Annales Neophilologiarum

In this paper we will examine various types of narrative techniques in the short story medium, as well as examples of the literary techniques relevant to style, plot, and perspective/point of view. Carmen Laforet’s narrative techniques provide deeper meaning for the reader and help the reader use imagination to visualize situations. Literary elements in narratives include such things as the setting, plot, theme, style or structure, characters, and perspective, or voice of the story, since literary techniques are best understood in the context of one of these elements. Common techniques relevant to plot, which is the sequence of events that make up a narrative, include backstory, flashback (analepsis), flash-forward (prolepsis). Common techniques relevant to narrative perspective, or who is telling the story, include first person, second person, third person, and third-person omniscient. The aim of this article is to examine the backstory that is used when the author, Carmen Laforet, feels it is important for the reader to know something that has happened prior to the actual events described in the short novel El piano. We will also examine the many Flashback used when the narrator or the main character takes the story back in time, and the events go back and forth between the past and the present. And so the Flash-forward, when the writer allows the reader to see future events, will be studied and analysed.