Imagine you work as a ghost investigator and you’ve been
sent to a forest to investigate a ghost who resides in the heart of a secluded
underground cave. You need to travel to the forest, catch the ghost, and report
all the details to your department.
When you arrive in the forest, there are a lot of details
you can report to your department. The trees, the animals and birds, the
flowers, the fragrant breeze, the various sounds, the rocky walls of the cavern,
the bats and bugs; and all. Will you stop by and report these details to your
office or march right into the cave and report the details of the ghost?
Joan Didion’s writing style, also called “Single Observation
and Sparse Prose” bypasses the superfluous or unnecessary details from a piece
of writing and jumps right into the “shimmering” highlight. Joan starts her novels with a shimmering “picture in mind” and
her job is to decipher the grammar and the grammatical structure behind these
images. The technique works on “omission as power.”
As Tom Stevenson writes,
"Subtracting, Not Adding, Is
The Path To A Happier Life."
Didion’s principle works in the same way.
In writing, “single observation” is a stylistic device, but
it can also be looked upon as a “philosophy of perception.” In the same way a wild
animal strips away the prey’s skin, layer by layer, gnawing it down to the
bone, a piece of writing is stripped away of all the adjectives that are not
required or are unnecessary to the story. Didion emphasizes on exposing the
underlying structure of a situation, to make the reader feel its cold, hard
reality underneath.
Didion often described this type of writing as a whirlpool
of vertigo and nausea. The technique commits to structural austerity, raw
honesty, and an uncompromising “form-follows-function” technique while
stripping away too much of flowery descriptions or sentimentality with brutal dispassion
and cold detachment. It’s like focusing a camera so devotedly on one crack in a
road that the crack unfolds the entire city’s map and its backstory. She often
builds the piece around a single, piercing or devastating observation, from a
scene, a dialogue, an object, or any other element.
The Science: The Brain Process
Why does this "less is more" approach hit so hard?
It involves several key neurological and cognitive mechanisms.
It reduces “noise”
The very sad, lonely, and depressed woman sat quietly on the
library bench, apparently trying to read a book.
A sentence like this cluttered with multiple adjectives and
adverbs makes things difficult and noisy for the brain. It overwhelms the brain
with high cognitive load on the language processing centers.
By assimilating a cluttered description into a pointed focus
concentrates the energy of the brain, controls the information, and declares it
quickly rather than elaborating it with long-stretched descriptions. Not that
description is bad, but this is just one of the ways we can experiment with our
writing.
It exercises the brain with “predictive coding”
Since the writing style only enables very sparse, tight, and
specific description of the story, it is left to the reader to fill the gaps in
this description, which makes them an active co-creator of the story, rather
than just being on the other side of it. In the world of science, this process
is called “predictive coding.”
Reaches straight into the subconscious mind
Abstract concepts or sensory details might trigger certain
emotions in a person, but the “single observation” bypasses the world of
thoughts, intellect, and senses, and directly reaches into the depths of the
subconscious mind, making the reader “experience” the coldness or the sadness,
rather than just painting a picture of it. It is the written equivalent of the
psychological concept “emotional distancing.”
You are reading a book and you come across a word that is
new to you. You type the word in Google search or pull out your dictionary to
check its meaning. And like this, a new word gets lodged in your brain in that
moment. You are strolling in the park and you pass by a group of young guys who
utter a slang word that you have never heard before. Again, you type the slang
in Google search box and check its meaning. Another word gets stored in the
vocabulary database of your brain. Then one day, an elderly relative visits
your house and as she’s talking to your parents in the native language, she
says a word that you feel is interesting, and you jot it down in your notebook.
Every day (If you are a writer, then every moment probably),
your brain absorbs zillions of new words, meticulously collecting them from the
world, from your experiences, from books, and information, and storing them in
your inner library. How does this happen? Why are we humans able to learn new
words while the lion and the ants seem totally helpless and incapable of
grasping them. Unless it is a movie with animal characters, you wouldn’t likely
hear a bear say “hey dude, what’s up?” or a crocodile tell you that he would
like to remain “lowkey.”
And even though every creature has its own vocabulary,
humans alone can grasp it in a way that no other creature can, thanks to their
super-intelligent brain.
