Shame | Style

Shame Style

Point of View

Shame is written in the first-person point of view, which is a natural form for the memoir. The narrator is an adult, looking back to her childhood and attempting to understand through a re-creation of the summer of 1952 who she was and what she was feeling. Although Ernaux uses a first-person narrator, she insists that she is retelling the events with the cold objectivity of a reporter. She accomplishes this by offering no analysis of her feelings or the events that stirred them. Rather, she describes things, makes lists of things, and breaks down things into their most elementary parts. It is as if she is writing what she sees, not what she feels.

Journal Writing

Shame is written as if Ernaux were keeping a journal. It is a form of writing that Ernaux often uses, whether she is writing fiction or nonfiction. In this way, she pulls her reader into her story as if offering a secret glance of her most private thoughts. The book also reads as if the author were writing only for herself; as if she were on a journey through her memories, trying to make sense of them. She is not writing to tell a story; although in the end a story is told, however unconventional it may be. It is bits and pieces strung together on a fine cord that Ernaux cleverly ties together in the process of examining the contents of her mind.

Lists

In the midst of her narrative, Ernaux often breaks away and offers her readers lists of things. At one point, she lists the contents of a box she has saved from childhood, a box...
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