The extract, I am going to analyse is taken from David Lodge's Nice Work written in 1982. According to the period it belongs to Postmodernism.

Right from the start the intelligent reader is able to understand that the narrator was speaking about a male character called Vic Wilcox; after the description of this male character he/she introduces another of the protagonists: Robyn Penrose. The narrator presents the new relevant female character thanks to two narrative techniques: flashback  and change in space. The speaking voice is a third person omiscent narrator, who knows everything about everyone like a god. The first piece of information that he/she gives to the reader is that the new character that he/she is intoducing is completely different from the previous one. Thanks to the information the reader can conjecture that all the book is made up thanks to the comparison and the different ideas of the two characters. Later the speaking voices presents the most important belief in Robyn’s life: she doesn’t believe in the concept of character. Reading the previous thought, the reader can immediately understand that this new character is a very educated person who probably belongs to college world. After that the narrator confirms the reader’s expectations saying that she is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Rummidge. The characterization is built starting from the name of the character: Robyn recalls english hero  Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor , and Penrose which is a compound word (the word "pen" refers to the semantic field of writing, and the word “rose” refers to the semantic field of feelings). Then the characterization is also made up thanks to the character's thoughts and her occupation. 


Robyn Penrose thinks that the character is only a burgeois myth and an illusion  and she compas it with the ideology of capitalism.

She explains that the rise of the novel had coincided with the rise of capitalism and also that the triumph of the novel had coincided with the triumph of capitalism. According to Postmodernis, the traditional idea of "character" is only an illusion, because it can no longer be considered stable and definite. This concept is called "deconstruction of the character" and it is one of the most relevat features of postmodernist thought.re of Postmodernism.


Later the narator suggests the idea that Robyn is protestant to link the character to parable of the talents.
After that he/she introduces another important feature of Postmodernism: saying that "every text is a product of intertextuality" the narrator wants to highlight that it is not a creation, but a mixture of citations. In the end the character is presented through her name, religion, thoughts, thories : (the character is feminist and antihumanist), philosophy (the word "semiotic capitalism" better explains her philosophy and physical appearance)and physical appearance.