Vocabulary sponging refers to a subconscious process in
which a person’s brain acts like a sponge. As they read a book of fiction, this
sponge absorbs or extracts interesting words from the book. The brain doesn’t
just absorb a word, it also absorbs its meaning, also generates interpretations
related to it, and decides when and how it can be used. Until then, the word
will be stored in the brain’s vocabulary database.
When it comes to learning words and retaining them in
memory, fiction proves way better than just ordinary dictionaries, manuals, or
encyclopaedias. You are more likely to recall a word that you learned while
reading a short story more than a word you learned from a typical vocabulary
flashcard. In fact, many of the words were originally coined or invented in
fiction novels. These words come under the category of “neologisms.”
For example, the slang “nadsat” was coined in Anthony
Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange. Famous terms like “freelance,” “Big
Brother,” and “Catch-22” too were first used in famous novels.
Science behind the process of “Vocabulary Sponging”
What happens in your brain when it absorbs a new word like a
sponge and stows it away in your vocabulary database?
Well, first of all, it does something called the
“Inferential Mapping” to fill the unobserved gaps or empty areas in the brain
using the newly-inputted information of the word.
The mapping process involves three parts of the brain - Visual
Word Form Area (VWFA), Wernicke’s Area, and Hippocampus.
Neural Triangulation
This mapping starts with a process called “neural
triangulation.” The brain activates three of its regions to decode the word’s
meaning. A region called the “Visual Word Form Area (VWFA)” scans and studies
the visual form or the physical shape of the letters.
The second part, called the Wernicke’s Area processes the
linguistic meaning, syntax, and other details of the word. The Hippocampus, the
emotion manager, starts forming connections between this new word and your
existing memories. Using these details, the brain constructs a
“High-Dimensional Semantic Space,” where it pins the word based on its
neighbouring words.
The second step is “Statistical Induction”
Human brain is a fabulous pattern-recognition machine. When
it encounters a new or unfamiliar word like “pulchritudinous,” it starts the
process of “statistical induction.” It starts associating this new word with
words like “beautiful,” “radiant,” or “stunning.” Based on how and where the
word is used, it calculates the probability of the word’s correct and nearest
meaning. A part called the “Inferior Frontal Gyrus” or the “context checker” narrows
down the word’s meaning through elimination of unsuitable ones.
The third step is simply deep encoding through repetition
When your brain picks up a new word from a book, novel, or a
story, your brain initiates the process of “narrative transport” by releasing
chemicals like oxytocin and dopamine. These chemicals signal the brain that the
information being processed is important and needs to be paid attention to. In
fiction, this impulse becomes even more charged up due to the addition of
emotion. Amygdala’ the brain’s emotional center, becomes active. The more books
you read, the more this process triggers in the brain, the deeper new vocabulary
gets encoded in the brain.
Inside a part called the “temporal lobe,” the brain creates
a placeholder or marker for the new word. Another part, called the prefrontal
cortex, uses the story to fill the placeholder. And then, the next time you
read that word, the brain fires that neural pattern again. By repetition of
this process, the new word becomes assimilated in your memory.
Let’s explore this fascinating feature with a short story:
He had just finished reciting the
spell and was about to wave his magic wand when something diverted his
attention. He stopped. He turned his head and saw two large glowing yellow eyes
staring at him from the glass window. Solmikki shivered and recoiled in horror.
Different elements of vocabulary in this short story,
including words and phrases, will trigger different areas of the brain to lodge
themselves in the brain.
For example, the Spell: “Abraduberahoohoodaamissishoo...” When
the brain hears this gibberish term, at first it feels puzzled because it
cannot grasp its meaning or associate it with a word or phrase. So, the
prefrontal cortex looks at the narrative setup instead to decide how to categorize
the term. After reading that the character of Solmikki pulled out a Magic Book
of Spirit Invocations and recited this term, the brain stows it away under the
category of “incantations.”
Another word from the book, the name “Googoodonyn” signifies
to the brain that it is related to a powerful character or a villainous entity due
to the narration associated with it in the story. Since he is the type of
character who had his eyes set on Solmikki’s kingdom and someone who abducted
this character, his name, though bizarre, is stored in the brain with the association
of a villain.
Another word, the kingdom’s name “BluBlaBoo” also
illustrates this process. Although the sound of this word indicates that the
word refers to something bouncy, babylike, or rhythmic, the story actually
depicts it as a “shadowy” kingdom. By creating a contrast between the babylike
vibe displayed by the sound of the word and the context “shadowy,” the reader stores
the word with the association of uncanny or dark fiction, something that is
strange and sinister.
