It is an extract taken from chapter 2 of David Lodge's novel. Nice work is an English novel written by David Lodge in 1988. The narrator introduces the main character, Robyn Penrose. Additional relevant function is introduce the character through her thoughts.

She is introduced by a third person omniscent narrator. The reader may perceive this as come expressions entered with parentheses (“a favourite phrase of her own”) or through phrases that reveal that the narrator knows what there are in her mind (“let us leave”). The narrator builds the character according to the categories belonging to the post modern novel. In particular she is periodizing the moment in which the charcter is being realized. In this way the narrator obtain a realistic effect, a principle of truthfulness and verisimilitude:

• at the beginning he creates a chronotopos: the setting of the extrac is quite unclear “back an hour or two in time, a few miles in space”. In addition the story is set in the fictionale city of Rummidge.

• the character is generated by contrast

• she is introduec through her convictions, dialect, proper name and surname: indeed the name Robyn Penrose is a male name that remind of he who fought for the poor protection, the surname evoks the idea of the pen, so the writing activity.

• Her profession is undefine, unstabile and relative that are the main feature of the post modernism. Indeed Robyn's academic position is very precarious.

• she is builds through her idea of the structural element of the novel, her interest (philophy and politics), her historical knowledge

The narrator expresses all her strong idea about the novel writing, the strong relationship between novel writing and economical production and the novel as a form of mass production. Indeed she though that “the novelist is a capitalist of the imagination”, product of imagination that is invested. Moreover the novel is considered the “first mass produced cultural artefact”).