Narrative Flashbacks

A character may occasionally take up a chair and narrate a narrative within a story, as in The Odyssey. Alternately, a character could come across old letters or diaries from another person, which would reveal some of the book's major secrets.

Flashbacks in Literature: Examples from For Whom the Bell Tolls

In Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the protagonist Pilar spends a significant amount of time describing killings that took place in her village during the Spanish Civil War. It's one of the most well-known literary uses of flashbacks and a grim retelling of the conflict. Hemingway employs these flashbacks to provide both character and historical context, even if the events are not directly related to the current plot.

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