types of narrators literature

• Literary Terms
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Choose a Narrator

I. What is a Narrator?

A narrator is the person telling the story, and it determines the point of view that the audience will experience. Every work of fiction has one! The narrator can take many forms—it may be a character inside the story (like the protagonist) telling it from his own point of view. It may be a completely neutral observer or witness sharing what he sees and experiences. It may be someone who is outside the story but has access to a character’s or characters ’ thoughts and feelings. Or, it may be an all-knowing presence who knows everything about the whole story, its setting, its characters, and even all of its history.

Though technically any type of written work has a narrator (since all information must be told from some point of view), its most important role is in fiction, where the style of narration determines everything about how the story is told, experienced, and understood by readers. This article will focus on that role.

II. Example of a Narrator

Here’s an example of a narrator who is telling the story from his point of view:

I’m going to share a story with you. It’s not an easy one to witness, for it’s about one of the worst things that ever happened to me. Others may tell it differently, but only in my version will you hear the entire truth, because only I know the real devastation of the events that unfolded on the day that changed my life forever.

My name is George, and I’m a professional speed eater. This is about the time I lost the most important hotdog eating contest of my life.

III. Types of Narrators

Authors use several types of narrators, or narrative styles (see Related Terms ). Third person and first person are the most common types of narration that authors employ in their writing, but the lesser known second-person narrator also exists!

a. First Person

A first person narrator is a character inside the story. He/she tells the reader what is happening from his/her own point of view, using “I,” “me” and “myself” to tell the story. Often, that means the reader learns the story alongside the narrator as it unfolds, hearing the narrator’s thoughts and feelings and understanding experiences in the way the narrator himself experiences them. One of the most interesting things about a first person narrator is that he or she can actually be someone unreliable—since the audience is experiencing the story as the narrator personally understands it, the point of view is very subjective and opinionated in ways that may not reveal the whole truth or the “full story.”

In addition to fiction, autobiographies use first-person narrative structure because the book is about the author himself.

b. Second person

A second person narrator is fairly unusual. In a second person narrative, the person telling the story uses “you” to describe the main character or narrator. In some cases, that also implies that perhaps the narrator or main character could even be you, the reader. Second person narration is used for “choose your own adventure” books, where you, the reader, have to decide what happens next in the story (i.e. “jump to page 50 if you turn left on the road, or jump to page 70 if you turn right” ).

c. Third Person

A third person narrator is not a part of the story, and refers to all of the characters (including the protagonist) using “he” and “she.” Using a third-person narrator gives an author the most options and flexibility in terms of how the story is told. The author may choose to share the thoughts, feelings, and points of view of several characters, instead of just one. As such, the third person is probably the most popular and widely-used style of narration, and there are three main types:

d. Third Person Objective

A third person objective narrator is just a witness to a story. They don’t have knowledge of any of the character’s thoughts or feelings, but are simply reporting on what is happening. It lets the audience form their own opinions based on objective observation.

e. Third Person Subjective

A third person subjective narrator is usually telling the story in a way that reflects at least one, but sometimes multiple characters’ thoughts, feelings and experiences. These things usually influence how the audience feels about the characters and what is going on in the story. It is probably the most popular narrative style.

f. Third Person Omniscient

A third person omniscient character is all-seeing and all-knowing. They are aware of all of the events that have ever happened and all of the people that they ever happened to. This means that they have full knowledge of all events, places, times, and people—this also includes the thoughts and memories of any character. In simple terms, a third person omniscient narrator is “God-like.”

IV. Importance of Narrators

The importance of having a narrator is obvious—without one, we simply couldn’t tell stories! But, more specifically, when it comes to storytelling, point of view is everything, and the narrator provides it to us. As such, narrative style is one of the most crucial elements of writing. An author chooses his narrator based on how he wants the story told, and how the audience is meant to experience it. Thus, everything we understand about a piece of writing is based on the style of narration, so its significance is huge.

V. Examples of  Narrators in Pop Culture

Example 1: first person.

Sometimes films and TV shows tell their stories through the point of view of a main character. This usually means that the protagonist is speaking to the audience as they themselves go through the events that are happening on screen. An excellent example of this style is the current series Mr. Robot, where most of the story is told from the point of view of Elliot, a young computer programmer and hacker. Throughout the series, we hear his thoughts and experience things from his point of view. Here’s a clip:

Mr. Robot is particularly unique because Elliot suffers from mental illness and experiences delusions and hallucinations. Since the story is from his perspective, the audience sometimes doesn’t know what is real, and what is only being imagined by Elliot.

Example 2: Third Person

Most movies and television shows are told from a third-person point of view. Most of that time that means having no obvious narrator at all, where the audience is the only outside witness. But sometimes, there’s a third-person narrator who is also watching the story and reports on it, like in this clip from Moonrise Kingdom :

Here, the man reporting appears on screen, but he isn’t actually part of the story. He is just there to fill the audience in on some important information, and provide commentary and extra details as the story unfolds.

Example 3: Mixed Narration

Many television shows will use multiple narrators to tell their stories. This is especially popular in documentaries, reality TV, and mockumentary shows. A popular style is to have an objective, third-person narrator (the person behind the camera), but uses first-person narration by showing the characters’ points of view through onscreen interviews. In this way, it reveals things about the characters and lets you get to know them from two perspectives. Here’s a clip from Parks and Recreation:

Here, we first see Ron Swanson and his toothache from a third person point of view. Then, there’s an interview with him, which reveals the joke he performed and shares his own perspective of what just happened. Many other shows like Modern Family and the The Office work in this style, as does nearly every reality TV show that’s ever been made!

VI. Examples of  Narrators in Literature

There have been many great novels and short stories with a first-person narrator. Scott F. Fditzergerald’s classic American novel The Great Gatsby is told from the perspective of Nick Carraway, a man who moves nearby Jay Gatsby. In the novel, we see everything from his point of view and understand it as he understands it. It opens like this:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “ Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “ just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me[.]

Here, the narrator is referring to something that was told to him, and his opinion about it. This is the function of a first person narrator—we know he will provide his thoughts and observations throughout the story.

Example 2: Second Person

A popular example of modern fiction with a second-person narrator is Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. The author begins right away by letting you know that the book is simultaneously written to and about you. This is a little hard to understand, so here are a few short excerpts:

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. It’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If on a winter’s night a traveler had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn’t published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you.

The book is written as if the author knows you are there and what you are doing, and knows things about you. It is a difficult, unique style to use successfully, and is thus very rare in literature, but Calvino is famous for it.

Example 3: Third Person

As mentioned, the third person is probably the most widely-used form of narration because it gives authors so much stylistic freedom. In the classic novel A Tale of Two Cities , Charles Dickens uses a third-person narrator who many often consider to be Dickens himself. The story is told from a third-person subjective point of view, where the narrator has access to the thoughts of several characters. Here’s the novel’s famous opening:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

As you can see, the narrator is describing the “times” of a certain period in history; the setting in which the story will unfold. He also makes it known that he is a witness to the period and the story by using the words “we,” which tells us that the narrator has personal experience when it comes to what he is telling us about.

VII. Related Terms

There are several related terms that we use to discuss a story’s narrator. They all focus on essentially the same thing but are used in different ways.

A narrative is another name for a story, which needs a narrator to tell it. You would say “the narrative is about so and so and is told in the third person.”

Narration is the method of storytelling and the way in which it is told. You would say “the story uses first-person narration,” for example.

Narrative Style

Narrative style is another way to talk about who the narrator is—it’s the style in which the story is told. You would say “the narrative style of this story is the third person.”

VIII. Conclusion

In conclusion, the narrator has a defining role in every story. Readers see and understand the story from the point of view of whoever is telling it, and who that is can change everything, from the amount of details we learn, to the level of truth behind the story, to which character we empathize with. Thus, the narrator is a key element of storytelling.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
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What is a Narrator? Definition, Examples of Narrators in Literature

Home » The Writer’s Dictionary » What is a Narrator? Definition, Examples of Narrators in Literature

Narrator definition: A narrator is the speaker of a literary text.

What is a Narrator?

Who is the narrator? A narrator is the person from whose perspective a story is told. The narrator narrates the text.

A narrator only exists in fictional texts or in a narrative poem. A narrator may be a character in the text; however, the narrator does not have to be a character in the text.

The point of a narrator is to narrate a story, i.e., to tell the story. What the narrator can and cannot see determines the perspective of the text and also determines how much the reader knows.

Types of Narrators

First Person Narrator

What is a first person narrator? A first person narrator speaks from the first person point of view . The first person narrator’s commentary uses the pronouns “I/we,” “my/our,” “me/us,” “mine/ours.”

The first person narrator is a character in the text because he is telling it from his point of view. Consequently, he is involved in the action of the story or participates in it in some way.

The first person narrator can only tell the audience what he sees. He cannot comment on action that he does not see or experience directly.

Second Person Narrator

The second person narrator is a character in the text because he is telling the story to another person. Consequently, he is involved in the action of the story or participates in it in some way.

The second person narrator is very rare in literature. When used well, the second person narrator makes it seem like he is talking directly to the audience, making the reader feel as though he is a part of the story.

The second person narrator can only tell the audience what he sees. He cannot comment on action that he does not see or experience directly.

Third Person Narrator

What is a third person narrator? A third person narrator speaks from the third person point of view . The third person narrator’s commentary uses the pronouns “he/she/they,” “his/her/their,” and “his/hers/theirs.”

Third Person Limited:

The third person limited narrator is not usually a character in the text because he removed from the action—that is, he does not participate in the action of the text.

He is called a limited narrator because he can only comment on the actions of some individuals. That is, there is some “behind the scenes” action that he does not see. Therefore, his narration is “limited.” He cannot comment on action that he does not see or experience directly.

Third person limited is not a common type of narrator in literature.

Third Person Omniscient:

He is called an omniscient narrator because he can comment on everything every character experiences. Therefore, his narration is “omniscient”. The third person narrator is someone outside the story looking down at everything that is happening.

Third person omniscient is the most common type of narrator.

The Effect of a Narrator

The way an author writes a narrator determines how the text is received. If the narrator is written well, the book will be well written, and vice versa.

