Narrative tense

Chronology

The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is written entirely in the past tense. The narrative sequence is mostly chronological. Overall, the novel is written in a time-lapse manner, as the action takes place over the course of about 12 days, and it takes only a few hours to read the novel. The narrative time is then shorter than the narrated time.

The time lapse comes about because minor time jumps are incorporated at many points in the story. For example, the firefighters are called out on a mission and get ready to go.In the next section, they have already arrived at the house they are supposed to burn down.The journey to the house is omitted from the narrative. In other cases, the time jump is made by a time statement, such as: "Half an hour later" (Part 3, 61%). In addition, some days are simply summarized with the help of a list, such as: "One two three four five six seven days: the fire house. (...) Third day" (Part 1, 37%).

In the text, there are many sections of dialogue where the conversation is de...