Bunnicula — Chapter 1

About This Passage

These four sentences perform a complete establishment of Harold's narrative voice in remarkably small space. The first sentence borrows from Victorian melodrama ('I shall never forget...'); the second introduces an unexpected heavy word ('abomination') for what turns out to be a vacuum cleaner; the third moves to colloquial habitualness ('That's something they always say to me'); and the fourth gives us direct quoted speech from the family addressing Harold by name. The four sentences move across four registers (formal/sentimental, mock-heroic, colloquial, direct quotation) without any visible transitions. By the end of the paragraph, the reader has been introduced to a narrator who is dignified and silly, formal and conversational, knowing and slightly self-deluded, and who is pretending more authority than he has while also undercutting his own pretensions. This is the voice of an unreliable comic narrator in the tradition of Bertie Wooster (Wodehouse) or Holden Caulfield (Salinger) or, much earlier, Tristram Shandy (Sterne) — a narrator whose specific way of telling the story is itself part of the comedy. Copying this passage trains a writer to notice how voice is built from rapid shifts of register and how a few sentences can establish a complete narrative personality.

Narration Prompt

Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use?

Discussion Questions

1. Harold's narrative voice is established within the first paragraph through specific word choices and rapid register shifts (Victorian melodrama, mock-heroic exaggeration, colloquial chatter, direct quotation). Argue what kind of narrator Harold is going to be — is he reliable, unreliable, both, or something more complex? What does the rapid register-shifting accomplish that a single consistent voice could not?
2. Harold tells us that in the Monroe household 'everyone treats everyone else with great respect for his or her intelligence. That goes for the animals as well as the people.' This claim is presented as a description but is also a clue about how the book wants to be read. What is Harold telling us about the conditions under which this story is even possible? What kind of family does this book require in order to work as a narrative?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide