Outside Reading 3

Four Narrators dominate the scene of Robert Ludlum's Bourne Supremacy. Two happen to be the same person. Each narrator tells their stories in different ways and gives a different feel of what is happening. While none actually tell the exact same event from their eyes they all do give accounts of events that have happened. This is reminiscent of the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer in the way that the story is told through multiple narrators.


"Breathing is breathing! Insisted Jason Bourne. "Being is being and thinking is thinking, added David Webb"(346). These two narrators are what makes this book so different from many books but also what makes it very similar Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Whenever there is direct, fast paced, action going on Bourne takes over telling the story. As I've mentioned in previous posts this gives the story a choppy, excited feel. What the reader sees is what Jason Bourne would see. When there is more rational thinking going on or one of the rare lulls in action Webb narrates the story. We think more about what is happening and what has happened which may make us remember something different than when we originaly saw it from the eyes of Jason Bourne. This is quite similar to how Foer uses Oskar, his granpa, and his grandma. Each of them will tell a story and often times it will be told again by one of the other characters. Oskar will always tell a story in an inquisitive way while his grandpa will tell it in a slightly more dry fashion. Grandma makes everything seem tragic which makes us see yet another story. Just like how Webb and Bourne will make the reader remember a story in a different way.

Now, because somehow I've avoided saying anything about plot, I'll give a summary of what has happened. The novel starts out by showing David and his wife Marie living the normal life that they longed for in the previous novel. Quickly though this life is disrupted when Marie is kidnapped by the government. David suspects it was the government and immediately does what they tell him to to get her back. The story moves to Hong Kong, China where David believes Marie is. He starts to make plans of his own but is aprehended and forced to cooperate. He is set on a mission to capture an assaassin that has been plaguing the east. The government thinks that he is the only one that can stop the assassin which is why they kidnap his wife. He would do anything for her and they take advantage of this.
Meanwhile Marie is not taking her situation sitting down. She quickly and cleverly finds a way to escape their custody and goes on the run with a friend fom the Canadian consulate named Catherine. The story continues following Bournes and Marie's quests to find each other.
Catherine is yet another strong individual that reminds the reader of Jason. She says, "You're a friend and a countrymen, my dear. And I am an angry woman"(277), in as Marie begins to question her quick thinking. We can tell from the tone of her writing that she is a serious woman and this, just like the multiple narrators above, give the reader a different picture of the event.