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What is a flashback in literature?
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What is a flashback & a backstory?
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Aug 23, 2021 · This narrative tool is called a flashback. Also used in films and television shows, flashbacks give a story more depth by revealing details that help readers understand character motives. Flashbacks also add tension and help advance the plot.
- What Is A Flashback?
- Examples of Flashback in Literature
- Function of Flashback
Flashback Definition
A flashback is a device used in stories, films, television episodes, etc., that interrupts the flow of the plot to “show” readers/viewers an event that happened previously. Most flashbacks are utilized to provide background so that the audience has a greater understanding of the story, characters, setting, etc., taking place in the chronological present. Flashbacks can take place at any point in the narrativearc, from the first to the last scene.
Use of Flashback in Literature
A flashback can serve many purposes in literature, including: 1. create suspensein the story 2. illustrate a certain character’s behavior 3. provide contextabout the setting 4. allow readers to “see” a memory During a flashback, readers understand that it represents something that has previously occurred in the timeline of the story. This literary device can shed light on deeper meanings and levels of storytelling without the writer overtly explaining to the reader in the “present” narrative.
Example #1: The Holy Bible
The Bible is a good source of flashback examples. In the Book of Matthew, we see a flashback has been used when Joseph, governor of Egypt, sees his brothers after several years. Joseph “remembered his dreams” about his brothers, and how they sold him into slavery in the past.
Example #2: Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesmanuses flashback to narrate Willy Loman’s memories of the past. At one moment, Willy talks with his dead brother while playing cards with Charley. He relives a past conversation in the present. This demonstrates a character that is physically living in the present, but mentally living in the memories and events of the past.
Example #3: The Cruel Mother
Another example of flashback is the ballad of The Cruel Mother, in which a mother remembers her murdered child. While going to church, she remembers her child’s birth, growing up, and death. Later, she thinks back further to a distant time in her past to rememberhow her own mother was ruthless to her.
The use of a flashback is to convey to the readers information regarding the character’s background, and give them an idea of the character’s motives for doing certain things later in the story. Therefore, a flashback in the story deepens inner conflict. It provides stimulus for the conflict, deepens the touching effects, and allows the reader to s...
In literature, a flashback is an occurrence in which a character remembers an earlier event that happened before the current point of the story. The definition of flashback is identical to that of analepsis, which comes from the Greek for “the act of taking up.”
Aug 23, 2020 · A flashback is a writing device that’s used to interrupt the present storyline for a brief return to past events. Most of the time, flashbacks are not literal; the characters are not actually traveling into the past.
Apr 10, 2012 · A flashback is a sudden, brief relocation to a previous time and then, just as suddenly, a return to the present story. Flashbacks can hint at backstories, but they aren’t backstories themselves. A backstory is a longer trip (in fact, sometimes backstories make up most of a story or even a novel).
A flashback, more formally known as analepsis, is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. [1] Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. [2]
What is Flashback? Flashback is a device that moves an audience from the present moment in a chronological narrative to a scene in the past. Often, flashbacks are abrupt interjections that further explain a story or character with background information and memories. II. Examples of Flashback
