First-person narrative
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A first-person narrative (also known as a first-person perspective, voice, point of view, etc.) is a
A classic example of a first-person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847),[1] in which the title character is telling the story in which she herself is also the protagonist:[6] "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me".[7]
This device allows the audience to see the narrator's
Point of view device
An example of the telling of a story in the grammatical first person, i.e. from the perspective of "I", is Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, which begins with "Call me Ishmael."[10]
First-person narration may sometimes include an embedded or implied audience of one or more people.[10] The story may be told by a person directly undergoing the events in the story without being aware of conveying that experience to readers; alternatively, the narrator may be conscious of telling the story to a given audience, perhaps at a given place and time, for a given reason.
In first-person narration, the narrator is a person in the story, telling the story from their own point of view. The narration usually utilizes the pronoun I (or we, if the narrator is speaking as part of a group). The character who tells the story might be in the middle of the action or more of a character who observes the action from the outer limits, but in either case readers are getting that character’s recounting of what happens.[11]
Identity
A story written in the first person is most often told by the main character, but may also be told from the perspective of a less important character as they witness events, or a person retelling a story they were told by someone else.[3]
Reliability
First-person narration presents the narrative through the perspective of a particular character. The reader or audience sees the story through the narrator's views and knowledge only.[12] The narrator is an imperfect witness by definition, because they do not have a complete overview of events. Furthermore, they may be pursuing some hidden agenda (an "unreliable narrator").
Character weaknesses and faults, such as tardiness, cowardice, or vice, may leave the narrator unintentionally absent or unreliable for certain key events. Specific events may further be colored or obscured by a narrator's background since non-omniscient characters must by definition be laypersons and foreigners to some circles, and limitations such as poor eyesight and illiteracy may also leave important blanks. Another consideration is how much time has elapsed between when the character experienced the events of the story and when they decided to tell them. If only a few days have passed, the story could be related very differently than if the character was reflecting on events of the distant past. The character's motivation is also relevant. Are they just trying to clear up events for their own peace of mind? Make a confession about a wrong they did? Or t a good adventure tale to their beer-guzzling friends? The reason why a story is told will also affect how it is written.[3] Why is this narrator telling the story in this way, why now, and are they to be trusted? Unstable or malevolent narrators can also lie to the reader. Unreliable narrators are not uncommon.
In the first-person-plural
- William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" (Faulkner was an avid experimenter in using unusual points of view; see also his Spotted Horses, told in third-person plural).
- Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey's memoir Cheaper by the Dozen.
- Theodore Sturgeon's short story "Crate".
- Frederik Pohl's Man Plus.
- Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides.
- Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club.
- Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End.
- Heidi Vornbrock Roosa's short story "Our Mother Who Art".[13]
Other examples include
First-person narrators can also be multiple, as in
There can also be multiple co-principal characters as narrator, such as in Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast. The first chapter introduces four characters, including the initial narrator, who is named at the beginning of the chapter. The narrative continues in subsequent chapters with a different character explicitly identified as the narrator for that chapter. Other characters later introduced in the book also have their "own" chapters where they narrate the story for that chapter. The story proceeds in a linear fashion, and no event occurs more than once, i.e. no two narrators speak "live" about the same event.
The first-person narrator may be the principal character (e.g., Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels), someone very close to them who is privy to their thoughts and actions (Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes stories) or one who closely observes the principal character (such as Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby). These can be distinguished as "first-person major" or "first-person minor" points of view.
Narrators can report others' narratives at one or more removes. These are called "frame narrators": examples are Mr. Lockwood, the narrator in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; and the unnamed narrator in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Skilled writers choose to skew narratives, in keeping with the narrator's character, to an arbitrary degree, from ever so slight to extreme. For example, the aforementioned Mr. Lockwood is quite naive, of which fact he appears unaware, simultaneously rather pompous, and recounting a combination of stories, experiences, and servants' gossip. As such, his character is an unintentionally very unreliable narrator and serves mainly to mystify, confuse, and ultimately leave the events of Wuthering Heights open to a great range of interpretations.
