Breaking the Traditional Narrative Mold

How does Susan Griffin attempt to 'break' the traditional narrative mold?

She does several things. First of all, her narrative does not follow the traditional linear style that we have come to expect from works dealing with historical events. Instead, it cuts and jumps between different times and events. An example of this can be found on page 76 where the narrative skips from 1945 and the night before Hiroshima is bombed to 1986 and the invention of the center fire metallic cartridge to 1941 and Life magazine publishing the photograph of Rita Hayworth featured above.

The second thing that Griffin does is interspersing her journal entries with historical events, in part VI of the book, 'Notes Towards a Sketch for a Work in Progress (271 - 363.) This is an interesting technique as it allows the reader to gain an insight into Griffin's personal thoughts and feelings on her work, her life, and the events taking place in the world around her, such as the first Gulf War. A 21st century version of this would perhaps be created by interspersing blog, social networking or email entries interspersed with current news events. This is perhaps a technique I should attempt later on, although how successful this would be, I am not sure. My entries on these sites tend not to be related to world wide events and more often complaints about the weather.

The third and perhaps most important way in which Griffin attempts to 'break' the traditional narrative mold is that she uses the stories of ordinary people. Whilst there are the well known names that are expected from an historical piece, such as Heinrich Himmler and Hugh Trenchard, but she also tells the stories of ordinary people who have been affected by war, such as Yõko, the woman who is the same age as Griffin and survived Hiroshima, and Hélène, the woman who survived the concentration camps and Griffin meets on the Paris Metro. These are the stories of ordinary people, just like the reader, who have survived extraordinary things. Their stories are more interesting, to me at least, than learning about this or that general whose story has been told in hundreds of books. Griffin shows us the stories that have not been made public, the private lives of war.