In the first chapter of The Bedford Reader, the techniques of narration and specific narratives are assessed. To begin, a definition of a narrative is clarified, “a narrative may be short or long, factual or imagined, as artless as a tale told in a locker room or as artful as a novel by Henry James” (40). The passages go in-depth into the process of storytelling, picking apart the importance of each piece, and allowing the reader to understand the simplicity of an essay, or in this case, a narrative. The passage evaluates a method of a summary with an analogy, “A summary is to a scene, then, as a simple stick figure is to a portrait in oils” (44). Simply stated, this means that a summary is as effective as a story written in complete and prolific detail. The Bedford Reader supplies the reader with examples and lectures to portray exactly what the detail of the narrative should include, and the purpose of the piece.…