AuntShecky
11-30-2007, 02:55 PM
In some art forms, a narrator is at best redundant and at worst intrusive. In acutely visual media, such as cinema, why would we need a narrator? Other than providing elucidation for a documentary (as in Fahrenheit 911, Supersize Me, etc.) or providing work for talented actors such as Morgan Freeman, why would a film require a voice-over narrator ? This is a “no no” that film schools insist upon avoiding. For instance, Morgan’s stentorian narration in Million Dollar Baby was well-done, but unnecessary. I saw two films by the same director, Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, and in at least one of them, there was voice-over narration. I remember that my intelligence (such as it is) was insulted by the fact and nearly an otherwise good movie in that a disembodied voice spelled out exactly what I was watching on the screen.
Most written works of fiction, though, do require a storyteller, a narrator. In general, the narrator is the prominent voice in the short story or novel. By voice I mean the more conventional concept – a person “speaking” rather than the mystical, metaphorical “voice” of lyric poetry. (For more about THAT, please refer to “Tweak Your Speaker,” a separate thread on these Forums.) In the following little article I will attempt to explain the different types of narrators.
FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR Fictional works related by the central character or protagonist, the “I.” Although first-person narrators seem almost contemporary, this isan old literary device. For instance, the free-wheeling Lawrence Sterne 18th century comic novel by Laurence Sterne is told in Tristram Shandy ’s own words. We don't think of many 19th c. Victorian novels as having a first-person narrator, but Dickens’s David Copperfield is considered to be among the best of that sub-genre. The Victorian novel which Chris Baldick cites as an example of a first-person narrator is
Jane Eyre by one of the Brontë gals.
American literature seems to have a special affinity for the first-person narrative; perhaps it derives from our individualistic nature and our pursuit of a egalitarian society free of class distinction. Many of Edgar Allen Poe’s tales are in the first person. So is “The” novel which is the literary hallmark (Leslie Fiedler: “All American literature begins and ends with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”) Speaking of Huck, a first-person narrator seems particularly appropriate for adolescents, with all their exuberance and humor, and alas, confusion. Another one that springs to mind is The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) in which Holden exhibits typical adolescent self-absorption as well as the idealism of a youth with his as-yet- unspoiled hunger and thirst for justice and authenticity.
Arguably the best novel in the last three decades is Humboldt’s Gift, written by the late Nobel laureate Saul Bellow (whom both Canadians and Americans can claim). The rough-and-tumble underworld hijinks as well as the lofty, philosophical musings of the title character are all presented to us by the likeable, brilliant though hapless, Charlie Citrine.
One caveat with the first-person narrator: is the narrator “reliable” or “unreliable”? Since all the events are filtered through the protagonist’s eyes, the reader has to take his version with the proverbial grain of salt. An extremely articulate and artful narrator, Humbert Humbert, forces us to look at Nabokov’s Lolita through the eyes of a man who is obsessed and perverse. A first-person narrative can thus be an apology or an admission of guilt, but the reader is getting only one side of the story, and a slanted, unreliable one at that-- which is NOT to say Lolita isn't an artistic masterpiece or one of the most ground-breaking and enduring works
of the twentieth century.
There is some overlapping in which you will find a first-person “I” doing the narration. This would be a THIRD-PERSON narrator who is not the protagonist but a bystander or a witness. We have another layer between the original “real” author and the story. The novel who makes no bones – no whalebones - about this kind of narrator is of course Moby Dick, which
opens with the line, “Call me Ishmael.” Narrators of this type could be either reliable or unreliable depending on the narrator’s personal stake in the outcome of the novel. Other prominent novels with this kind of narrator are Marlow in Heart of Darkness (Conrad), Nick in The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), and Duncan Ramsey, who narrates two of the novels in Robertson Davies’s Deptford trilogy. Sometimes the narration is so unobtrusive – and thus ostensibly “reliable” --that the reader almost forgets that it has a narrator other than the actual author, and is reminded only when he comes across the rare sentence that contains an “I.” This is quite true of Overton in The Way of All Flesh. ( By the way, there are two literary giants with the same name: Samuel Butler. We should read both of them! The first is the 17th century poet who gave us Hudibras, and a very funny type of satiric verse “hudibrastic”; the second is the author who wrote during the latter half of the 19th century, although The Way of All Flesh was not published until 1901, after his death.)
Another type of THIRD-PERSON NARRATOR is the “omniscient” author. There isvery little filtering between the “real” author of the novel and the text, although the author himself/herself stays out of it. This omniscient or “All-knowing” narrator is like a God, and like God, the narrator is distant, truly above the fray. The narrative presents all points of view of all characters; almost like a camera documenting the events, in addition to delving into a character’s private thoughts when the omniscient author wants to do so. The reader can take what is presented at face value, for if there is such a thing as a reliable narrator, it would be this omniscient one.
As I said, there is over-lapping, wiggle room among the types of narration. In some cases it’s not the narrator but the reader who is doing the eavesdropping. This true of an early type of novel, the epistolary novel which consists of a series of letters sent back-and-forth between the characters. This sub-genre was popular in the 18th century: Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa in England and Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses in France.
But for real snooping you can't beat the “stream of consciousness” device. In “stream of consciousness” novels, there is no clearly-identifiable “narrator.” The reader picks up the “story” or the unfolding of events through the often-fragmentary thoughts and emotions of one or more character. This device has a modernistic, almost surreal, tone, quite suitable for The Literature of the Absurd. Samuel Beckett’s trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable) is rife with stream-of-consciousness, interspersed with passages of straightforward first and third person narrative as well. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury signifies something by presenting the same story through the points of view of several characters. Virginia Woolf often experimented with this kind of device, but James Joyce’s Ulysses with its famous concluding passage of Molly Bloom’s “soliloquy,” is perhaps the most famous example of stream of consciousness.
