A Genettian analysis applied to Getting home safely

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This is a Genettian analysis applied to the short story Getting home safely by Jeff Noon. Genette is one of the most important narratologists and he focuses not on the tale but on how it is being told. Genette has made six questions from which he discusses the way the story is narratised.
The telling can according to Genette be either mimetic or diegetic. A mimetic text is one that is showing you exactly what is happening. It is usually more detailed about the setting than a diegetic text. Mimetic texts are also making use of direct dialogues which are making the mimetic texts very easy to distinguish. Since the mimetic texts are very detailed they result in ‘slow telling‘. A diegetic text is the opposite to a mimetic because instead of telling us what is happening, it summarises what has happened. It is simply telling us what has happened without letting us know how it happened. This text is mimetic since it is not very summarising in its way of telling us the story. It also let us know of the setting and it feels like we are being shown what has happened. But the failing thing if we would say that it is mimetic would be that it does not contain any direct speech as in a dialogue. But I would still claim that it is told in a mimetic way almost all the way anyway. It is just the first paragraph that is diegetic because there the narrator goes back in time to tell us what has happened in the beginning of the night. You can see this by looking at the quote “Gone two in the morning and a gang of us were leaving a Megadog gig at the Academy on Oxford Road, Manchester” (p.189). In that sentence the narrator summarises what has happened instead of telling us how it is happening.
A text can be focalised in different ways: by external, internal and zero focalisation. A text with external focalisation is a text where the reader is an observer of what is said and done as if they were at the scene. In a text with internal focalisation the focus lies upon what the characters think and feel. The third and most common alternative is zero focalisation or better known as omniscient focalisation. Zero focalisation has many similarities with internal focalisation but the difference is that with zero focalisation you do not only get to know of the feelings of one character but of several. This text is told with internal focalisation since we do not only get to know what is said and done but also what the main character thinks and feels as in “By now I‘m worried that I‘ve lost my original party“ (p.190).
There are four categories of narrators but a narrator can be more than just one. First there is the covert narrator. The covert narrator is a storyteller without a name, a stranger telling us the story. Then we have the overt narrator who might be participating in the story. The overt narrator has a name, gender and history. A heterodiegetic narrator is an outsider while a homodiegetic narrator is present in the story. The narrator in this story is participating in everything that we are being told. The narrator also has a gender and history but in this case no name. This makes the narrator homodiegetic and overt.
Does this story have any flashes backwards (analeptic parts) or forward (proleptic parts)? You could say that the diegetic part in the beginning is an analeptic part since the narrator goes back in time to tell us what happened that night while the rest of the story is told in the present tense. Whether this story is in medias res (when a story begins in the middle) or not can be hard to tell since it starts in the middle of the narrator’s night but in the beginning of his dream. If I have to choose I would say that it is in medias res.
It is very common that a story has a frame or primary narrative with an embedded narrative within it. When that is the case it most often is the embedded story that is the main story. This story does not contain any embedded narratives within the primary narrative. Because it only has a primary narrative makes it a single-ended story. It does not have any intrusive parts because it has no embedded story to intrude.
This story is also quite remarkable in its way of representing the speech and thoughts because everything the narrator says or thinks is mimetic. For example he or she says "I´m in a dream!" instead of "I said I was in a dream" which he or her would have said if it would have been transposed. There is one more way that the narrator could have expressed him or herself and that would have been in a narratised way when it would say “He said he was in a dream”.
This short story has been very beneficial to make a Genettian analysis on. I did not find any difficulties whatsoever to follow Genette’s model when I was looking at this story. I did not even have to make any compromises except for maybe a few times and then not at important parts.
The narrator is telling us what happens in first person and that makes us getting closer to the story. And the fact that we get to know of his thoughts and feelings makes us even more involved in and touched by what happens. Genette’s theory has made me understand why it feels like I am close to the narrator and more aware of how the writer tries to catch me. Without applying Genette’s theory I would not even have noticed it. I have not had any help by Genette when trying to understand the ending. It is an open ending and we do not know if the narrator really is in a dream or simply just drunk or high on drugs. The confusion starts when the narrator is hearing strang...