If you work through the following questions and establish answers to them for the particular narrative you are studying, you should end up with an informed and insightful understanding of how the narrator shapes your response to and interpretation of the narrative as a whole.<\/p>\n
It is admittedly not always easy to distinguish between a narrator and a focalizer, but if the work you are evaluating contains a passage or passages in which one of the characters tells a story at some length then, for the duration of that telling, that character is also a narrator. Mary Shelley\u2019s novel\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>, for instance, begins and ends with a figure called Walton sending letters to his sister in which he recounts his experiences in the Arctic. The most significant of these experiences is meeting Dr. Frankenstein, who comes on board Walton\u2019s ship in a condition close\u00a0to death and tells Walton the story of how he came to give life to a creature of his own making and what followed that momentous achievement. Frankenstein\u2019s story takes up most of the pages of the novel and so, even though it is Walton who writes Frankenstein\u2019s story down and sends it\u00a0to his sister, Dr. Frankenstein himself is unquestionably one of the story\u2019s principal narrators. There is, moreover, a third narrator \u2013 the being Frankenstein creates \u2013 because in the middle of Frankenstein\u2019s narration he describes how he met his creation and how that being insisted on telling him the story of his life from his birth up to\u00a0that moment.<\/p>\n The number of narrators a narrative contains makes a considerable difference\u00a0to its representation \u2013 and our understanding \u2013 of the events it relates. It contributes, after all, to the number of points of view to which we are given access on those events and this in turn can influence the degree and manner in which we understand how truth works in that narrative\u2019s storyworld. For instance, a narrative with a single, omniscient narrator can convey a sense that there is an objective truth out there and that we can know (say) exactly how and why things happen (and even exactly how other people think). This sense may well be contested and shown to be hollow in such a narrative, but it is there all the same. A work with multiple narrators, on the other hand, can either suggest that there are simply several different \u2013 and perhaps even incompatible \u2013 ways of looking at things and thus several different truths or even no complete truth at all; or they might indicate\u00a0(and this is how the presence of several narrators in\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>\u00a0is\u00a0sometimes interpreted)\u00a0that truth does not belong to one perspective or person alone but can only be achieved through the combination of those perspectives.<\/p>\n The issues raised by single or multiple narrators are, of course, related to the issues raised by single and multiple plots<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2. Is the narrator a participant in the events she or he retells? What difference does this make?<\/p>\n There are three technical terms narratologists have\u00a0devised to categorise\u00a0three different kinds\u00a0of narrator\u00a0according to their involvement in the events they narrate. These are\u00a0homodiegetic\u00a0<\/strong>narrators,\u00a0heterodiegetic<\/strong> narrators and\u00a0extradiegetic\u00a0<\/strong>narrators. Despite their somewhat off-putting nature, you will find it useful\u00a0to learn these terms.<\/p>\n A\u00a0homodiegetic<\/strong> narrator is a narrator who lives in the storyworld and participates in the events represented in the narrative. A\u00a0heterodiegetic<\/strong> narrator is a narrator who may live in the storyworld but does not participate in the events represented in the narrative. An\u00a0extradiegetic<\/strong> narrator neither lives in the storyworld nor participates in the action.<\/p>\n Imagine, for instance, a novel in which A tells a story in which her cousin B comes to stay and tells her about his researches into a mysterious event which took place in his\u00a0village a year or so before. B was only able to solve this mystery when he found a manuscript left by C in which C recounts the events in which C herself was heavily involved. In this scenario, A would be an extradiegetic narrator, B a heterodiegetic narrator, while C would be a\u00a0homodiegetic narrator.<\/em><\/p>\n The purpose of making these distinctions is to help us establish what each narrator knows, how they know it and (by extension) whether they are emotionally evolved in or detached from the action (i.e. partial or impartial) and whether we can rely on their version of events.<\/p>\n 3. Does the narrator have a personality and are they engaged in or detached from the events they describe? What difference does this make?<\/p>\n Some narratives are told in such a neutral and detached manner that they may appear at first sight as if they do not have a narrator at all. Being supposedly neutral, unemotional, concealed and detached is, however, as much of a personality as being witty, partial, self-promoting, emotionally-engaged and so on. By the same token, it makes as much of a difference to the way a story is told and thus to what we end up believing that story says. The effect of describing an horrific massacre in entirely unemotional and neutral terms is by no means itself\u00a0unemotional or neutral, for instance.<\/p>\n 4. How does the narrator\u2019s use of language influence the manner in which we respond to the story they tell?<\/p>\n This question relates closely to the one before, since it too helps establish the narrator\u2019s emotional, cultural and intellectual proximity to and\/or distance from the events she or he retells. You might start by identifying whether the narrator speaks in the first-person singular (\u2018I\u2019) \u2013 such a narrator is also sometimes termed an autodiegetic<\/strong> narrator \u2013\u00a0in which case we are most likely to suspect we are being offered a somewhat subjective account of events, or whether she or he narrates in the third-person, in which case they may (though not necessarily) be trying to convey a sense that their version of events is accurate and objective.<\/p>\n The narrator\u2019s choice of vocabulary also offers a useful clue to the particular worldview and prejudices they may be bringing to their representation of what happened and why. A narrator who uses a highly legalistic language, for instance, is likely to view the action and characters in highly legalistic terms, one who uses a highly scientific language is likely to do the same but in scientific terms, whereas a narrator whose language is very gossipy is likely to focus on those elements that make the story seem more engaging or salacious.<\/p>\n 5. Is the narrator omniscient and all-seeing or is their access to what happened limited in some way? What difference does this make?<\/p>\n This question too brings us to the issue of what the narrator knows, how they know it, and how we as readers accordingly respond to the information and version(s) of events they provide.<\/p>\n 6. Is the narrator reliable or unreliable? What difference does this make?<\/p>\n It is not always difficult\u00a0to determine whether a narrator is reliable or unreliable, although in some cases we are genuinely left uncertain \u2013 and in such cases our uncertainty affects our interpretation of what has taken place in profound ways. What\u00a0is<\/em> always more difficult, but nonetheless necessary, is for us to establish\u00a0why<\/em> we find a particular narrator reliable or unreliable. Usually, this is because other elements of the narrative can subtly undermine or uphold our trust in that narrator. A good place to look for subtle hints of this kind are the narrative\u2019s other focalizers<\/a>, but it could lie too in the presence of irony or satire, or in the overarching worldview offered by the narrative (what some narratologists refer to as the implied author<\/a>).<\/p>\n