So there you have it. Next novel you pick up, it might be fun to determine what kind
of narrator it is and why. For more on the topic, such as a complex explanation of “implied” narrators and readers, as well as a useful source of general literary information, I highly recommend The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms by Chris Baldick, published in 1990, 246 pp.
Most written works of fiction, though, do require a storyteller, a narrator. In general, the narrator is the prominent voice in the short story or novel. By voice I mean the more conventional concept – a person “speaking” rather than the mystical, metaphorical “voice” of lyric poetry. (For more about THAT, please refer to “Tweak Your Speaker,” a separate thread on these Forums.) In the following little article I will attempt to explain the different types of narrators.
FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR Fictional works related by the central character or protagonist, the “I.” Although first-person narrators seem almost contemporary, this isan old literary device. For instance, the free-wheeling Lawrence Sterne 18th century comic novel by Laurence Sterne is told in Tristram Shandy ’s own words. We don't think of many 19th c. Victorian novels as having a first-person narrator, but Dickens’s David Copperfield is considered to be among the best of that sub-genre. The Victorian novel which Chris Baldick cites as an example of a first-person narrator is
Jane Eyre by one of the Brontë gals.
American literature seems to have a special affinity for the first-person narrative; perhaps it derives from our individualistic nature and our pursuit of a egalitarian society free of class distinction. Many of Edgar Allen Poe’s tales are in the first person. So is “The” novel which is the literary hallmark (Leslie Fiedler: “All American literature begins and ends with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”) Speaking of Huck, a first-person narrator seems particularly appropriate for adolescents, with all their exuberance and humor, and alas, confusion. Another one that springs to mind is The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) in which Holden exhibits typical adolescent self-absorption as well as the idealism of a youth with his as-yet- unspoiled hunger and thirst for justice and authenticity.
Arguably the best novel in the last three decades is Humboldt’s Gift, written by the late Nobel laureate Saul Bellow (whom both Canadians and Americans can claim). The rough-and-tumble underworld hijinks as well as the lofty, philosophical musings of the title character are all presented to us by the likeable, brilliant though hapless, Charlie Citrine.
One caveat with the first-person narrator: is the narrator “reliable” or “unreliable”? Since all the events are filtered through the protagonist’s eyes, the reader has to take his version with the proverbial grain of salt. An extremely articulate and artful narrator, Humbert Humbert, forces us to look at Nabokov’s Lolita through the eyes of a man who is obsessed and perverse. A first-person narrative can thus be an apology or an admission of guilt, but the reader is getting only one side of the story, and a slanted, unreliable one at that-- which is NOT to say Lolita isn't an artistic masterpiece or one of the most ground-breaking and enduring works
of the twentieth century.
There is some overlapping in which you will find a first-person “I” doing the narration. This would be a THIRD-PERSON narrator who is not the protagonist but a bystander or a witness. We have another layer between the original “real” author and the story. The novel who makes no bones – no whalebones - about this kind of narrator is of course Moby Dick, which
opens with the line, “Call me Ishmael.” Narrators of this type could be either reliable or unreliable depending on the narrator’s personal stake in the outcome of the novel. Other prominent novels with this kind of narrator are Marlow in Heart of Darkness (Conrad), Nick in The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), and Duncan Ramsey, who narrates two of the novels in Robertson Davies’s Deptford trilogy. Sometimes the narration is so unobtrusive – and thus ostensibly “reliable” --that the reader almost forgets that it has a narrator other than the actual author, and is reminded only when he comes across the rare sentence that contains an “I.” This is quite true of Overton in The Way of All Flesh. ( By the way, there are two literary giants with the same name: Samuel Butler. We should read both of them! The first is the 17th century poet who gave us Hudibras, and a very funny type of satiric verse “hudibrastic”; the second is the author who wrote during the latter half of the 19th century, although The Way of All Flesh was not published until 1901, after his death.)
Another type of THIRD-PERSON NARRATOR is the “omniscient” author. There isvery little filtering between the “real” author of the novel and the text, although the author himself/herself stays out of it. This omniscient or “All-knowing” narrator is like a God, and like God, the narrator is distant, truly above the fray. The narrative presents all points of view of all characters; almost like a camera documenting the events, in addition to delving into a character’s private thoughts when the omniscient author wants to do so. The reader can take what is presented at face value, for if there is such a thing as a reliable narrator, it would be this omniscient one.
As I said, there is over-lapping, wiggle room among the types of narration. In some cases it’s not the narrator but the reader who is doing the eavesdropping. This true of an early type of novel, the epistolary novel which consists of a series of letters sent back-and-forth between the characters. This sub-genre was popular in the 18th century: Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa in England and Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses in France.
But for real snooping you can't beat the “stream of consciousness” device. In “stream of consciousness” novels, there is no clearly-identifiable “narrator.” The reader picks up the “story” or the unfolding of events through the often-fragmentary thoughts and emotions of one or more character. This device has a modernistic, almost surreal, tone, quite suitable for The Literature of the Absurd. Samuel Beckett’s trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable) is rife with stream-of-consciousness, interspersed with passages of straightforward first and third person narrative as well. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury signifies something by presenting the same story through the points of view of several characters. Virginia Woolf often experimented with this kind of device, but James Joyce’s Ulysses with its famous concluding passage of Molly Bloom’s “soliloquy,” is perhaps the most famous example of stream of consciousness.
So there you have it. Next novel you pick up, it might be fun to determine what kind
of narrator it is and why. For more on the topic, such as a complex explanation of “implied” narrators and readers, as well as a useful source of general literary information, I highly recommend The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms by Chris Baldick, published in 1990, 246 pp.