The name of the character Nanto, who arrives in the ending
of the story, is stored in the brain through the process of “associative
mapping.” Although the brain is not too familiar with Nanto, it knows that this
character discovered Solmikki’s book on the hill. So, the brain creates a “neural
bridge” between the two characters to recall the word from the memory whenever
required in the future.
Lastly, the word “Nimble” used in the story shows how
fiction can “redefine” vocabulary. Nimble, the word generally refers to quick
and light in movement. In this story, it seems to refer to something which is “small,
faint, and delicate.”
The setting sun filled the sky with orange, but
when she looked up from her room’s window, the sky appeared grey. It was a
cold, winter evening and after 6 pm, a clock on her room’s wall had stopped
ticking. Outside, a street dog yelled a frightening call. He must be feeling
cold, she wondered.
She flung a thick pink shawl on her shoulders and reached
for the attic to get an old sweater from the trunk. The wooden stairs were
rickety and old. As she climbed, they creaked.
She hadn’t climbed this staircase
in the past three months. The lights upstairs needed to be changed. Most of
them had their glass broken by an aggressive storm that came a few months ago, in
the monsoon. She had to carry a lamp as she climbed the stairs. As she put one
foot after the other, the lamp dangling from her fingers oscillated from side
to side like a pendulum. As it did, it spilled pools of glowing yellow light on
the giant paintings that hung on the side walls. The gold trimmed edges of the
paintings glittered in the lamplight. Some pools revealed expressionless faces
of her family members that looked as if they were gazing right at her, not in a
happy way.
She reached the attic and unbolted the door. Everything inside was dusty.
The murmuring dust particles formed a disturbing halo around the lamp. She
walked to the bronze trunk and tried to open it. It wouldn’t open. Its super-old
antique handle seemed to be rusting with years of neglect. She placed the lamp
on top of an empty shelf. To squeeze out maximum strength of her muscles, she
stretched her right leg from the back and started pulling on the trunk’s
stubborn handle vigorously.
It must have been close to five minutes when the
handle appeared to surrender to her will. She pulled it from the knob, swung it
upwards, and settled it against the wall. The inside of the trunk looked like
another world in contrast to the suffocating desert of dust that surrounded the
trunk.
Lounging within the dark blue velvet lining of the trunk, there were expensive
and colorful fabrics, apothecary-style glass bottles of perfume, thick
hardcover books, and boxes of mysterious trinkets that glittered in the lamplight.
She bent down to dive into this vast ocean of luxury and pulled out a silk bag.
She pulled a string and unfastened the bag and pulled out an orange sweater.
The sweater appeared to have been sewen for a toddler. Above one sleeve, near the
left shoulder, there was a ripped strand of orange wool. For just as much time
as the sound of a sparrow’s chirp lasted outside, she stared at the sweater,
lost in thoughts.
Then, as if jolted back to the present moment, she flumped
the trunk close, grabbed the lamp, and rushed down the stairs. The stairs
creaked even more, the echoes of their groaning sounds screaming at her as she
walked away towards the front door. She flanked the door open and stepped out
on the street, where she thought, was the dog that was yelling the frightening
calls due to cold.
The dog wasn’t there. She stood there for a long time. She
looked here and there, on the sides and around the neighbours’ gardens. The dog
had disappeared. Where did he go? Will he die in the winter? She looked at the
orange sweater. If he would have waited just a little bit more, she could have
saved him. With the saddening thought possessing her, she walked into the house
and closed the door tight shut.
She walked to her room, turned off the lights,
and slipped inside the blanket on her bed. Moon’s uncaring white light entered
through the window and spilled itself here and there. The curvy crests and
valleys of her blanket cast shadows on the ceiling. She was still sitting, not
lying down for sleep.
She could not know whether it was her time to sleep yet,
because the clock had stopped ticking. So she took out the orange sweater clenched
under her elbow. Faint shadows of a tree leaves crept across the floor. She didn’t
notice it. She was busy looking at the sweater, as if recalling something she
thought she had forgotten.