A good narrator makes the reader want to continue with the text. Furthermore, a good narrator makes the reader feel like he is fully submerged in the plotline and the lives of the characters.

How Narrators are Used in Literature

Every story has a narrator. Let’s look at a couple popular texts to understand this concept.

The Catcher in the Rye

Author J.D. Salinger’s choice to use a first-person narrator determines the course of the text. Since the story is only viewed through Caulfield’s eyes, it is very difficult to distinguish truth from fiction (because Caulfield is a self-proclaimed “terrific liar”).

The choice to use Caulfield as the narrator has spurred great interest in this novel. Because it is hard to determine truth from Caulfield’s brilliant imagination, the reader is left with many questions as he concludes the text. This is one of the many reasons this text considered a “classic.”

The Grapes of Wrath

This text is written with a third person omniscient narrator. The narrator has access and insight to every character’s thoughts and actions.

John Steinbeck chose this type of narrator specifically for this text. One reason this narrator works effectively is because the text includes intercalary chapters.

The text oscillates between the intercalary chapters and the fictional narration. These intercalary chapters require an omniscient perspective.

Summary: What are Narrators?

Define Narrator: the definition of narrator in literature is the person who narrates or tells the story.

In summary,

• A narrator tells the story.
• There are different kinds of narrators.

Narrators can greatly benefit or greatly harm a story.

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Narrator: Definition and Examples

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Narrator Definition: The narrator is the character or speaker who tells the story to the reader.

A narrator tells the story to the reader from their perspective in literature , including important plot details like setting, mood, characterization, and conflict. The narrator can be the author, a character from outside of the story, or a character or persona they’ve created within the story. The narrator can use several points of view in which to tell the story such as first person, third person limited, and third person omniscient. First person narrators tell the story using “I” and “me”. Third person omniscient narrators tell the story using “he”, “she”, and “they”, and can access the thoughts of any character. Third person limited narrators use third person pronouns as well; however, they are typically limited to only being able to express the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Each point of view changes the reader’s access to the information coming from the characters, and may change the story completely, depending on important factors such as bias and experiences.

A narrator can also be unreliable or intrusive. An unreliable narrator’s descriptions of their experiences or events are usually colored or distorted by their own biases or emotions. An intrusive narrator continues to interrupt the story with personal commentary or opinions about characters and events. Both reliable and intrusive narrators usually occur in first person narrations. The narrator’s point of view often shapes the reader’s thoughts and attitudes about the story. For example, in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations , Pip tells the story of his rise and fall from fortune in first person, and by the end of the story, he admits his shame for his egotistical treatment of others along the way, which helps the readers feel empathy and forgiveness for his mistakes.

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Narrator examples.

Holden Caulfield as first person narrator in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye allows the reader to experience Holden’s stream-of-consciousness descent into madness.

”The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” by Jon Scieszka tells the famous children’s tale from the point of view of the wolf. Rather than the wolf chasing the pigs in a hungry rage, he was simply searching for a cup of sugar, but he had a bad cold, too. His blowing down of houses was strictly reserved to his sneezing fits. This point of view completely changes the perspective of the story for the reader.

In 1984 by George Orwell, the third person limited narrator only tells the reader Winston Smith’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Because the reader and Winston are unaware of the thoughts and feelings of other characters, both are unprepared for the impending betrayals.

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the narrator has the ability to access all of the characters’ thoughts and emotions as a third person omniscient narrator. The reader knows Hester’s quiet attitude of penance, Pearl’s curiosity, Reverend Dimmesdale’s guilt and shame, and Chillingworth’s patient revenge.

In Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness , Conrad uses two narrators: the original narrator, and Marlow, who tells the story of his trip up the Congo River to the narrator. By the end of the novel, Marlow has managed to shift the original narrator’s perspective towards a dark and foreboding feeling about the civilized world.

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This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

Narrator: A Literary Device

The narrator serves as a crucial mediator between the story and the audience, shaping the perspective and influencing the interpretation of the text.

Narrator: Etymology

Table of Contents

The term “narrator” traces its etymological roots to the Latin word “narrare,” meaning “to tell” or “to recount.” The concept of a narrator is fundamental in literary discourse, embodying the voice that communicates the events and experiences within a narrative.

The narrator serves as a crucial mediator between the story and the audience, shaping the perspective and influencing the interpretation of the text. This etymological connection to “telling” underscores the narrator’s role as a storyteller, emphasizing their agency in constructing and conveying the narrative to the reader.

Narrator: Meanings

Narrator: definition of a literary device.

A narrator, as a literary device , is the narrative voice that communicates the events, perspectives, and emotions within a story.

This device encompasses various forms, including first-person, third-person omniscient, and unreliable narrators, each influencing the reader’s interpretation.

The narrator’s role extends beyond storytelling, shaping the narrative’s tone , atmosphere, and thematic depth, serving as a crucial mediator between the text and the reader.

Narrator: Types

Narrator in everyday life.

• Internal Monologue : The constant inner dialogue or self-talk that narrates our thoughts, feelings, and reactions throughout the day, helping us process experiences.
• Reflective Commentary: When we mentally recount events or discuss them in our minds, providing a narrative structure to our memories and shaping our understanding of personal experiences.
• Decision-Making Narration: The internal deliberation and reasoning we engage in when making choices, with our internal narrator guiding us through pros, cons, and potential outcomes.
• Emotional Narration: The way our internal narrator influences our emotional responses to situations, providing interpretations and judgments that contribute to our overall mood.
• Problem-Solving Dialogue: Engaging in mental conversations with ourselves to analyze problems, consider solutions, and plan actions, often involving a back-and-forth exchange of ideas.
• Narrative Memory Retrieval: When our internal narrator retrieves and recounts memories, shaping the way we perceive past events and influencing our sense of identity.
• Self-Reflective Narration: Moments of introspection where the internal narrator helps us reflect on our beliefs, values, and personal growth, contributing to a continuous narrative of self-awareness.
• Social Interaction Preparation: Anticipating and rehearsing social interactions through mental dialogue, considering potential responses and scenarios to navigate conversations effectively.
• Narration of Learning Processes: When we guide ourselves through the process of learning or acquiring new skills, using internal narration to understand, practice, and master various tasks.
• Dream Narration: The internal storytelling that occurs during dreams, where our minds construct narratives that may be fantastical, symbolic, or reflective of our subconscious thoughts and emotions.

Narrator Examples from Literature

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The novel is narrated by Nick Carraway, who serves as both a participant and an observer in the events surrounding Jay Gatsby. Nick’s first-person perspective provides insights into the complex characters and the extravagant world of the Roaring Twenties.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: Scout Finch, the young protagonist, narrates the novel in the first person. Her innocence and evolving understanding of societal issues offer a unique lens through which readers explore racial injustice and moral growth in the American South.
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: Holden Caulfield’s first-person narration offers a raw and authentic portrayal of teenage angst and alienation. His distinctive voice captures the challenges of navigating the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez: The novel employs a third-person omniscient narrator, providing a comprehensive view of the Buendía family’s multi-generational saga in the fictional town of Macondo. The narrator seamlessly weaves magical realism into the narrative.
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: The novella is narrated by Marlow, who recounts his journey into the African Congo. Marlow’s narrative style, coupled with the framing device of a boat on the Thames, adds layers of meaning to the exploration of colonialism and human nature.
• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe: The short story is narrated by an unnamed and unreliable narrator who tries to convince the reader of their sanity while describing the murder they have committed. The narrative technique heightens the psychological horror and suspense in Poe’s classic tale.

Narrator: Suggested Readings

• Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction . University of Chicago Press, 1961.
• Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method . Cornell University Press, 1983.
• Banfield, Ann. Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction . Routledge, 1982.
• Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film . Cornell University Press, 1978.
• Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology . University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
• Phelan, James, and Peter J. Rabinowitz. A Companion to Narrative Theory . Wiley, 2005.

Read more on Literary Devices below:

• Diatribe: A Literary Device
• Diatribe in Literature
• Deuteragonist: A Literary Device
• Deuteragonist in Literature
• Dichotomy: A Literary Device

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Entries with the tag: Types of Narrators

Discover the different types of point of view for narration and see which one fits the best into your writing.

Types of Narrators (6): The First-Person Narrator

In this part of the tutorial about the types of narrators , I’ll analyze the first-person narrator which is the one widely used in contemporary literature. What distinguishes him from the witness narrator, who also resorts to the first person, is the fact that this narrator is the protagonist talking about himself (or herself) and his circumstances. There are quite a lot of first-person novels. Paul Auster’s Moon Palace and Oracle Night , J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye , or Philippe Claudel’s Brodeck’s Report are well-known examples.

In addition, the first-person narrator is often used in crime fiction. This is the case of in the novels written by Jeff Lindsay about the serial killer Dexter. Nevertheless, we can also find this type of narrator in the epistolary genre, personal diaries, biographies, internal monologues, etc. Regardless of the literary genre, here are some general features that can help us determine if the first-person narrator fits our story:

Types of Narrators (5): The Second-Person Narrator

TThe second-person narrator, though not very common, is present in literature and media. For example, the posts I publish online are directed at my readers. This is why I resort to the second-person narrator.

This type of narrator is also typical of the epistolary form; in fact, many novels contain letters or emails the characters send to each other. Nevertheless, the addressee of the second-person narrations I want to analyze in this section are not characters, but the readers themselves.

For instance, in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler , the second-person narrator acts as the master in a role-playing game attempting to get the reader to identify with the main character. A much more recent example is Paul Auster’s Winter Journal . This fictionalized autobiography is written in the second person as a way of putting the reader in the writer’s shoes. Through this technique, the author wants to show the emotions and experiences he has gathered throughout his life could be those of any other person in the world. The opening line of the book is a clear declaration of intent:

Types of narrator: The Witness Narrator

In the first page of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose , the narrator makes a declaration of intent: “I prepare to leave on this parchment my testimony as to the wondrous and terrible events that I happened to observe in my youth, now repeating all that I saw and heard, without venturing to seek a design, as if to leave to those who will come after (if the Antichrist has not come first) signs of signs, so that the prayer of deciphering may be exercised on them.”

