Narrative
The plot meanders between the thoughts, hallucinations and inner voices (both real and imagined) of its many characters, as well as through time (past, present, and future)— sometimes in mid-sentence. Much of the back story is explained via dialogue between characters, who recount unreliable, often mutually contradictory, versions of their supposed histories. There are even parts in the book in which the narrative reviews and jokingly deconstructs the work itself.
Read more about this topic: The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Famous quotes containing the word narrative:
“The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn’t imagine ourselves through a day without it.”
—Robert Coover (b. 1932)
“To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)