Then it came to her, tumbling like a rush of
chemicals inside her body. She couldn’t see in the dark but she knew that
droplets of sweat were bubbling up on her forehead, inside her chest, and
between her legs. She remembered it, scene by scene, sound by sound. As she
did, she started crying, at first in faint sobs, then in full-blown screams.
The
frightening screams shook awake a street dog from his sleep. He thought someone
around was feeling cold. He shivered. In the sky, the moon hid behind a cluster
of clouds.
What emotion this short story triggered inside you? You’ll
probably say, grief. And although, there are bits of horror, mystery, and humor
in the story as well, the primary emotion that it evoked was grief. You may
like to call its emotional cousins like melancholy, depression, sadness, or
pain, but essentially it was grief.
For this story, grief is the primary pintuck that is holding
together the entire fictional narrative. This illustrates what the celebrated
writer Edgar Allan Poe called the “single effect theory,” also known by phrases
like “unity of impression” and “unity of effect.”
According to Poe, the “single effect theory” is a brilliant way
to learn how to craft a short story. The theory states that a short story
should revolve around a single, intense emotion, such as dread, grief, anger,
fear, etc. You can refer to Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions for a full list
of emotions you can use as starting prompts for your story.
The idea of Poe’s Single Effect Theory is that every
sentence, every incident, every detail, or character should converge to provoke
one, singular, pre-conceived, desired emotion in the reader. It can also be a
single psychological or intellectual state, such as confusion or contemplation.
Nothing that is extraneous to this singular state should be added to the story.
It’s like, looking at the story as if it were a machine engineered
with various elements where each element worked together to serve a singular
purpose. You can also imagine it with the example of a song’s guitar notes. The
notes might have different leads, multiple chords, but there is always a dominant
chord that guides the rest of the melody.
Poe believed that writing isn’t a random craft born out of
spontaneous bursts of inspiration. Rather, it’s quite alike solving a
mathematical problem. A story doesn’t come out from a random burst of inspiration,
but is constructed piece by piece with words, sounds, images, and other
elements. He, himself, applied this technique in his work, where he explored
the darkest recesses of his mind, the madnesses, the obsessions, the
psychological terrors.
His poem, The Raven, is centered around the emotion of
deep melancholy. Many of his works express the emotion of poetic beauty often
linked to sadness and loss.
His “Single Effect Theory” is a fascinating lesson that also
teaches us a way of exploring our own inner psyche, where we can magnify each
emotion and lay it out bare and naked on the paper for our mind to see and
reflect. It’s a focused meditation into the self carried out on the vehicle of
words, via writing. It’s both a prompt and the way, whichever way you like to
see it, and use it.
For decades, centuries maybe, visual artists have drawn on
this proverb to feel good while writers are left gazing at the 1000-word draft
that took them a whole week to write. Not that there is any separation between
writers and artists, but there is another way to look at this proverb, that
crossed my mind.
Sometimes what one picture can say with its compact visual,
even a thousand words struggle to express. This is true, indeed. But if you are
a writer who is passionate about (or just interested in) writing, this proverb holds
a brilliant exercise you can do, to enhance not just your writing, but also
your mind.
For artists, the proverb presents a contracting exercise,
where they have to condense lots of little elements into a single frame and
present a big idea in a little space. For writers, on the other side, the
proverb presents an expanding exercise. You can call it brainstorming.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, this picture is a
metaphorical treasure trove for you to explore ideas, new perspectives, and
kick start your writing process each time you feel the block.
This is what I mean to say. Take one picture. It can be
anything - a photograph, an
illustration, an AI image, a painting you found on Pinterest, a doodle you saved
on Instagram, an ad poster, photo from a childhood album, or even your own
selfie. Take this picture and take a good look at it. By good look, I mean, immerse
your gaze in its details – the colors, the shadows, the patterns, the textures,
the setting, the expressions (if there are characters). These details are
potent triggers and prompts for you to get your sleeves rolling and dive into a
whole writing project.
Imagine the possibilities.
One picture can help you write a thousand books. This idea
can even trigger a dramatic iteration cycle between artists and writers. Artist
will produce a picture, writer will write a thousand books, artist will read
these books and produce a different picture, writer will again write a thousand
books. And the process goes on…forever.
This is how just one idea, no matter how good or how boring
it is, can generate a whole new universe that can function on an iterative,
self-generating loop.
From a simple proverb to a writing exercise to a tantalizing
possibility…
I am impressed. I am going to try out this exercise. If you too find it exciting, do let me know!
