Intended Audience?

[NickAdams]

I was reading Don Quijote and noticing that I pay attention to narrative and humor when I first read a book. Two exceptions: for Faulkner, it's my emotional reaction to the situations; for Borges, it's the meaning. I feel I'm missing out when others are reading for character or plot, which I follow, but I don't ask questions about them.

I was thinking about the unreliable narrator and why they are such. I never ask, as many do, is this author unreliable. My question is: Who is the narrator's intended audience? This only applies to first-person narrative, which I consider Quijote to be, where the historian is a character telling his findings of the famous knight. If Holden was telling the story to phonies, would he have been more passive, or is he and that's where the angst comes in.
The narrators intended audience is their motive for lying, honesty, resistence and etc.

Has anybody else asked themselves this?

Please post the title of a book written in the first-person and give us their intended audience, or atleast who you think it is.

[Charles Darnay]

I think, regardless of first or third person narration, you should realize that it is the author speaking (through the character or characters) and so the question should not be who is the narrator's intended audience but the author's, becasue, narrators are all fictional, from the historian in Don Quixote to the narrator of lets say, Les Miserables. With this question in mind, well it really depends on the work. If we are focusing here on Don Quixote, I would say that the intended audience for Cervantes is for his fellow countrymen who may have forgotten those simple joys in life. Such is just my opinion though.

[ThousandthIsle]

I just finished reading Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier), and about 2/3 of the way through the book, we find that the narrator has been very unreliable. Her interpretations of her careful documentations (of everything from conversations through facial expressions) have been missed the mark entirely.

Du Maurier produced an enjoyable suspense, but Rebecca was most of all written as a character study in human jealousy. I would say that the narrator directed her thoughts to a faceless audience who would give her the sympathy and understanding and encouragement she didn't recieve at Manderly. The thought that "someone out there must understand" is what I think enabled her to go off on her tangents and suberge herself in feelings of inferiority - and all around blow everything out of proportion.

[Literary_Cat]

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a first-person narrative with an unreliable narrator and (I feel) a distinct message to communicate to the audience. I love all the uncertainties in the book--the first of which is the gender of Scout. Even better, though, is what Scout does not know about her father, the trial, Boo Radley--even her brother. If the intended audience will pay attention to what Scout gets wrong, it may be able to more readily discern Lee's thematic point.

Other (somewhat modern) examples: The Poisonwood Bible, The House on Mango Street, An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose...

Was this along the lines of what you were looking for, Nick?

[PeterL]

I was thinking about the unreliable narrator and why they are such. I never ask, as many do, is this author unreliable. My question is: Who is the narrator's intended audience? This only applies to first-person narrative, which I consider Quijote to be, where the historian is a character telling his findings of the famous knight. If Holden was telling the story to phonies, would he have been more passive, or is he and that's where the angst comes in.
The narrators intended audience is their motive for lying, honesty, resistence and etc.

Has anybody else asked themselves this?

Please post the title of a book written in the first-person and give us their intended audience, or at least who you think it is.

In most novels the world is the intended audience, and the narrator is simply a vehicle that the author uses to convey whatever. Consider Foucault's Pendulum the intended audience is the reader, and the narrator is careful but wrong, but not as wrong as most of the characters. In {i]The Aluminum Man the protagonist recognised that he was ignorant, but events were even more surprising than he thought; and clearly it was addressed to the world at large. I don't think that it is important whether the narrator is reliable, because the actions and reactions of the characters create the situation that the author wishes to convey. One nice thing about unreliable characters is that they seem more human.

[NickAdams]

I think, regardless of first or third person narration, you should realize that it is the author speaking (through the character or characters) and so the question should not be who is the narrator's intended audience but the author's, becasue, narrators are all fictional, from the historian in Don Quixote to the narrator of lets say, Les Miserables. With this question in mind, well it really depends on the work. If we are focusing here on Don Quixote, I would say that the intended audience for Cervantes is for his fellow countrymen who may have forgotten those simple joys in life. Such is just my opinion though.

True, but how about in the context of the books reality?


Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a first-person narrative with an unreliable narrator and (I feel) a distinct message to communicate to the audience. I love all the uncertainties in the book--the first of which is the gender of Scout. Even better, though, is what Scout does not know about her father, the trial, Boo Radley--even her brother. If the intended audience will pay attention to what Scout gets wrong, it may be able to more readily discern Lee's thematic point.

Other (somewhat modern) examples: The Poisonwood Bible, The House on Mango Street, An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose...

Was this along the lines of what you were looking for, Nick?

But who is the audience? ThousandthIsle said a faceless audience. Something like that.


In most novels the world is the intended audience, and the narrator is simply a vehicle that the author uses to convey whatever.

I believe it all starts like that, but something eles grows out of it.