You just read the words of a witness narrator which is a role played by a character who tells the story in the third person (he isn’t the protagonist) and has the point of view of someone who has witnessed it either from the inside or from the outside. This type of narrator doesn’t usually write about himself or herself.

There are many different types of witness narrators, each with his distinctive features. Here are the most common ones:

Types of Narrators: Third-Person Subjective Narrator

This type of narrator may be confused with the omniscient narrator, but the difference between them is the third-person subjective narrator adopts the point of view of one of the characters of the story.

Thus, his or her vision is limited. He’ll have insight into what a character is thinking or feeling, but he will only have a superficial knowledge of the other characters. Nevertheless, the third-person subjective narrator will always be wiser than a first-person narrator as he can describe his chosen hero from both inside and outside perspectives.

Types of Narrators:The Omniscient Narrator

In this second post of the series, you’ll learn more about the all-knowing and all-seeing omniscient narrator who conveys the facts from a third-person point of view and doesn’t take part in the story.

As the name suggests, this god-like narrator knows everything about the characters and the plot. In addition, he or she is able to predict the future and make assumptions and judgments. The use of this omniscient point of view was very common in nineteenth-century novels.

Let’s take a careful look at the omniscient narrator’s features:

Types of Narrators: Point of View in Fiction Writing

The “once-upon-a-time” stories of your childhood already taught you that in order to tell a story, you need a narrator who transmits it to the reader. Every text (even articles or reports) has a narrator. That is, they’re told from a specific point of view with a particular approach and a distinct tone.

Thanks to the narrator, you can describe characters and settings, convey emotions, insert dialogues, express opinions, and ration information to create suspense or intrigue.

How to Use Dialogue Tags Properly

Since dialogue belongs to the characters, the narrator’s remarks can sometimes spoil it. However, they become necessary in a long conversation or in a dialogue with many members. If you want to know how to use them, here is a list of helpful tricks:

1. Brevity is the soul of wit.

As readers, we all are used to expressions such as “said John,” “asked Mary,” or “replied Sue,” but they should be used carefully because they slow down the reading pace. The same goes for adverbs or unnecessary explanations. As an example, look at this dialogue:

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A Guide to All Types of Narration, With Examples

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In writing or speech , narration is the process of recounting a sequence of events, real or imagined. It's also called storytelling. Aristotle's term for  narration was prothesis .

The person who recounts the events is called a narrator . Stories can have reliable or unreliable narrators. For example, if a story is being told by someone insane, lying, or deluded, such as in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," that narrator would be deemed unreliable. The account itself is called a narrative . The perspective from which a speaker or writer recounts a narrative is called a point of view . Types of point of view include first person, which uses "I" and follows the thoughts of one person or just one at a time, and third person, which can be limited to one person or can show the thoughts of all the characters, called the omniscient third person. Narration is the base of the story, the text that's not dialogue or quoted material.

Uses in Types of Prose Writing

It's used in fiction and nonfiction alike. "There are two forms: simple narrative, which recites events  chronologically , as in a newspaper account;" note William Harmon and Hugh Holman in "A Handbook to Literature," "and narrative with plot, which is less often chronological and more often arranged according to a principle determined by the nature of the plot and the type of story intended. It is conventionally said that narration deals with time,  description  with space."

Cicero, however, finds three forms in "De Inventione," as explained by Joseph Colavito in "Narratio": "The first type focuses on 'the case and...the reason for dispute' (1.19.27). A second type contains 'a  digression ...for the purpose of attacking somebody,...making a comparison,...amusing the audience,...or for amplification' (1.19.27). The last type of narrative serves a different end—'amusement and training'—and it can concern either events or persons (1.19.27)." (In "Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age," ed. by Theresa Enos. Taylor & Francis, 1996)

Narration isn't just in literature, literary nonfiction, or academic studies, though. It also comes into play in writing in the workplace, as Barbara Fine Clouse wrote in "Patterns for a Purpose": "Police officers write crime reports, and insurance investigators write accident reports, both of which narrate sequences of events. Physical therapists and nurses write narrative accounts of their patients' progress, and teachers narrate events for disciplinary reports. Supervisors write narrative accounts of employees' actions for individual personnel files, and company officials use narration to report on the company's performance during the fiscal year for its stockholders."

Even "jokes, fables, fairy tales, short stories, plays, novels, and other forms of literature are narrative if they tell a story," notes Lynn Z. Bloom in "The Essay Connection."

Examples of Narration

For examples of different styles of narration, check out the following:

• ​The Battle of the Ants by Henry David Thoreau (first person, nonfiction)
• "The Holy Night" by Selma Lagerlöf (first person and third person, fiction)
• Street Haunting by Virginia Woolf (first person plural and third person, omniscient narrator, nonfiction)
• Definition and Examples of Narratives in Writing
• Point of View in Grammar and Composition
• Third-Person Point of View
• Understanding Point of View in Literature
• AP English Exam: 101 Key Terms
• What Is a Novel? Definition and Characteristics
• Introduction to Magical Realism
• Organizational Strategies for Using Chronological Order in Writing
• How to Summarize a Plot
• How to Write a Narrative Essay or Speech
• Narratio in Rhetoric
• 5 Easy Activities for Teaching Point of View
• What Is Narrative Poetry? Definition and Examples
• Compose a Narrative Essay or Personal Statement
• What Is Narrative Therapy? Definition and Techniques

Narrative Definition

What is narrative? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

A narrative is an account of connected events. Two writers describing the same set of events might craft very different narratives, depending on how they use different narrative elements, such as tone or  point of view . For example, an account of the American Civil War written from the perspective of a white slaveowner would make for a very different narrative than if it were written from the perspective of a historian, or a former slave.

Some additional key details about narrative:

• The words "narrative" and "story" are often used interchangeably, and with the casual meanings of the two terms that's fine. However, technically speaking, the two terms have related but different meanings.
• The word "narrative" is also frequently used as an adjective to describe something that tells a story, such as narrative poetry.

How to Pronounce Narrative

Here's how to pronounce narrative: nar -uh-tiv

Narrative vs. Story vs. Plot

In everyday speech, people often use the terms "narrative," "story," and "plot" interchangeably. However, when speaking more technically about literature these terms are not in fact identical. 

• A story refers to a sequence of events. It can be thought of as the raw material out of which a narrative is crafted.
• A plot refers to the sequence of events, but with their causes and effects included. As the writer E.M. Forster put it, while "The King died and the Queen died" is a story (i.e., a sequence of events), "The King died, and then the Queen died of grief" is a plot.
• A narrative , by contrast, has a more broad-reaching definition: it includes not just the sequence of events and their cause and effect relationships, but also  all of the decisions and techniques that impact how a story is told. A narrative is  how a given sequence of events is recounted.

In order to fully understand narrative, it's important to keep in mind that most sequences of events can be recounted in many different ways. Each different account is a separate narrative. When deciding how to relay a set of facts or describe a sequence of events, a writer must ask themselves, among other things:

• Which events are most important?
• Where should I begin and end my narrative?
• Should I tell the events of the narrative in the order they occurred, or should I use flashbacks or other techniques to present the events in another order?
• Should I hold certain pieces of information back from the reader?
• What point of view  should I use to tell the narrative?

The answers to these questions determine how the narrative is constructed, so they have a huge influence on the way a reader sees or understands what they're reading about. The same series of events might be read as happy or sad, boring or exciting—all depending on how the narrative is constructed. Analyzing a narrative just means examining how it is constructed and why it is constructed that way.

Narrative Elements

Narrative elements   are the tools writers use to craft narratives. A great way to approach analyzing a narrative is to break it down into its different narrative elements, and then examine how the writer employs each one. The following is a summary of the main elements that a writer might use to build his or her narrative.

• For example, a story about a crime told from the perspective of the victim might be very different when told from the perspective of the criminal.
• For instance, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were friends, and they wrote during the same era, but their writing is very different from one another because they have markedly different  voices.
• For example, Jonathan Swift's essay " A Modest Proposal " satirizes the British government's callous indifference toward the famine in Ireland by sarcastically suggesting that cannibalism could solve the problem—but the essay would have a completely different meaning if it didn't have a sarcastic tone. 
• For example, the first half of Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield tells the story of the narrator David Copperfield's early childhood over the course of many chapters; about halfway through the novel, David quickly glosses over some embarrassing episodes from his teenage years (unfortunate fashion choices and foolish crushes); the second half of the novel tells the story of his adult life. The pacing give readers the sense that David's teen years weren't really that important. Instead, his childhood traumas, the challenges he faced as a young man, and the relationships he formed during both childhood and adulthood make up the most important elements of the novel.
• For example, Mary Shelley's novel   Frankenstein  uses three different "frames" to tell the story of Dr. Frankenstein and the creature he creates: the novel takes the form of letters written by Walton, an arctic explorer; Walton is recounting a story that Dr. Frankenstein told him; and as part of his story, Dr. Frankenstein recounts a story told to him by the creature. 
• Linear vs. Nonlinear Narration:  You may also hear the word narrative used to describe the order in which a sequence of events is recounted. In a linear narrative, the events of a story are described  chronologically , in the order that they occurred. In a nonlinear narrative, events are described out of order, using flashbacks or flash-forwards, and then returning to the present. In some nonlinear narratives, like Ken Kesey's  Sometimes a Great Notion , there is a clear sense of when the "present" is: the novel begins and ends with the character Viv sitting in a bar, looking at a photograph. The rest of the novel recounts (out of order) events that have happened in the distant and recent past. In other nonlinear narratives, it may be difficult to tell when the "present" is. For example, in Kurt Vonnegut's novel  Slaughterhouse-Five , the character Billy Pilgrim, seems to move forward and backward in time as a result of post-traumatic stress. Billy is not always certain if he is experiencing memories, flashbacks, hallucinations, or actual time travel, and there are inconsistencies in the dates he gives throughout the book—all of which of course has a huge impact on how  his stories are relayed to the reader.

Narrative as an Adjective

It's worth noting that the word "narrative" is also frequently used as an adjective to describe something that tells a story.