Ever since he lost his wife to a snake bite, Telmo Tinga
transformed forever. He withdrew from the world and dedicated himself to a life
of recluse. Enshrouded by the green cloak of looming forest trees, his little
hut was both his home and his work station. For as far as his eyes could see,
the ground was enveloped in prickly carpets of long, pinny grasses. Shooting
from within these grasses, giant trees rose proudly, spreading their gnarly
branches like veins of a monster’s claws trying to posssess the blue canvas of
the sky. On most days, there wasn’t any animal in sight, let alone a human.
A
small cloud constantly hovered above his hut, raining down a perpetual drizzle
on everything that lay, stood, or hung inside his hut, an unrelenting reminder
of the intense sorrow that lingered in his heart. What would have made an
ordinary person insane, became the new normal for Telmo. After years of
battling his own grief, Telmo had befriended the hovering cloud, the constantly
drizzling water, and a strange routine where he spent his days talking to his
tools. He used these tools to craft items of furniture, home decoration, and
show pieces. At the end of every month, he visited the city to sell these items
to a big trade emporium for good amount of money.
He spent a portion of the money to buy home essentials and
saved the rest of it in his home bank for buying new tools or for the rainy
days. Rest of the days, he spent his time interacting with his tools. The
tools, like his family members, listened to his thoughts, his laments, his
sorrows, his memories, his happinesses. While he banged their tips on sheets of
metal or rubbed their blades against blocks of wood or pummelled ornamented
designs with veneer, the tools listened to his stories, with patience.
One morning when he woke up to look into the mirror, horror
struck him. The mirror was missing. There was just wall, plain mud-colored wall
in front of his eyes. This wasn’t however what horrified him. What horrified
him was what he saw when he lifted his gaze. The mirror wasn’t missing. It was
just hanging at a height. He turned around his gaze to scan other things. It
seemed, that everything had gotten enlarged into giant sizes. Even the small
cushioned chair appeared to be surpassing his own height. He jumped and hopped
on top of the chair and tried to look at himself in the mirror. The cloud
hovering above the hut continued to rain down drizzle.
Little dollops of liquid
plopping down caused one of the cushion’s edges to turn wet. He jumped over the
cushion and tried to look at his reflection in the mirror. Disbelief enveloped
him as he noticed that he was no longer a human, he was an insect, although he
still seemed to have a human mind. He could still think, describe things, have
feelings and opinions. But his body had turned into an insect, a giant beetle
with silver-black metallic body, a tiny round head with two antenna erupting
from it and two googly eyes.
Telmo noticed that his metallic body had soaked up all the
water from the cushion. The cushion was now dry. He jumped on the ground where
the drizzle had wetted it. He noticed that his body again soaked up the
drizzle. Telmo stepped out of the hut and started crawling towards the roof. Once
he reached the roof top, he took a long jump to try and touch the hovering
cloud. He latched on to the cotton candy-like cloud and shifted his body on top
of it, in the same way he had been sitting on the cushion. His body started
soaking up the moisture in the cloud. Within a few moments, his body had sopped
up all the water. The cloud dissolved in the mist and Telmo dropped on the
roof, his belly holding all the water his body had absorbed.
Crouching underneath a mallet, he slept. The next day he
woke up, he felt different. His chest felt open, his abdomen pulsing with warm
swirls of breath, his head dizzy yet light. He looked up. The hovering cloud had
vanished. He settled down to work on a lamp he had been working on before he
turned into an insect. He tried to talk to his tools, but the tools wouldn’t
respond, as if their squeaky, creaky voices had died, along with the hovering
cloud. Extreme silence jolted Telmo into an intense pang of loneliness and
longing. He couldn’t hold back anymore. He slumped down on the ground and burst
into tears. He kept crying until evening, then sat there gazing at the fleeting
colors of the sky. Golden, orange, pink, purple, blue, black.
Night set in. He walked inside the hut and embraced his late
wife’s photo. He no longer felt grief of her loss. He was ready to move on.
The following morning, while he was working on the lamp, a
group of travellers emerged from the cover of grassy bushes and approached his
hut. Reaching the door of the front courtyard, one of them walked towards a
small jewellery cabinet Telmo had left out to dry after a coat of paint. Others
walked around, gazing at other items that lay scattered in the courtyard. Returning
to Telmo, they gave him a big order. He was to create thousand bamboo-glass
chairs, for which he would get about 10 million rupees.
