show is played back on video. The show itself then serves as another framing device, as Jamal sees flashbacks of his past as each question is asked. The last portion of the film then unfolds without any narrator.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness demonstrates a narrator telling a story, while the protagonist is quoted so as to give the framed appearance that he is telling the story. The narrator provides the transition to the one speaking the story.

A famous literary example is Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, whereby we learn events through a visitor to the house of the title, who in turn has been told these events by the housekeeper of the Linton family. None of the main characters ever directly narrates.

Frame stories are found in many role-playing video games, such as the early Dragon Quest IV, released in 1990. This literary device can also be sparingly used to achieve secondary ends. For instance, the Shining Force series of role playing games use narrators within frame stories to implement things like starting, saving and exiting the game without breaking the fourth wall entirely, or rather by constructing a second fourth wall to shield the player from having to suspend his/her disbelief as much.