• Narrative Poetry: While some poetry describes an image, experience, or emotion without necessarily telling a story, narrative poetry is poetry that does tell a story. Narrative poems include epic poems like The Iliad , The Epic of Gilgamesh , and Beowulf .  Other, shorter examples of narrative poetry include "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carrol, "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti, and "The Glass Essay," by Anne Carson.
• Narrative Art: Similarly, the term "narrative art" refers to visual art that tells a story, either by capturing one scene in a longer story, or by presenting a series of images that tell a longer story when put together. Often, but not always, narrative art tells stories that are likely to be familiar to the viewer, such as stories from history, mythology, or religious teachings. Examples of narrative art include Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the  Pietà ; Paul Revere's engraving entitled  The Bloody Massacre ; and Artemisia Gentileschi's painting  Judith Slaying Holofernes .

Narrative Examples

Narrative in  the book thief  by markus zusak.

Zusak's novel,  The Book Thief , is narrated by the figure of Death, who tells the story of Liesel, a girl growing up in Nazi Germany who loves books and befriends a Jewish man her family is hiding in their home. In the novel's prologue, Death says of Liesel:

Yes, often, I am reminded of her, and in one of my vast array of pockets, I have kept her story to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt—an immense leap of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.

Narrators do not always announce themselves, but Death introduces himself and explains that he sees himself as a storyteller and a repository of the stories of human lives. Choosing Death (rather than Leisel) as the novel's narrator allows Zusak to use Liesel's story to reflect on the power of stories and storytelling more generally.

Narrative in  A Visit From the Goon Squad   by Jennifer Egan

In A Visit From the Good Squad ,  Egan structures the narrative of her novel in an unconventional way: each chapter stands as a self-contained story, but as a whole, the individual episodes are interconnected in such a way that all the stories form a single cohesive narrative. For example, in Chapter 2, "The Gold Cure," we meet the character Bennie, a middle-aged music producer, and his assistant Sasha:

"It's incredible," Sasha said, "how there's just nothing there." Astounded, Bennie turned to her…Sasha was looking downtown, and he followed her eyes to the empty space where the Twin Towers had been. 

Because there is an empty space where the Twin Towers had been, the reader knows that this dialogue is taking place some time after the September 11th, 2001 attack in which the World Trade Center was destroyed. Bennie appears again later in the novel, in Chapter 6, "X's and O's," which is set ten years prior to "The Gold Cure." "X's and O's" is narrated by Bennie's old friend, Scotty, who goes to visit Bennie at his office in Manhattan:

I looked down at the city. Its extravagance felt wasteful, like gushing oil or some other precious thing Bennie was hoarding for himself, using it up so no one else could get any. I thought: If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.

Just as Sasha did in Chapter 2, Scotty stands with Bennie and looks out over Manhattan, and in both passages, there is a sense that Bennie fails to notice, appreciate, or find meaning in the view. But the reader wouldn't have the same experience if the story had been told in chronological order.

Narrative in Atonement by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan's novel Atonement tells the story of Briony, a writer who, as a girl, sees something she doesn't understand and, based on this faulty understanding, makes a choice that ruins the lives of Celia, her sister, and Robbie, the man her sister loves. The first part of the novel appears to be told from the perspective of a third-person omniscient narrator; but once we reach the end of the book, we realize that we've read Briony's novel, which she has written as an act of atonement for her terrible mistake. Near the end of  Atonement , Briony tells us:

I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end. I gave them happiness, but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me. Not quite, not yet. If I had the power to conjure them at my birthday celebration…Robbie and Cecilia, still alive, sitting side by side in the library…

In Briony's novel, Celia and Robbie are eventually able to live together, and Briony visits them in an attempt to apologize; but in real life, we learn, Celia and Robbie died during World War II before they could see one another again, and before Briony could reconcile with them. By inviting the reader to imagine a happy ending, Briony effectively heightens the tragedy of the events that actually occurred. By choosing Briony as his narrator, and by framing the novel Briony wrote with her discussion of her own novel, McEwan is able to create multiple interlacing narratives, telling and retelling what happened and what might have been.

Narrative in Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran who survived the bombing of Dresden, and has since “come unstuck in time.” The novel uses flashbacks and flash-forwards, and is narrated by an unreliable narrator who implies to the reader that the narrative he is telling may not be entirely true:

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn’t his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I’ve changed all the names.

The narrator’s equivocation in this passage suggests that even though the story he is telling may not be entirely factually accurate, he has attempted to create a narrative that captures important truths about the war and the bombing of Dresden. Or, maybe he just doesn’t remember all of the details of the events he is describing. In any case, the inconsistencies in dates and details in Slaughterhouse-Five  give the reader the impression that crafting a single cohesive narrative out of the horrific experience of war may be too difficult a task—which in turn says something about the toll war takes on those who live through it.

What's the Function of Narrative in Literature?

When we use the word "narrative," we're pointing out that who tells a story and how that person tells the story influence how the reader understands the story's meaning. The question of what purpose narratives serve in literature is inseparable from the question of why people tell stories in general, and why writers use different narrative elements to shape their stories into compelling narratives. Narratives make it possible for writers to capture some of the nuances and complexities of human experience in the retelling of a sequence of events.

In literature and in life, narratives are everywhere, which is part of why they can be very challenging to discuss and analyze. Narrative reminds us that stories do not only exist; they are also made by someone, often for very specific reasons. And when you analyze narrative in literature, you take the time to ask yourself why a work of literature has been constructed in a certain way.

Other Helpful Narrative Resources

• Etymology: Merriam-Webster describes the origins and history of usage of the term "narrative."
• Narrative Theory: Ohio State University's "Project Narrative" offers an overview of narrative theory.
• History and Narrative:  Read more about the similarities between historical and literary narratives in Hayden White's  Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-Century Europe.
• Narrative Art: This article from Widewalls explores narrative art and discusses what kind of art doesn't  tell stories. 

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All About Narrators: Who’s Telling This Story, Anyway?

Tere Marichal, storyteller from Puerto Rico, telling the Afro-Caribbean folktale of Anansi at Biblioteca Juvenil de Mayag during a Multicultural Childrens Book Day.

How to Read Fiction Step  5: Narrators and Point of View 

Wading into a new fiction, it’s natural to size up the characters and get a bead on the story line. Who’s the central character? What is her problem or goal? Then off we go, following the storyline up and down until we find out how it all comes out in the end.

But before launching out into the plotline, there’s one big question we need to ask first, and keep asking all the way through: who is telling this story, anyway?

Is it someone who is in the story with a limited view of events, or someone outside looking omnisciently down? Is it someone we can trust or someone we must question?

A work of fiction is not just a description of a series of incidents; it is a description of a series of incidents as told by a particular teller. Sometimes a fiction is more about the teller than it is about the events in the storyline itself. Whatever the narrator choice or mode of telling, this important aspect of great fiction is something we don’t want to miss.

In this post I’m going to talk about the many different types of narrators an author could choose when constructing a fiction, and how that artistic choice influences the story that we experience as readers.

How to Read Fiction Series

Step 1: Style

Step 2: Theme

Step 3: Plot

Step 4 Part 1: Characterization Techniques

Step 4 Part 2: More Characterization Techniques

Step 6: Tone in Fiction

Playing with Narrator Perspectives: TV and Film

Narrator perspective is hardly an unfamiliar concept these days because so many television and film scripts are built around it. Often the whole point of a tale is to show how individuals seldom describe events without bias but rather filter events through their own perspectives, often to present themselves in the most favorable light.

Most folks have heard of the awarding-winning 1950 Japanese film Rashomon , famous for doing exactly that. This great film tells the story of a bandit who murders a travelling samurai and rapes his wife. The story is re-told by four narrators, the bandit, the wife, the ghost of the samurai, and finally by a woodcutter who witnessed the incidents. Each tells the story differently as each narrator tries to make him or herself look good while the other characters look bad. The film is a serious look at the difficulty of arriving at justice given that witnesses are unreliable to one degree or another.

In a lighter mode: back in the 90s I enjoyed watching the television show X-Files . I’ve always remembered the “Bad Blood” episode (12th episode of season 5) because of its comic use of narrator perspective. In the episode, Agents Mulder and Scully have to track down an apparent vampire who is killing people in a small town.

In the course of the episode, the tale is told two different ways, once from Agent Mulder’s perspective and once from Agent Scully’s. Their descriptions of events, and especially of the small-town sheriff who figures in the tale, differ quite a lot based on the prejudices and opinions of each. Result? Both comedy and complexity.

Anderson and Duchovny, actors who played Scully and Mulder in X-Files, at 2013 Comic Con Convention for 20th Anniversary of the show.

Types of Narrators and Point of View in Great Fiction

What film and TV are doing now, great fiction writers did first: to create narrators who filter and shape the story we read or experience. A writer’s choice of narrator controls everything about how a story is told, starting with the POINT OF VIEW from which we can view the story. What are the types of narrators and points of view that writers can choose from?

Most often, fiction writers choose either first person narrators or third person narrators:

A first person narrator speaks from the “I” or “we” perspective. Most often, a first person narrator is a character within the story, usually but not necessarily the central character (protagonist). First person narrators offer only a limited POINT OF VIEW —that is, the writer can portray only events and thoughts accessible to that narrator character. Note that there are some ways around this limitation, though, discussed below.

A third person narrator is not usually a character in the story but merely a voice relating events, describing characters from a “they” perspective. Third person narrators can be neutral, anonymous, and unnoticeable. They can also be very much the opposite, personable and discursive, as if seeking a relationship directly with “dear readers.”

Third person narrators can offer an OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW , which means that they know everything about all the characters, both their actions and their thoughts. But third person narrators can also have a LIMITED POINT OF VIEW , relating the story as if showing it like a movie camera would if it were positioned behind or inside the head of a particular character.

The second person narrator , who speaks directly to readers as “you” while making the reader a character within the story, is a rare narrator type. This narrator also has a limited POINT OF VIEW, able to report only the events that can be experienced personally by both narrator and readers as they have become characters within the story.

Questions to Ask About Narrators

Once you know about the different types of narrators writers can choose, it’s fun to do a little analysis of how they used these options to structure their particular tale. When you first wade into a new fictional tale, you can ask yourself what type of narrator it has and how that choice shapes the story.

If the narrator is first person, why would an author want to limit point of view to one or two characters? Why choose that particular character? How would the story be different if told from a different character’s point of view?

