NARRATIVE BREADCRUMBS IN CHARLES MARTIN’S SEND DOWN THE RAIN
NARRATIVE BREADCRUMBS IN CHARLES MARTIN’S SEND DOWN THE RAIN

Summary/Abstract: We are analyzing here the novel Send Down the Rain by Charles Martin from the perspective of what we have called narrative breadcrumbs, meaning details that connect with one another to provide relevant interpretations bearing on characters and events. We notice that some of these hints or breadcrumbs are faulty, in the sense that they mislead us, the readers, sending us on false leads. The first section after the introduction deals thoroughly with precisely this type, showing how this strategy occurs at the beginning of the story. The rest of the sections focus on other types of such meaningful clues, both simpler ones, such as cues present in people, marks in a landscape, drawing, and outer and inner scars, and more complex ones, which are dedicated their own sectors in the paper, namely: blending separate parts of oneself and bonding with others in intrapersonal and interpersonal communication, chronological-genealogical causalities, truth and deception in personal and group (hi)stories, detective work, and the reconstruction of lives through fixing objects. The perspective is cultural and narrative studies.

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