Narrative is the most famous type of any text. Various purposes are communicated in a narrative type. However the way it is constructed is describing certain event, character or phenomenon in detail. Narrative prefer showing to telling and that the power of narrative. Reader will feel as he show by him self what happen in the text. Actually narrative can be fiction such as short story or novel and non-fiction like memoirs.

According to Madison smart Bell, the narrative design, or what we call form or structure, is of first and final importance to any work of fiction. In that structure, we will find elements of story; characterization, point of view, theme and plot. Plot is the way of the story constructed.

When we read a text, we can call it narrative as we see the following generic structure inside the text:

Orientation; the introduction of what is inside the text. What text is talk in general. Who involves in the text. When and where it happen.

Complication; what happens with the participants. It explores the conflict among the participants. Complication is the main element of narrative. Without complication, the text is not narrative. The conflict can be shown as natural, social or psychological conflict.

Resolution; this is the phase where the participants solve the problem aroused by the conflict. It is not matter whether the participants succeed or fail. The point is the conflict becomes ended.

Now let's read the following example of narrative text !


Story of Rabbit and Bear

Once upon a time, there lived as neighbours, a bear and a rabbit. The rabbit is a good shot. In contrary, the bear is always clumsy ad could not use the arrow to good advantage.

One day, the bear called over the rabbit and asked the rabbit to take his bow and arrows and came with bear to the other side of the hill. The rabbit was fearing to arouse the bear's anger so he could not refuse it. He consented and went with the bear and shot enough buffalo to satisfy the hungry family. Indeed he shot and killed so many that there was lots of meat left after the bear and his family had loaded themselves and packed all they could carry home.

The bear was very gluttonous and did not want the rabbit to get any of the meat. Th e rabbit could not even taste the blood from the butchering as the bear would throw earth on the blood and dry it up. The poor rabbit would have to go home hungry after his hard day's work.

The bear was the father of five children. The youngest child was very kind to the rabbit. He was very hearty eater. The mother bear always gave him an extra large piece of meat but the youngest child did not eat it. He would take it outside with him and pretended to play ball with the meat. He kicked toward the rabbit's house and when he got close to the door he would give the meat with such a great kick. The meat would fly into the rabbit's house. In this way, the poor rabbit would get his meal unknown to the papa bear.