If the narrator is third person, is the point of view Omniscient or Limited? If Limited, in what way? Why might an author choose to limit the point of view?

What are characteristics the narrative voice itself? Does the narrator seem to disappear into the tale, or does the writer fashion a prominent, talkative voice for the narrator? If the narrative is in second person, what are the impacts of including the reader into the story as an actual character? Why might a writer choose this narrative method?

How much does this narrator try to directly control readers? Does the narrative voice instruct readers on all aspects of the tale, including how to interpret each character’s thoughts and actions, or does the narrator just report and describe without offering an interpretation, leaving readers to analyze for themselves?

Read on for more discussion and examples of each type of narrator.

First Person Narrators

In many famous works, the whole personality of the fiction derives from the personality of the narrator, so it’s easy to call to mind many famous ones: Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Dickens’s David Copperfield, or Salinger’s Holden Caulfield. These first person narrators are the people we care most about within their own stories. We see their whole story from their perspective and are therefore naturally sympathetic with their aims and struggles.

As savvy reader, it’s interesting to consider why an author might have chosen a particular character rather than another as the first person narrator who would tell the tale. Why Jane instead of Rochester or Helen? Why David instead of Aunt Betsy or Agnes? Why Huck instead of Tom or Jim? How might the story be entirely different if told by another? Often later writers play with the original writer’s choice by re-telling a famous story from a different character’s perspective, as Jean Rhys did when she re-told Jane Eyre’s story through Bertha’s eyes in Wide Sargasso Sea .

Sometimes the first person narrator is not the central character, or protagonist, in the story. Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby is a famous example. Gatsby, and possibly Daisy, are the central figures in the story Nick is telling. It’s especially interesting to think about why Fitzgerald fashioned Nick to be narrator rather than let Gatsby, the central figure, narrate the tale.  If Gatsby had told his own story, we might hear the tale of a self-made man who was proud of cutting corners to rise to the top, because he did it all for love, to win Daisy. Nick only partially holds that view, seeing the story as a whole from more complex and shifting perspectives.

Early Novelists and First Person Narrators

First person narrators were uncommon in fiction before the development of realism. For early Realist novelists of the 18th century, First Person probably seemed like the obvious choice to make a fiction seem more real to readers. First person narrators make a fiction seem like a real memoir of actual events–not “once upon a time in a kingdom far away,” but “I, this person, was there and did these things.” Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders are both famous early examples of first person narrators who tell their fictional tales as if they were real people.

Epistolary Novelist Samuel Richardson with Family

Other famous 18th century writers made use of the “epistolary fiction” device. Epistolary Fictions are works told in the form of letters (“epistles”) written by different characters. Famous fictions using this technique include Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa, and Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker . In his Clarissa , Richardson was able to achieve subtle and extensive character portraits of four very different people, Clarissa, a beautiful persecuted lady, Lovelace, her would-be seducer, Anna, Clarissa’s friend, and Belford, Lovelace’s friend, by writing numerous letters from each character’s perspective.

In Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker,  four characters go on a pleasure journey around Britain and Scotland led by Welsh squire Matthew Bramble. Accompanying him  are his unmarried older sister Tabitha, their niece Liddy, their nephew Jemmy, and Tabitha’s maid Winifred.

All four characters write letters to their friends, revealing very different perspectives on the different events in the narrative. For instance, when they visit the big London pleasure garden at Vauxhall, Squire Matthew writes his friend how tacky and frightful the place is, full of kitschy art and annoying, yammering people. His young niece Liddy, on the other hand, writes to her girlfriend about what a magical fairyland the place is, with lanterns, statuary, and beautifully dressed elegant people everywhere.

Clinker was one of Dickens’s favorite works, probably because of the comedy Smollett achieved by juxtaposing the different characters’ views of each event which varied according to their personal preoccupations and capabilities.

Epistolary Fiction didn’t disappear after the 18th Century, though it became less common. Some famous later examples include The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and Dracula by Bram Stoker, both of which rely on letters and diary entries to convey portions of the story. In America, we find the famous short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in which the story of a depressed woman’s breakdown is conveyed by means of diary entries, which are very similar to letters. In the 20th century we find Possession by A. S. Byatt, in which the romance between two famous 19th century poets is revealed through their letters, uncovered by two 20th century scholars who read and interpret them a century later.

Second Person Narrators

A second person narrator uses the word “you” and speaks directly to the reader, therefore making the reader a direct part of the fictional interaction. It’s equivalent to “breaking the fourth wall” in drama or film, when the actors turn directly to the viewer and involve them directly into the action of the film.

Second person seems natural when giving directions or attempting to persuade a reader (“Next you crack the egg and put it in the batter,” or “Now you will experience the comfortable ride of this great automobile”). However, Second Person seems awkward and contrived within a fiction, so few writers in the Western tradition have made use of it.

There are a few exceptions, though, mostly in short fiction rather than in novels. I like Daniel Orozco’s “Orientation, ” a short story in which the second person narrator is giving a new employee, who is “you” the reader, a tour of the office, while sharing all kinds of crazy and distorted gossip about the people who work there.

Another use of second person narrators is in video games or “choose your own adventure” books, wherein the reader becomes a character within the story and is allowed to make choices that can send the narrative in different directions.

Although second person narration has produced a few interesting fictions, to me it feels contrived and unnatural. When the reader becomes a character, the reader can influence the shape of the tale by making different choices, which leaves the resulting shape of the narrative somewhat out of the writer’s control.

The result, to me, is seldom a polished work of art but more of a fun imagination game or perhaps a thought experiment. If you know of an exceptional work of fiction employing a second person narrator, I would love to hear about it. Leave a note in the comments!

Third Person Narrators

House of Bilbo Baggins from New Zealand set of “The Lord of the Rings” film.

Anonymous Third Person Narrators

Narrating a story in third person is a very old kind of storytelling indeed, going back to ancient tales older than “Once Upon a Time” itself. Third person narrative voices convey every element of a story for readers, providing details of setting, characters, conflict, plot events, reporting dialogue and any background details readers need to understand what is happening.

J. R. R. Tolkien provides us with a great example of this kind of narrator in The Lord of the Rings . With his charming descriptions and omniscient (all knowing) point of view, this narrator roves all over Middle Earth to stand behind one character after another at different times and places. He can tell readers the inner thoughts of most of them, reserving reports only when needed to produce suspense; he can also tell readers any needed background information, such as the general opinions of a character’s neighbors, as he does here in the opening chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring .

Notice that though the narrative voice is distinctive, Tolkien does not draw the reader’s attention to the narrator, but rather directs attention to the scenes and characters he wants them to imagine:

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved, but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth. –Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring , Chapter 1.

Here, we can see how Tolkien focuses the reader’s attention less on the narrative  voice and more on Mr. Baggins and what his neighbors thought of him.

“Dear Reader”: Non-Disappearing Third Person Narrators

“George Eliot” (Mary Ann Evans) at age 30. Painting by d’Albert Durade.*

Not all third person readers are so anonymous. Nineteenth century classic fiction is famous for narrators of the “Dear Reader” school—that is, narrators who have characteristics as prominent as any of the characters in the novel. These narrators use their third person privileges to speak directly to readers, offering their opinions not just on characters and events in the story, but also on what they think the readers will think of those characters, or indeed, on any topics that might seem related to the story at all.

These writers seem to be reaching out to readers in friendship, trying to make a direct connection from writer to reader. It’s important to keep in mind, though, that the “friendly” narrator is not the actual writer who speaks to readers in her own voice. The chatty third person narrator is still a fiction, as much of a character creation as any of the other fictional people in the novel.  For instance, some of George Eliot’s fictions feature narrators who are male, even though she, the writer (whose real name is Mary Ann Evans), was not.

That said, it’s still true that narrators who speak directly to readers spawn a kind of closeness between reader and writer, a sense that we readers have connected with the actual author. And indeed, I personally get a sense of the writer’s actual character more from these types of narrators than from any other type, and really enjoy reading their works because of that.

George Eliot/Mary Ann Evans (mentioned above) and Anthony Trollope are both famous for using this kind of narrator. Eliot’s narrative voice is that of a wise and earnest friend, who often pauses in the midst of an event or conversation in the story to talk directly to readers about everything that’s going on. She might ask readers to pardon her for too much detail, or to take warning from characters, to gently call readers out for hypocrisy in their likely judgments, or even to consider what readers can learn from the fictional situation.

Eliot’s narrators also tell us all about how other people in fictional town or village feel about the characters and their doings, thus creating a complex picture of whole social networks involving people from all different social classes and walks of life. Trollope does much the same with his narrators, though usually in a lighter tone and more of a focus on making comic observations about characters and what is going on in the tale.

Both Eliot and Trollope assume omniscience as their point of view. To learn more about the work of each of these writers, take a look at these posts below. For yet another type of third person “direct-to-reader” narrator voice, read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair , in which the third person omniscient narrator isn’t just chatty; he can get positively snarky and sardonic.

Trollope’s The Warden: Empathy v. The Media

Dorothea’s Brook in Middlemarch: Moral Streams and Ripples 

Controlling Omniscient Narrators

Some writers fashion narrators who exert little noticeable control over readers. They just report on events, describing scenes and characters without explaining or urging readers to interpret or judge them a particular way. But other fictions have narrators that tell readers everything about what to think and feel about the story. In life we usually dislike people who are too controlling, but in art, including written art, control is not always bad.

D. H. Lawrence.

D. H. Lawrence, for instance, often deploys a controlling and dominant narrative voice to create powerful effects in fiction. His brilliant and moody short story “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” is one good example of an extremely controlling narrator.

Lawrence’s Freudian-esque theory of human personality underlies this tale of two people who fall in love completely against their will. This theory that people are controlled by powerful unconscious forces renders them incapable of explaining any of their thoughts or motivations, because they don’t really understand themselves at all. Thus Lawrence’s all -knowing narrator steps in to do it for them.

His third person omniscient narrator describes the scene, creates the mood, and shares in-depth detail about each character, including their inner psyches, lacing the language with metaphor and poetic diction. The result, as in so much of Lawrence’s writing, is moody, moving, and perceptive, yet still leaving readers a lot to ponder about what love really is.

