First person

First-person narrative is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by only one character at a time, who explicitly refers to him- or herself using words and phrases involving "I" (referred to as the first-person singular) and/or "we" (the first-person plural). This allows the reader or audience to see the point of view (including opinions, thoughts, and feelings) only of the narrator, and no other characters. In some stories, first-person narrators may refer to information they have heard from the other characters, in order to try to deliver a larger point of view. Other stories may switch from one narrator to another, allowing the reader or audience to experience the thoughts and feelings of more than one character.

First person is used somewhat less frequently. The first-person point of view sacrifices omniscience and omnipresence for a greater intimacy with one character. It allows the reader to see what the focus character is thinking; it also allows that character to be further developed through his or her own style in telling the story. First-person narrations may be told like third person ones; on the other hand, the narrator may be conscious of telling the story to a given audience, perhaps even at a given place and time, for a given reason. In extreme cases, the first-person narration may be told as a story, within a story, with the narrator appearing as a character in the frame story.

In a first person narrative, the narrator is a character in the story. This character takes actions, makes judgements and has opinions and biases. In this case the narrator gives and withholds information based on its own viewing of events. It is an important task for the reader to determine as much as possible about the character of the narrator in order to decide what “really” happens.

The narrator can be the protagonist (e.g., Gulliver in “Gulliver’s Travels”), someone very close to him, who is privy to his thought and actions (Dr. Watson in “Sherlock Holmes”), or an ancillary character who has little to do with the action of the story (Nick Carraway in “The Great Gatsby”). A narrator can even be a character relating the story second-hand.

The first person narrator is the type most obviously distinct from the author. It is a character in the work who must follow all of the rules of being a character, even during its studies as narrator. For it to know anything, it must experience it with its senses, or be told about it. It can interject its own thoughts and opinions, but not those of any other character, unless clearly told about those thoughts.

Since the narrator is within the story, he or she may not have knowledge of all the events. For this reason, first-person narrative is often used for detective fiction, so that the reader and narrator uncover the case together. One traditional approach in this form of fiction is for the main detective's principal assistant, the "Watson", to be the narrator: this derives from the character of Dr Watson in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

In the first-person-plural point of view, narrators tell the story using "we". That is, no individual speaker is identified; the narrator is a member of a group that acts as a unit. The first-person-plural point of view occurs rarely but can be used effectively, sometimes as a means to increase the concentration on the character or characters the story is about.

The first-person narrator may be the principal character or one who closely observes the principal character (see Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights or F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, each narrated by a minor character). These can be distinguished as "first person major" or "first person minor" points of view.

First-person narrative can tend towards a stream of consciousness, as in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The whole of the narrative can itself be presented as a false document, such as a diary, in which the narrator makes explicit reference to the fact that he is writing or telling a story. This is the case in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

In autobiographical fiction, the first person narrator is the character of the author (with varying degrees of accuracy). The narrator is still distinct from the author and must behave like any other character and any other first person narrator. In some cases, the narrator is writing a book (“the book in your hands”), therefore it has most of the powers and knowledge of the author.

The first person narrator may directly address the reader, though it is usually considered bad form unless there is a valid reason and explanation. Usually this is done when the intended audience is also a fictional character within the book. This is the case in novels written in the form of letters, known as epistolary novels (Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”) or as told to another character.

Second person

A small number of novels have been written in the second person, frequently paired with the present tense. It is almost universally agreed that second-person narration is hard to manage, especially in a serious work. This is the rarest point of views because, though theoretically possible, it does not work very well. A reader narrating to himself (herself) would never call himself (herself),”you”, and anything the narrator does is questionable. E.g.: “It’s under your skin, you think, underneath all those arteries and veins that crisscross in a delicate lacework. Thick and gray fur, matted with your own blood, trapped between skin and muscle, desperate for release” (Jonathan Garg, “New Moon”).

When done well, the reader imagines himself within the action. Most stories written in second person are probably closer to first-person with “you” replacing “I”.

An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was term coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually to deceive the reader or audience. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but third-person narrators can also be unreliable.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1042