For the next few months, he dedicated himself to creating
bamboo-glass chairs, each daubed with a doodle of his wife’s face and the
initial of her name. Once the project was over, he collected all the photos and
belongings of her and bid them a farewell by burning. He had liberated both
himself and her, something which she would have wanted for him if he could talk
to her. He assembled his ash in a tub, poured it in a forest river, and walked
away, seeking a new partner and his dreams of success.
Apart from being interesting and entertaining, the tale of
Telmo Tinga is a fantastic example that illustrates a storytelling concept popularized
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Called “Magical Realism,” the concept, as its name
suggests, is a writing strategy where elements of magical or supernatural
worlds are presented as natural parts of realistic world, often with a very
mundane and matter-of-fact tone or realistic setting.
The concept allows the writer to explore the realm of magic
to illuminate the real. With the introduction or intrusion of magic,
supernatural, impossible, unrealistic, bizarre, uncanny, or unusual elements,
the writer presents the fusion of realistic and magical/fantastic. Boundaries
between speculation/magic and reality are blurred. The aim, is to express
emotions and normalize magic with amalgamation and practical integration of
magic and reality.
What elements in this story illustrate the concept of
“magical realism”?
1.Normalization of the fantastic – The perpetual
cloud hovering above Telmo’s hut, constantly raining drizzle, represents a
fantastical metaphor for the intense grief and unending sorrow that prevails in
his heart. Yet the cloud is depicted in an entirely natural and realistic
setting.
2.Fusion of realism and fantasy – Telmo’s story
involves a blend of the magical and the mundane. The secluded hut in the forest
and the hovering cloud; his job as a craftsman, selling goods in the city, and
the talking tools.
3.Anthropomorphism with magical tools as a Coping
Mechanism – Telmo’s core routine, where he talks to his tools as if they were
his family members or friends, represents anthropomorphism, a concept where
human characteristics are attributed to non-human entities. While drenched in
extreme isolation and the profound grief of losing his wife, Telmo uses these
magical “talking tools” as a psychological coping strategy. The loss of the
cloud and the subsequent silence of the tools at the end represents his mind no
longer needing to project that connection—the coping mechanism is dissolved
because his grief is gone.
4.Thermodynamics and Phase Transition (The Insect
Transformation and Metamorphosis) - Telmo's instantaneous and unexplained
transformation into a small, metallic, water-absorbing insect that retains a
human mind. - This radical, magical/dream-like physical change is presented as
a simple/realistic event. The insect is depicted to possess a magical ability
of swallowing up grief (water). This small metallic creature soaks up the
moisture from the cushion, the ground, and finally, the hovering cloud. This
element depicts the scientific concept of “thermodynamic equilibrium.”
With the act of physically absorbing the
energy of grief, Telmo’s body naturally arrives at a state of emotional
stability or thermodynamic equilibrium, thereby, transforming into a healed
state.
5.Magical Companionship and extreme ecology: the
story presents Telmo in an extreme environment of isolation and recluse where
he relies on the magical and supernatural elements as a crutch to manage his
emotions. The description of "prickly carpets of long, pinny grasses"
and giant trees forming "gnarly branches like veins of a monster’s claws"
emphasizes a wild, aggressive environment hostile to human connection.
Extreme isolation, recluse, and grief forces him into an
emotional breakdown and eventually, symbiosis. While the cloud of intense
sorrow constantly hovers above him, the tools act as his companions in
catharsis, listening to his sorrows. When the cloud finally bursts, his reality
collapses and he is jolted into a rapid symbiosis. Turning into an insect,
which essentially is a materialization of his sorrow, he drinks up the grief, and
moves on into radical acceptance. Eventually, his reality starts to shift. He
begins to heal. He receives the big order and he feels ready to move into a new
life, a transformed version of himself.
Telmo's journey from paralyzing grief to emotional liberation,
with the magical happenings serving as symbols of his internal state and
necessary steps toward healing. His old biology, his old ecosystem, his old
mind are now just history. By the end of the story, Telmo turns into an
entirely new person. So, basically, the story uses elements of magic and
fantasy to shift his reality from old to new. This fusion and intersection of
realism and magic is what marks this storytelling device.