Third Person Narrators with Limited Point of View

Sometimes fiction writers use third person narration but choose to limit how much that narrator seems to know about characters or events. The narrator’s point of view is limited, perhaps just to one character’s mind, or to one setting or to a specific period of time.

By doing this, the author can more easily create suspense or mystery by keeping readers as much in the dark as most of the characters are. Sometimes limited point of view can draw readers deeper into the story as they struggle to figure out what is going on from the limited information they have. That causes them to think more deeply about characters and themes the author might want to discuss.

In Shirley Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery,” her dispassionate and restrained narrator is limited to a point of view that seems to hover above the town square, where people are ominously gathering on a beautiful June day in a small village to do. . . what? The narrator does not explain.

This narrative voice reports no one’s inner thoughts, no past history, and no subsequent results after the events. It merely reports characters’ actions and speeches when they occur, as if a camera is perched above the gathering, broadcasting to the ether while events proceed. As the story unfolds and actions become clearly more sinister, this calm unemotional narrative voice seems not just mysterious but positively chilling.

Another famous short story with limited point of view is “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway . Like Jackson’s narrator, Hemingway’s narrator reports only a few details of the setting, what the characters do, and what they say. Readers must figure out who the characters might be, and even the topic of conversation (which, though never explicitly mentioned, is the man’s desire for the woman to get and abortion and her resistance).

Austen’s Indirect Discourse

Jane Austen

Brilliantly comedic author Jane Austen invented a particular kind of limited third person narration often called “indirect discourse.” Though her narrator speaks in third person, which might suggest to readers that the narrator is omniscient, she might be limiting the narrator to just one character’s thoughts and point of view.

She used indirect discourse to particularly brilliant effect in Emma . For almost the whole first half of the novel, she narrates in third person but restricts her point of view to Emma’s mind without letting the reader know that specifically. Thus first time readers can get fooled into thinking that Emma’s views on everything are correct; but when all her surmises start coming untrue, the little picture as summed up by Emma unravels, and readers must re-think their interpretations of all the events coming before.

Austen’s indirect discourse in Emma is a brilliant comedic device, but also a means of drawing attention to a serious theme: it is so easy for humans to think they have figured everything out, totally unaware that they formed their views filtered through their own prejudices and desires.

Writers might check out this blog post for interesting tips on creating their own third person narrators.

Unreliable Narrators

When picking up a new fiction, most readers are inclined to trust their narrators, to take their descriptions of characters, settings, and events as reliable. But what about when they can’t? Enter the Unreliable Narrator.

Except in experimental fiction, Unreliable Narrators are usually First Person narrators.  Unreliable Narrators are storytellers whom we learn, as we read, not to trust. As the story unfolds, their judgment of characters proves unsound, or their “memory” of events is skewed, or their interpretation of what is really going on in the story is distorted. Through use of Unreliable Narrators, writers can introduce more complexity to a tale, drawing readers in to figure out the story and to consider the meaning of the narrator’s shifting perspectives.

Creating Suspense with Unreliable Narrators

Young Daphne du Maurier, writer of Rebecca.

The simplest function of Unreliable Narrators is to mislead readers or hide information, thus creating more suspense until the writer is ready to spring the surprise information on readers. Famous examples include Mrs. De Winter in Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca , in which the first person narrator’s insecurities and naivete draw her to make a lot of incorrect assumptions about the past.

Shirley Jackson’s Merricat in We Have Always Lived in a Castle is another example. Merricat assumes a character of sweet, put-upon innocence, leading readers to believe that her older sister is a murderess. But is she? The Unreliable Narrator device helps Jackson pull off some good suspense.

Inspiring Deeper Thinking with Unreliable Narrators

Sometimes Unreliable Narrators are used thematically, as invitations to think more deeply about the issues being discussed in the tale. Mark Twain’s Huck Finn is used in this way. At first Huck naively repeats people’s racist speeches and beliefs. He tends to accept what people say about themselves along with their judgments about right and wrong, blaming only himself  if he can’t quite agree with how others see things.

But even from the novel’s beginning, readers are enticed to see more deeply and judge more harshly than Huck does. As Huck becomes more educated about what is truly evil and what is good in the human heart, readers become educated as well.

Huck Finn telling his tale to Tom Sawyer. Illustration from a French edition of the novel.

Unreliable Narrators and Complex Perspectives

In her masterpiece Wuthering Heights , Emily Bronte makes an even more complex statement about how human perspectives distort what they see and remember about the actions of their fellow beings. The strange tale of Catherine and Heathcliff and their progeny reaches readers only through the distorted perspectives of its tellers, as light penetrates wavy old glass.

Faithful family servant Nellie is the primary narrator, but parts of the tale also reach readers through Lockwood, the shallow and misapprehending city visitor, and through long pieces of dialogue from Heathcliff, Cathy, Cathy II, and Isabel.

Even from the first sentences in the novel, readers can pick up that Lockwood is mistaken about pretty much everything he sees. Thus readers have fair warning from Chapter 1 that they will have to assemble pieces of information for themselves as the story proceeds, to interpret the characters or even fully perceive what has happened in the story. Bronte depicts how points of view are always filtered and that truth is always partial, or at least multi-faceted. This idea becomes a major theme of the novel, conveyed primarily through its complex narrative structure.

For writers who want to use unreliable narrators in their work, this blog post might be helpful:

Modernist, Experimental, and Disappearing Narrators

Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing well into the 20th, many writers experimented with the design of their narrators. Some writers pushed the envelope by trying to make narrators disappear entirely, telling stories that didn’t seem to have narrators at all.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is one example. Technically, her narrative voice seems to be third person omniscient, able to go inside the minds of one character after another or to describe a scene happening on the streets of London outside of anyone’s mind.  But the narrator lodges itself so firmly inside the mind of one character at a time, rendering their mental speech each in their own words, that readers almost live the interior experience of each individual character, rather than hear a narrator talk about it.

Virginia Woolf in 1927.*

Woolf’s narrator does not signal when she is jumping from one character’s perspective to another, which confuses some first-time Woolf readers who must catch the signals when the point of view has shifted from Clarissa to Peter to Sally to Septimus or yet another character, following the “stream of consciousness” of each separate thinker.

James Joyce does something similar in Ulysses . Sometimes his narrator is Third Person, expounding upon ideas and events that surround the two main characters of the novel, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. But mostly his narrator is positioned inside the minds of one or the other of these two characters. The narrative voice does play more than Woolf’s does with the style of language, changing styles in almost every chapter.  But the overall effect is to give readers a journey inside the daily lives and minds of Leopold and Stephen.

William Faulkner is yet another Modernist writer who experiments with stream of consciousness and disappearing third person narrators. Like Emily Bronte, he was fascinated with the human difficulty of understanding how other people feel and think, given that people’s interior beings are quite different.

Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Absalom Absalom, and As I Lay Dying —indeed, most of his work altogether—employ disappearing Third Person narrators to render the interior speech of successive characters. He takes each character back over the very few events that occur in each of the tales to explore how each character experiences and regards each event, and to uncover how little each character truly understands the other characters.

So Many Kinds of Narrators to Tell a Story!

From First Person narrators who relate their own personal histories, to Third Person narrators who want to be your friend, to narrators who seem to disappear into their stories even while they tell them, the voices who tell amazing stories run the gamut from simple to complex.

What kind of narrators are in your favorite fictions? How does the author’s choice of narrator influence the story you read? How would it be different if told from an alternate point of view, by a different voice entirely? More often than not, every element of a fiction would change if it were told by a different kind of narrator.

The next time you pick up a great classic novel, give some thought to who is telling that story, and why the author might have made that choice. Appreciate the author who artistically chose exactly the right character, the right voice, the right point of view to bring that particular tale most powerfully to you.

Sometimes the whole story boils down to one main factor: who is telling it.

Who’s telling this story, anyway? And from what point of view is it told?

Photo Credits:

Tere Marichal. Biblioteca Juvenil Mayague z, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Storyteller.

Anderson and Duchovny at San Diego Comic Con 2013.  Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Man telling story . Jamain, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Samuel Richardson and Family painting .  Francis Hayman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Bag End-Lord of the Rings movie set.   Photo by  Bence Kondor  from  Pexels . 

George Eliot.  1819 – 22 December 1880), aged 30, by the Swiss artist Alexandre-Louis-François d’Albert-Durade (1804-86).  Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

D. H. Lawrence . Passport Photo. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

  Jane Austen .  James Andrews / Public Domain. 

Daphne Du  Maurier.    Author unknown, Copyrighted free use, via Wikimedia Commons.

Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer .  Illustration by Achille Sirouy, 1886. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons {PD-US-expired}.

Virginia Woolf, 1927 .   Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Speaking woman with glasses.   Photo by  Karolina Grabowska   from Pexels.

Mary Jane is a longtime literature lover who lived in the Cincinnati area for many years, then in central Louisiana for three years (what a treat!), teaching literature classes at universities in both locations. Now back in the Cincinnati area, she pampers her grandchildren, experiments with cooking, and visits art museums as often as possible.

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Literature 101 , Reading Fiction

classic fiction classic literature classic novels D. H. Lawrence famous authors first person narrator How to read Fiction limited point of view narrators omniscient narrator point of view questions about narrators third person narrator Tolkien

January 14, 2023 at 9:17 pm

impressive, powerful and very effective use of second person narrator in Danya Kukafka’s Notes on an Execution.

January 16, 2023 at 2:57 pm

Hello! Good to hear of an effective use of second person narration, still pretty rare to see. I will add this book to my ever-growing reading list! Thanks for commenting.

July 12, 2023 at 6:27 am

Hi! I wanted to thank you for all the resources and time that you’ve put into this website. I’m taking various courses in English as part of my bachelor’s degree, and I’ve been supplementing some of my reading with articles from your site – I very much appreciate them! I also had one question about third person narrators after reading this article. Would the narrative perspective in something like Little House on the Prairie also be considered simply third person limited? If I remember right, in those books we have access to the inner thoughts of Laura herself only, as well as access to all the external events that happen to her family. In the examples in this article, stories from a third person limited perspective give the reader access only the events as they occur, and no more than that. One last question I had: am I right in concluding that either an anonymous narrator, or a “dear reader” style narrator may be a “controlling” narrator who tells the reader what to think about the story? Thank you so much!

