Identifying narrative strategies

An aspect of showing in Memoirs of a Geisha “ In our little fishing village of Yoroido, I lived in what I called a ” tipsy house.” It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing. As a child it seemed to me as if the ocean had caught a terrible cold, because it was always wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze–which is to say there was a burst of the wind with a tremendous spray. I decided our tiny house must have been offended by the ocean sneezing in its face from time to time, and took to leaning back because it wanted to get out of the way. Probably it would have collapsed if my father hadnt cut a timber from a wrecked fishing boat to prop up the eaves, which made the house look like a tipsy old man leaning on his crutch” (Golden 3).
This book, Memoirs of a Geisha, was written by Arthur Golden and first published in 1997. The novel has been reprinted different times by other publishers. The book is told in first person perspective and narrates a story of a geisha that works in Kyoto during the time of World War II. The above paragraph is descriptive because it describes the ocean in a way that a picture forms in the mind of readers. The paragraph also pays attention to the details by allowing readers to use all of his/her five senses: “… the ocean had caught a terrible cold, because it was always wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze…” The paragraph also employs the use of metaphors to assist in painting the picture in the readers mind. It shows, and does not tell because it describes the ocean in a way that one may think he/she is near the ocean.
Works Cited
Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a geisha: a novel. New York: Vintage Books, 1999. Print.