such as ‘a grotesque sheen’, are nonsensical, and images such as ‘rusted iron suds’ are entirely imaginary, yet they immediately resonate with the reader, prompting a vivid image despite their surrealism.However, they are mainly intended to work in parallel with the prose style to enhance the already surreal narrative, and to provide a link between the unformed and transient narrative consciousness, and its literary counterpart. This surrealism is accentuated by the vignettes that make up the story, each one with a different setting and flowing organically into the next, which was influenced by Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer’ where each encounter with another character serves as a separate vignette, reflecting Neddy’s fractured memory, tied together by the ‘string of swimming pools’ named the ‘Lucinda’, much as I use the narrative consciousness to provide an element of continuity throughout ‘Ampersand’. Whilst I was drawn to the idea of using the aesthetic of the text to mirror the events of the narrative, I also felt that this threateningly measured look needed to be contrasted with a literary device that added to the organic and fluid quality of the prose. Therefore, I incorporated a water leitmotif into the text, for example the ‘transparent wash’, the ‘water surface’ and the ‘eel’, which helps to create a dream-like atmosphere whilst also highlighting the fluid narrative style. This was a technique present in several stimulus texts, for example throughout ‘The Swimmer’ Cheever likewise sustains a water leitmotif through the ‘pool(s)’, ‘water’ and ‘stream(s)’, mirroring the ‘Lucinda River’.
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