Reading Narrative Fable Featuring Past Tenses: Story of Rabbit and Bear

English Admin – Narrative text fable in the story of rabbit and bear. Narrative is the most famous type of text fro student of high school when learning English in classroom. There are some purposes to achieve in a narrative type. Narrative writers prefer showing to telling and that the power of narrative writing. Readers will feel as if they got the experiences by him self about what happens in the text. Actually narrative can be fiction such as short story or novel. Narrative writing is also found  in a 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, applying 4 elements of story; characterization, point of view, theme and plot is absolutely important. Plot is the way of the story constructed.

Now let’s read the following example of narrative text! The story is written using 4 past tenses. We will show you the list of them after reading it. Here we go!

Story of Rabbit and Bear

Once upon a time, there lived as neighbors, a bear and a rabbit. The rabbit was a good shot. In contrary, the bear was always clumsy and 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 preventing 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.

Generic Structure and Past Tenses as Dominant Language Feature of Narrative Text
When we read a text, we can call it narrative if we find the elements of the following generic structure inside the text. They are:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

The story of rabbit and the bear is given to learn and see an example of narrative text fable. This story is written using 4 past tenses. They are simple past tense nominal and verbal, past future tense, past continuous tense, and past perfect tense. The sentences in the story which use each of the tenses are listed below

Past Continuous in Narrative Text
The rabbit was preventing to arouse the bear’s anger
Past Perfect Tense in Narrative Text
The bear and his family had loaded themselves and packed all they could carry home.

Past Future Tense in Narrative text
The poor rabbit would have to go home hungry after his hard day’s work.
He would give the meat with such a great kick.
The meat would fly into the rabbit’s house.
The poor rabbit would get his meal unknown to the papa bear.
The bear would throw earth on the blood and dry it up.
He would take it outside with him and pretended to play ball with the meat.
Nominal Simple Past Tense in Narrative Text
The rabbit was a good shot.
The bear was always clumsy ad could not use the arrow to good advantage.
The bear was very gluttonous and did not want the rabbit to get any of the meat.
The bear was the father of five children.
The youngest child was very kind to the rabbit.
He was very hearty eater.
Verbal Simple Past Tense in Narrative Text
The rabbit could not even taste the blood from the butchering as
The mother bear always gave him an extra large piece of meat
The youngest child did not eat it
He kicked toward the rabbit’s house and when he got close to the door
There lived as neighbours, a bear and a rabbit.
The bear called over the rabbit and asked the rabbit
He could not refuse it.
He consented and went with the bear and shot enough buffalo to satisfy the hungry family.
He shot and killed so many buffalo
That is the example of narrative text fable featuring simple past tenses. Learning English text should be proceeded by having enough knowledge of certain grammatical structure before understanding the text as a whole. Grammar and structure including tenses are helps student understand the meaning of the story. So learning English today still need to have good understanding on grammar and structure.

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