"The Frequency" and Other Writings Literary Elements

Essay/Creative non-fiction

The American zeitgeist of the late 20th century.

First-person narrator from the perspective the author.

By turns concerned, perplexed, suspicious and ironic.

Protagonist: Dan Rather. Antagonist: the mystery of what actually happened during the “Kenneth, what is the frequency” incident.

The essay’s conflict is determining what really happened during the incident with Dan Rather and his alleged attackers.

Anticlimax: it is never fully established with certainty what occurred that day.

“I want Dan Rather to be free” early in the essay ironically foreshadows the final image of Rather at the end: “There is Dan Rather, up in his tower, a prisoner of perplexity.”

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Multiple allusions are made to Snow White, specifically the version as written by the other major figure in the essay, author Donald Barthelme.

Imagery that compares the story to a postmodern fairy tale or legend is utilized throughout as a result of references to Snow White, Rapunzel and King Arthur.

“…how could the attackers—who knoew their victim well enough to communicate with coded language—then stalk and attack and the wrong man, especially when the `wrong man’ was nationally famous?”

Dan Rather than Donald Barthelme are placed in parallel throughout the text as result of similar ages, similar backgrounds, and both having lived in Houston at the same time. “Rather’s very name is contained within the name Barthelme. Barthelme’s last novel was The King, about King Arthur. Rathur? Lather? Editor-king? Who can say?” (One can say, however, this parallel reaches the point of being a big, big stretch on the part of the author.)

“Park Avenue is a hardly a spot for random violence” is an example of this literary technique which applies the entirety of the population and geography of Park Avenue to those heavily patrolled spots in the richest areas which actually are resistant to being hot spots for random acts of public violence.

The author quotes from a work of Donald Barthelme which is indicative of his offbeat prose which includes an idiosyncratic example of personification: “Once I caught Kenneth’s coat going down the stairs by itself but the coast was a trap and inside a Comanche who made a thrust with his short, ugly knife at my leg.”