Narrator

The Narrator is the entity within a story that tells the story to the reader. It is one of three entities responsible for story-telling of any kind. The others are the Author and the Reader (or Audience). The Author and the Reader both inhabit the real world. It is the Author's function to create the alternate world, people, and events within the story. It is the Reader's function to understand and interpret the story. The Narrator exists within the world of the story (and only there^) and presents it in a way the Reader can comprehend.

Types of narrator

in progress-- 01:58, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

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An unreliable narrator is a character who may be giving an imperfect or incorrect account, either consciously or unconsciously. This can be due to that character's biases, ulterior motives, psychological instability, youth, or a limited or second-hand knowledge of the events. The author in these cases must give reader information the narrator does not intend she may deduce the truth. This process creates a tension that is a central force behind the power of first person narratives, and provide the only unbiased clues about the character of the narrator. To some extent ALL narrators are unreliable, varying in degree from trust-worthy Ishmael in Moby Dick to the severely retarded Benjy in The Sound and the Fury and the criminal Humbert Humbert in Lolita. Other notable examples of unreliable narrators include Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, and Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.

Related Topics:
Unreliable narrator - Bias - Moby Dick - The Sound and the Fury - Humbert Humbert - Lolita - The Great Gatsby - Holden Caulfield - The Catcher in the Rye

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Unreliable narrators aren't limited to fiction. Memoirs, autobiographies and autobiographical fiction have the author as narrator and character. Sometimes the author purposely makes his narrator persona unreliable such as Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries. Other times the author himself is unreliable. This is generally the case in political memoirs where biases and ulterior motives dominate. This is especially true in campaign books such as George W. Bushs A Charge to Keep or John Edwards' Four Trials.

Related Topics:
Memoirs - Autobiographies - Autobiographical fiction - Author - Narrator - Character - Persona - Jim Carroll - The Basketball Diaries - George W. Bush - A Charge to Keep - John Edwards - Four Trials

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A writer's choice of narrator is crucial for the way a work of fiction is perceived by the reader. Generally, a First-Person narrator brings greater focus on the feelings, opinions, and perceptions of a particular character in a story, and on how that character views the world and the views of other characters. If the writer's intention is to get inside the world of a character, then it is a good choice, although a third-person limited narrator is an alternative that doesn't require the writer to reveal all that a first-person character would know. By contrast, a third-person omniscient narrator gives a panoramic view of the world of the story, looking into many characters and into the broader background of a story. For stories in which the context and the views of many characters are important, a third-person narrator is a better choice.

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