July 12, 2023 at 8:19 am

Hello! I’m so glad the site is helping you with your studies, and hopefully adding to your enjoyment of great literature!

It has been ages since I read Little House! I would say the answer to your question is yes, I would call the narrator limited third person if Laura herself is not speaking, and if no one’s thoughts other than Laura’s are accessible. The information available to readers is “limited” to only events and Laura’s thoughts. Writers can limit narration any way they think will serve their narrative. To your second question: yes, I think both anonymous and “dear reader” narrators can be controlling. If I think of some examples, I will come back and add to this comment!

Thanks so much for leaving your kind comment. Tell your fellow students about the site!

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What is Narrative?

Narrative definition.

Narrative is the basis of storytelling. Narratives are oral or written accounts that connect related events or incidents for the purpose of entertaining, educating, communicating, sharing, and/or creating meaning for readers or listeners. Narratives can be found in novels, movies, plays, music, and even video games, and they are often referred to as storylines.

Use of Narrative in Literature

Writers use narrative in literature to present their stories. Narrative can be linear in which events are portrayed in a logical, often chronological, manner for relatively straightforward understanding on the part of readers. Narrative can also be nonlinear in which the reader must piece together the connections between events, characters , or action in the story . The literary devices and approaches that writers utilize to form their narrative styles combine to create varied, meaningful, innovative, and impactful works of literature.

History of Narration or Storytelling

Storytelling is an essential part of human nature. Man is the only creature that tells stories, and we have been telling stories and listening to them since the time we learned to speak. Storytelling began with oral traditions, and in such forms as myths , legends , fables , anecdotes , and ballads . These were told and retold, passed down from generation to generation, and they shared the knowledge and wisdom of early people.

The basic theme of various forms of story-telling were fear of natural forces, deeds of heroes , gods and goddesses, and to teach life lessons from others’ experiences. Biblical stories have the primary purpose of teaching spirituality. Most biblical stories were performed in churches to convey spiritual messages to the masses.

Narrative Examples in Everyday Life

Modern narratives have a broader function. After a close study of famous examples of modern narrative, we see that such narratives do not merely entertain, but serve as ways to communicate writers’ moral , cultural, and political perspectives .

Moreover, narratives have contributed to achieving educational objectives in our everyday life. Different forms of media enable people to express and record their real life stories, and to share their knowledge and their cultural values across the world. In addition, many documentaries on television adopt a narrative technique to communicate information in an interesting way.

Examples of Narrative in Literature

Example #1: animal farm (by george orwell).

Animal Farm , by George Orwell , is a modern narrative example known as a “political satire ,” which aims at expressing a writer’s political views. It uses animals on a farm to describe the overthrow of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Communist Revolution of Russia before WWII. The actions of the animals on the farm are used to expose the greed and corruption of the Revolution. It also describes how powerful people can change the ideology of a society.

Example #2: Faerie Queen (By Edmund Spenser)

Poetry written in the style of a narrative is known as “narrative verse .” Faerie Queen , by Edmund Spenser, is an example of such poetry. It narrates the adventures of the Red- Cross Knight in helping Lady Una rescue her parents from the evil Dagon. On a symbolic level it describes the mission of the Holiness as helping the Truth, fight Evil, and thus regain its rightful place in human hearts.

Example #3: The Withdrawing Room (By Charlotte Macleod)

Charlotte Macleod’s The Withdrawing Room is an example of a thriller or suspense narrative. Augustus Quiffen, a lodger at Sarah’s Brownstone home, is killed by falling under the train. It seems to be an accident until Mary Smith tells Sarah that it is a murder, but she is not sure of the identity of the murderer. Sarah and Max Bittersohn investigate the matter, and find that the killer has planned the death beforehand.

Example #4: Don Quixote (By Miguel de Cervantes)

Don Quixote , by Miguel de Cervantes, is a parody of romance narratives, which dealt with the adventures of a valiant knight. Unlike serious romances, in Don Quixote , the narrative takes a comical turn. We laugh at how Quixote was bestowed a knighthood in his battle with the giants [windmills]. We enjoy how the knight helps the Christian king against the army of a Moorish monarch [herd of sheep]. These and the rest of the incidents of the novel are written in the style of Spanish romances of the 16th century, in order to mock the idealism of knights in the contemporary romances.

Function of Narrative

Storytelling and listening to stories are part of human instinct. Therefore, writers employ narrative techniques in their works to attract readership. The readers are not only entertained, but also learn some underlying message from the narratives.

Moreover, a narrative is set in specific cultural contexts . Readers can get a deep insight of that culture, and develop an understanding toward it. Thus, narratives can act as a binding force in uniting humanity.

Related posts:

• Narrative Essay
• Narrative Poem

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What is narrative? 5 narrative types and examples

Narration and narrative are two key terms in writing fiction. Read on to learn what narrative is, as well as five types of narrative, with examples:

• Post author By Jordan
• 20 Comments on What is narrative? 5 narrative types and examples

Narration and narrative are two key terms in writing fiction. Read on to learn what a narrative story is, as well as five types of narrative, with examples:

What is narrative?

Narrative is a style of writing that connects ideas, concepts or events. It shows a sequence of events. Humans like to tell and listen to a coherent story .The definitions below show three important aspects of narration in storytelling:

• It  connects  events, showing their patterns, relating them to each other or to specific ideas, themes or concepts.
• It is a  practice  and  art in that when we tell a story, we shape the narrative – the connection between events.
• Narrating a story involves shaping events around an overarching set of aims or effects (whether consciously or unconsciously). For example, in a comedic narrative, the overarching aim is to surprise/shock or otherwise lead the audience or reader to be amused.

Here are three definitions of narrative technique via the  Oxford English Dictionary that illustrate the above ideas:

• A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
• The practice or art of telling stories.
• A representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values.

A number of literary techniques are used to create narrative: figures of speech, dialogue rhetorical devices and so on.

Now that we’ve clarified what narrative is, here are several types of narration, with examples and tips for using them well:

Common types of narrative:

Descriptive narrative.

• Viewpoint narrative
• Historical narrative
• Linear narrative
• Non-linear narrative

Let’s explore each narrative type with examples:

Descriptive narrative connects imagery, ideas, and details to convey a sense of time and place.

The purpose of descriptive narrative

Descriptive narrative has two key purposes:

• To create a sense of setting, of time and place.
• To convey the mood and tone of said time and place (e.g. threatening, peaceful, cheerful, chaotic).

When we describe a pastoral scene in a rural setting, for example, we might linger on specific images (such as a wide, empty field, an abandoned tractor) to build up an overarching mood (such as peaceful simplicity).

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Descriptive narrative examples

The Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master of this type of narration. In Love in the Time of Cholera  (1985), the third person narrator describes the unnamed seaside city in the Carribbean where much of the novel takes place. Marquez narrates the passage through the eyes of Dr. Urbino, one of the city’s most distinguished doctors:

The city, his city, stood unchanging on the edge of time: the same burning dry city of his nocturnal terrors and the solitary pleasures of puberty, where flowers rusted and salt corroded, where nothing had happened for four centuries except a slow aging among whithered laurels and putrefying swamps. In winter sudden devastating downpours flooded the latrines and turned the streets into sickening bogs. (p. 16-17)

In the space of a paragraph, Marquez shows how the city changes (or doesn’t change) over centuries. This makes Marquez’s setting more vivid and real. The narration passes from showing the city’s history to its citizens’ current ways of life. The narrator proceeds to describe the lives of poor inhabitants:

During the weekend they danced without mercy, drank themselves   blind on home-brewed alcohol, made wild love among the icaco plants, and on Sunday at midnight they broke up their own party with bloody free-for-alls. (p. 17)

Over the course of two pages, Marquez masterfully shows the city’s mood, culture, unique spirit. His narration then zooms in closer on individuals’ lives. The multiple time-scales in his narrative – past and present day – combine to give a rich sense of time and place .

2: Viewpoint narrative

Often, the express purpose of a section of narration is to help us understand the views and feelings of the narrating character or ‘viewpoint narrator’. Point of view or POV is thus a key element of narration ( read about different types of POV here  and a definition of narration here ).

The purpose of viewpoint narrative

Viewpoint narrative presents events or scenes to us so that we see understand them through narrators’ feelings, desires, beliefs or values.

In omniscient narration, the narrator may share multiple characters’ private thoughts, even in a single scene. In limited narration, by contrast, we can only know what a single person’s perception (and its subjective limitations) tells us. Tweet This

[You can read more about different points of view here .]

Viewpoint narrative has power. We might interpret story events the way the narrator does. Because we don’t have a different viewpoint for comparison, or because their voice is strong, self-assured. Yet the viewpoint narrator in a scene may be unreliable (they could lie about what truly happened, or gloss over details that, for example, make them look worse to others).

Authors like Vladimir Nabokov have written novels featuring protagonists who are unethical or even abusive. In novels such as Nabokov’s  Lolita , the reader has to remember that the narrating voice has its own agenda. The narrative voice is in first-person, through Humbert Humbert.

The most common viewpoint narratives are generally in either first-person narrative or third-person. There are some stories that have been written in second-person ‘you’ but these are far less common. The Fault in our Stars by John Green and To Kill a Mockingbird  by Harper Lee are other examples of a first-person narrative.

Other third-person narratives are Middlemarch by George Eliot in which she employs third-person omniscient narration to delve into the lives and relationships of the characters in the provincial town of Middlemarch. In Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: the writer uses third-person limited narration to delve into the psyche of the protagonist, Raskolnikov, as he grapples with morality and guilt. The thriller You by Caroline Kepnes is an example of a book written in both first-person and second-person narration. In Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, he novel follows the life of a young man in New York City during the 1980s. The second-person narrative immerses the reader directly into the protagonist’s experiences.

Viewpoint narrative example

Virginia Woolf is a master of filtering events via individual characters’ perceptions. She often switches between multiple characters’ viewpoints within a single page. This approach (called ‘stream of consciousness’) lets her reveal characters’ different fixations and personalities.

