Tom Jones Character

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Specific Narrative Technique in Tom Jones • The Voice of the Narrator Tom Jones uses a variety of rhetorical methods to define and exemplify the nature of its hero, the most obvious and pervasive being the voice of this intrusive narrator. Although this narrator is often a moral bully and social propagandist, he is also (like Thackeray’s later narrator), a master showman. We do not mind his bullying and manipulation, because he is (with one or two minor exceptions), open and direct with the reader, never pretending to be anything other than the controlling force behind the action. • Abstraction and Generalization One major technique is the narrator’s use of abstractions and generalizations as the common vocabulary of description of the hero. And this generalizing is not merely typical of 18th-century thought, but carefully calculated for effect. For example, although Jones’s appearance is a large part of his charm, we are not given any specific physical description of Jones until well into the middle part of the novel. And even then the language is abstract and general rather than detailed and specific: Mr. Jones, of whose personal Accomplishments we have hitherto said very little, was in reality, one of the handsomest young Fellows in the World. His Face, besides being the Picture of Health, had in it the most apparent Marks of Sweetness and Good-Nature. These Qualities were indeed so characteristical in his Countenance, that while the Spirit and Sensibility in his Eyes, tho' they must have been perceived by an accurate Observer, might have escaped the Notice of the less discerning, so strongly was this Good-nature painted in his Look, that it was remarked by almost every one who saw him. It was, perhaps, as much owing to this, as to a very fine Complexion, that his Face had a Delicacy in it almost inexpressible, and which might have given him an Air
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