What is the space of a narration?
According to a definition found online (see http://mimosa.pntic.mec.es/ajuan3/lengua/comnov.htm)
the space is “one of the elements that configurate the novel -the hypertext
in this case-. The most important thing in the narration is its significant
meaning. Also associated with the description. Therefore, it is needed to
pay attention to those descriptions when they appear… or even when they don’t.
It is needed to distinguish between the different novelistic spaces, from
the real ones to the fictional and the mythics.”
In order to analyze “Shopping list” I am
going to follow the clicking order I established for myself. As I have said
in the introduction, I set a standard to
follow which was to click on the food depending on the order I would cook
it, and this made me realize that it is presupposed that people would start
clicking on the vegetables. I thought this because when you click on the
last of them it appears a link to follow called “You have all the ingredients
for a green salad” that makes you read a bit of text more, and it also says:
“You have not bought everything yet”, therefore there is another link (“shop
again”) that makes you have the whole “Shopping list” again, and you start
or continue with the other food left. This is very important because it does
not let you leave the story until you have read everything written in all
the food. Therefore there is always a "go to start" written, and pictures
about all the food where you can click and follow the story or do click again:
- Green Pepper: She likes them “when she is reading”
–that means somewhere else, not in the kitchen- or “at work”. These two are
real spaces.
- Lettuce: This makes her remember about the Beatrix
Potter’s tales that her husband read her as “bedtime stories”, what means
that it was in bed –another real space-.
- Cucumber: She remembers about when they “moved together”,
what means she is talking about when they started living in their hose nowadays,
which is another real space, even though she does not tell us directly about
it.
- Green salad. (Not spaces)
- Tinned tomatoes. It does not appear any space, but
she talks about when she cooks, what means that she is talking about the
kitchen indirectly -another real space-.
- Sugar: This remembers her about initials written
on “that tree at Cragside”, what is a real space, but also a mythical space.
Another real space appears, “the woods”
- Margarine. (Not spaces)
- Onions. “In my life” refers to time, but also to
space, because we can analyze that when she says that onions made her remember
when she cried during her life, this happened all around wherever something
sad happened to her.
- Mushrooms: She says “when she wakes up “in the dark”...he’s
“there” to hold her”. She is talking about a real space because she means
he is with her during night, but it also refers to mythical moment when she
needs her husband. “Home”, “bedsides” and “window” altogether refer to everywhere
at their home, which is also a real space.
- Garlic. (Not spaces)
- Minced beef: “at our local butchers”, “supermarket”,
“the shops”, “chemist’s”, “study”, they all are real spaces. Furthermore,
when she says “he came back” she means he went back to their house, which
is another real space.
- Spaghetti: “”Yorkshire”, “home”, “at my mum’s” are
real spaces too.
- Italian seasoning: “Italy”, “there”, “Rome”, “Pisa”,
“Florence” are also real spaces.
- Self-raising flour. (Not spaces)
- Peaches: “aisle” is a real space, it obviously refers
to the supermarket.
- Custard. (Not spaces)
As we can see, all the spaces in the hypertext are
real spaces, because she talks about real facts that happened in these places,
but they are also meaning something -sometimes mythical- to her. It is also
important to say that she is at home or in the supermarket while she is talking
about these other places.