A narrative is constructed to elicit a particular response from its audience. In the form of a written story, authors use specific narrative strategies to position the 'ideal reader' to achieve the intended understanding of the meanings of the text. Oliver Sacks's short story The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is an unusual tale because it does not show conventional plot development; the story contains no conflict or conflict resolution. The genre of the story is also difficult to define because it reads like an autobiographical account of an experience Sacks had with a patient while working as a neurologist. While it is arguable that the narrative is a work of nonfiction, it is nevertheless a work of representational nonfiction, distinct from the reflection of actual events. It is a construction, Sacks chose the elements that were included and omitted in the narrative and used narrative strategies to position readers to process the signs in the text and produce achieve the dominant understanding. This confusion between truth and fiction is similar to that of the "new journalism" genre. However, rather than being a journalist writing a piece of fictional journalism, Sacks is a doctor writing a fictional medical analysis. To influence readers' understanding of the narrative, Sacks used the point of view strategy of subjective narration, atypical in this story in that a characterization or representation of Oliver Sacks is the narrator and Oliver Sacks the person is the true author. The story is driven by characters rather than plot, and no matter how accurate a depiction of real people the characters are, they are constructions. Sacks gave the characters of Doctor P. and his namesake an admirable and sympathetic trait...... middle of paper ......tation test in which a person had to read the story without knowing that the real author is even the narrator and character, would probably read as a detailed work of fiction. Since readers know that Oliver Sacks is actually a neurologist, the meaning of the text changes. This is how the real author is distinguished from the implied author; the implied author is what the reader can infer from the material presented in the text, without any knowledge of the author's actual context. The knowledge that Oliver Sacks is actually a neurologist also positions readers to accept the narrator's version of events because they would be inclined to accept the privileged and authoritative narrative voice. The techniques of point of view, subjective narration, and characterization then position readers to accept the meanings presented in the text.