A rare form of the first person is the first-person omniscient, in which the narrator is a character in the story, but also knows the thoughts and feelings of all the other characters. It can seem like third-person omniscient at times. A reasonable explanation fitting the mechanics of the story's world is generally provided or inferred unless its glaring absence is a major plot point. Three notable examples are The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, where the narrator is Death, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, where the narrator is the titular character but is describing the story of the main characters, and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, where a young girl, having been killed, observes, from some post-mortem, extracorporeal viewpoint, her family's struggle to cope with her disappearance. Typically, however, the narrator restricts the events relayed in the narrative to those that could reasonably be known. Novice writers may make the mistake of allowing elements of omniscience into a first-person narrative unintentionally and at random, forgetting the inherent human limitations of a witness or participant of the events.
In many cases, writers can improve writing with the use of first person. It allows writers to be assertive, add clarity, and position themselves in their writing by offering the following benefits:
- Assertiveness: In some cases you might wish to emphasize agency (who is doing what), as for instance if you need to point out how valuable your particular project is to an academic discipline or to claim your unique perspective or argument.
- Clarity: Because trying to avoid the first person can lead to awkward constructions and vagueness, using the first person can improve your writing style.
- Positioning yourself in the essay: In some projects, you need to explain how your research or ideas build on or depart from the work of others, in which case you’ll need to say “I,” “we,” “my,” or “our”; if you wish to claim some kind of authority on the topic, first person may help you do so.[15]
Autobiography
In
Detective fiction
Since the narrator is within the story, he or she may not have knowledge of all the events. For this reason, the first-person narrative is often used for
An example of detective fiction using first person is " A Violent Gospel ". Westmoreland’s Southern Noir debut is about two hellraising brothers, Marshall and Mack Dooley, who decide to heist a church’s money laundering operation. The story is told through Mack Dooley’s eyes, which really kicks the fun up a notch. [16]
Forms
First-person narratives can appear in several forms; interior monologue, as in
Other forms include temporary first-person narration as a story within a story, wherein a narrator or character observing the telling of a story by another is reproduced in full, temporarily, and without interruption shifting narration to the speaker. The first-person narrator can also be the focal character.
Styles
With a first-person narrative it is important to consider how the story is being told, i.e., is the character writing it down, telling it out loud, thinking it to themselves? And if they are writing it down, is it something meant to be read by the public, a private diary, or a story meant for one other person? The way the first-person narrator is relating the story will affect the language used, the length of sentences, the tone of voice, and many other things. A story presented as a secret diary could be interpreted much differently than a public statement.[3]
First-person narratives can tend towards a
First-person narrators are often unreliable narrators since a narrator might be impaired (such as both Quentin and Benjy in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury), lie (as in The Quiet American by Graham Greene, or The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe), or manipulate their own memories intentionally or not (as in The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, or in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Henry James discusses his concerns about "the romantic privilege of the 'first person'" in his preface to The Ambassadors, calling it "the darkest abyss of romance."[17][18]
One example of a multi-level narrative structure is
Film
First-person narration is more difficult to achieve in film; however, voice-over narration can create the same structure.[10]
An example of first-person narration in a film would be the narration given by the character Greg Heffley in the film adaptation of the popular book series Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
See also
References
- ^ a b "Overview: First-person narrative". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ Grammarly, https://www.grammarly.com/blog/first-second-and-third-person/#:~:text=We%2C%20us%2C%20our%2Cand,%2C%20my%2C%20mine%20and%20myself."
- ^ a b c d "Point of View and Narrative Voice". Literary Analysis. Ohio University. Archived from the original on 28 June 2017. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ "Literature Glossary - First-person Narration". Shmoop. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-521-31063-5.
- ^ a b "Jane Eyre Narrator Point of View". Shmoop. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ "Examples of Writing in First Person". YourDictionary. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ Evers, Stuart (13 May 2008). "The dangers of first-person narrative". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ Wiehardt, Ginny (20 March 2017). "How to Recognize and Create an Unreliable Narrator". The Balance. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ a b c "First Person Narration", Purdue University College of Liberal Arts
- ^ "Point of View: It's Personal". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ Ranjbar Vahid. The Narrator, Iran:Baqney. 2011
- ^ Heidi Vornbrock Roosa's short story "Our Mother Who Art"
- ^ Miller, Laura (April 18, 2004). "We the Characters". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
- ^ "Should I Use "I"?". The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
- ^ "7 Great Crime Novels with First Person Narrators". CrimeReads. 2022-06-20. Retrieved 2024-03-23.
- ISBN 0-8071-1259-3.
- ^ The Ambassadors (p. 11) on Project Gutenberg Accessed 17 March 2007