Take, for example, this scene in Mrs Dalloway (1925). Septimus Smith is a World War I veteran whose mental health is crumbling. His Italian wife Rezia feels unease and longs for her home country. Woolf switches from paragraph to paragraph between Septimus and Rezia’s viewpoints, in third person:

Human nature, in short, was on him – the repulsive brute, with the blood-red nostrils. Holmes was on him. Dr. Holmes came quite regularly every day. Once you stumble, Septimus wrote on the back of a postcard, human nature is on you. Holmes is on you. Their only chance was to escape, without letting Holmes know; to Italy – anywhere, anywhere, away from Dr. Holmes. Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925), p. 81

Then to Rezia’s POV in limited third person:

But Rezia could not understand him. Dr. Holmes was such a kind man. He was so interested in Septimus. He only wanted to help them, she said. Woolf, p. 81.

Woolf’s gift for clear viewpoint and narration means that she can narrate individuals’ differing fears and obsessions from their viewpoints within a single page without breaking the flow.

Woolf reports Rezia’s words within narration, instead of using dialogue. This allows Woolf’s narrative (and changing viewpoints) to flow into each other without interruption.

Other novels that use this device are Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The novel is narrated by both husband and wife, Nick and Amy, providing conflicting perspectives of the series of events as the mystery unfolds.

In The Martian by Andy Weir,  the novel alternates between the first-person perspective of astronaut Mark Watney, stranded on Mars, and the third-person perspectives of those working to rescue him.

3: Historical narrative

In genres such as biography, autobiography and various historical subgenres (e.g. historical romance or WWII fiction), a lot of narration recounts events in the past. Of course, the author may choose to tell a war story in a tumultuous present tense. There’s no  single  way to narrate the past. Yet it serves a common purpose:

Historical narrative example

One thing common to historical narrative in different genres is it shows historical process. It links causation from event to event, showing the chain reactions that lead to how things pan out.

This is why in historical narrative, such as narration sharing a character’s backstory , we often have  words showing order of events . Such as the words bolded in this example:

First,  the city was a fledgling thing.  In the early days , there was one traffic light, and if you were doing your driver’s license, you could be damned sure you’d have to drive past it.  In later years , as the local publishing industry grew, it became a hotbed of hotshot journalists-in-training.  So the city needed  more traffic lights (and the related tender corruption to write about).

A sense of historical cause and effect, of  long stretches of time condensed,  is typical of historical narrative.

Historical narrative and time words

Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things  (1997), about tragedies that strike twin siblings born in Ayemenem in India and their family, is full of rich historical narration. Note the phrases and words that convey time’s passage, e.g. ‘Six months later…’.

Rahel was first blacklisted in Nazareth Convent at the age of eleven ,  when she was caught outside her Housemistress’s garden gate decorating a knob of fresh cowdung with small flowers. At Assembly the next morning, she was made to look up depravity in the Oxford Dictionary and read aloud its meaning. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1997), p. 16

Roy proceeds to narrate Rahel’s expulsion, revealing Rahel’s inquisitive mind in the process:

Six months later she was expelled after repeated complaints from   senior girls. She was accused (quite rightly) of hiding behind doors and deliberately colliding with her seniors. When she was questioned by the Principal about her behaviour (cajoled, caned, starved), she eventually admitted that she had done it to find out whether breasts hurt. Roy, p. 16.

Through narrating events in the past , in Rahel’s schooling, Roy fleshes out a sense of her character. She shows her inquiring, rule-breaking nature while also showing the strict social backdrop that conflicts with it. By narrating Rahel’s history, or backstory, Roy foreshadows future conflicts between Rahel’s individualism and society’s expectations.

4: Linear narrative

Linear narrative is narration where you tell events in the order they happened , i.e. in sequence. This type of narrative is typical of realist fiction where the author wants to create the sense of a life unfolding as a character experiences day to day or year to year.

The purpose of linear narrative

Linear narrative shows causation clearly. When we see what happened to a character yesterday, then today, then tomorrow, its often easier to notice patterns and chains of cause and effect.

Stories told in a linear time-frame might be told mainly using past, present, or even future tense. Yet each event flows on simply from the previous incident described. Often this helps to create what Will Self calls ‘the texture of lived life’, as we see characters going through this, then that, then the next thing.

Example of linear narrative

David Mitchell’s genre-bending Cloud Atlas  (2004) spans multiple eras, settings and characters, and is nonlinear as a whole. Yet one section of his book, titled ‘Half-Lives – The First Luisa Rey Mystery’ is written as a mystery/thriller. This section in itself is linear narrative, told in the present tense.

Luisa Rey is a young journalist who becomes a target of powerful people when she investigates health and safety failings at a nuclear power plant.

Mitchell creates suspense and tension by placing Luisa’s narration in third person and the present tense. The present tense narrative creates a sense of immediate action, unfolding now . Mitchell also creates tension by separating Rey’s inner monologue from events happening around her:

Luisa Rey hears a clunk from the neighbouring balcony. ‘Hello?’ Nobody . Her stomach warns her to set down her tonic water. It was the bathroom you needed, not fresh air , but she can’t face weaving back through the party and, anyway, there’s no time – down the side of the building she heaves: once, twice, a vision of greasy chicken, and a third time. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004), p. 90.

The linear chain of events – feeling uneasy and ill at a party, getting sick – occur on a simple timeline of ‘this happens, then that’.

Bildungsroman (also known as coming-of-age novels) also follow the linear narrative style. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens are some examples of linear narratives.

Prose narrative, relating personal experience narratives, is another form of narrative that takes a linear form. These are often found in mythological narratives, as well. Sometimes there are life lessons imbedded in these narratives. Some popular examples include the fable of Icarus (not listening to the advice about flying too close to the sun). This type of story is well known to many of us from a children’s stories. Fables are a type of narrative genre that have a particular focus on illustrating a moral lesson.

5: Nonlinear narrative

Different types of narrative include narration that does not follow events in the order they happened.

Chronological events (e.g. what happens in 1990 followed by what happens in 1991) don’t have to match up with the order of  narrative  events. The author might share key details from 1990 before going back to the events of 1987 in the story.

However, as novel writing coach Romy Sommer says, avoid making the first several chapters of your novel all backstory:

An issue I see with a lot of beginner writers is they tend to write the backstory as the story itself. If you do find yourself writing the first few chapters being all about the backstory […] you may need to ditch the first few chapters. Romy Sommer, ‘Understanding character arcs: How to create characters’, webinar preview here.

The purpose of non-linear narrative

Non-linear narrative has various uses:

• It can represent the narrator’s emotional state or consciousness. For example, a severely traumatized narrator who has flashbacks might tell events in a jumble of chapters set in different years, out of sequence, as they try to piece together fragments and memories.
• It can show stories with related arcs or themes unfolding in different places and times.  In Michael Cunningham’s retelling (of a sort) of Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway , characters living in different time periods have personal experiences and tragedies that echo events from Woolf’s book as well as Woolf’s own life.
• It can build suspense.  For example, Donna Tartt opens  The Secret History by telling the reader about a murder. We next meet the murder victim alive, as the story jumps back to the events leading to his killing.

Example of nonlinear narrative

Donna Tartt’s prologue to The Secret History  (1992) is a masterful piece of non-linear narration . Within the first page, we know there’s been a murder and the first person narrator is somehow complicit. Tartt’s opening paragraph reveals a lot but still builds anticipation:

‘The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. He’d been dead for ten days before they found him, you know. It was one of the biggest manhunts in Vermont history – state troopers, the FBI, even an army helicopter; the college closed, the dye factory in Hampden shut down, people coming from New Hampshire, upstate New York, as far away as Boston.’ (p. 1)

Yet next thing we know, we’re back in the days when the narrator first met Bunny, and Bunny Corcoran is very much alive. This non-linear recalling of events gives us a dramatic moment before its buildup. Yet Tartt still delays our complete gratification by making us wait for full understanding of what happened, and why.

Other good examples include The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. This novel revolves around a man with a rare genetic disorder that causes him to time travel involuntarily. The narrative alternates between the perspectives of the time-traveling husband and his wife, presenting their lives out of chronological order. 

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, provides multiple ways to be read. The author offers a “Table of Instructions” that allows readers to choose between two possible orders for the chapters. The narrative follows the life of an Argentine intellectual living in Paris and explores themes of existentialism and identity.

Use examples of narrative to improve your own narration

Read through the examples of narrative above and try exercises based on these authors’ narrative styles and techniques:

1. Write a paragraph  of historical narrative  describing a character’s home city and how it has changed over the years. In the next paragraph, describe how a character or section of the population spends a typical weekend in the city, showcasing more of the city’s unique details.

2. Write a scene using viewpoint narrative  showing two characters preoccupied with different worries, in the third person. Write the scene entirely in narration. Any speech must be reported speech and not dialogue. For example: ‘He told her that he was tired of the city and was thinking about moving abroad.’ In the first half, filter narration through the first character’s thoughts, but then switch to the other character’s point of view. How do they see things differently?

Does your skill in narration need developing? Our writing coaches will help you craft better narrative.

Related Posts:

• Types of narration infographic - 6 narrative POVs
• What is an omniscient narrator? Narrative examples and tips
• How to build narrative pace using grammar
• Tags examples of narrative , narration

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

20 replies on “What is narrative? 5 narrative types and examples”

Tips are one thing, but aptly differentiating the types is MONEY. Can’t wait to share this.

Thanks, Elias!

[…] first chapter must get the reader comfortable with your narration style. Make it clear how the story will be told. Through one person’s perspective, jumping around […]

very informative

Thank you for the feedback, Richard!

where are the examples

Hi Rory, thank you for asking – they are throughout the article under the subheadings with ‘examples’.

What is the difference between a narrative techniques listed here and the first person narrator and third person?

Hi James, Happy New Year and thank you for your question. The types of narrative in this article refer to functions of narrative rather than viewpoint. First person and third person narration are different points of view (narration using ‘I’ or ‘We’, versus narration using ‘He’, ‘She’, ‘They’, or a gender neutral or non-binary pronoun. I hope this helps? Let us know any questions you have about narration!

[…] But this escapism doesn’t have to always mean detachment. Puzzles are highly involved activities, where good ones are designed to teach the player. But they often lack a viewpoint or narrative that is often included in games. We don’t see puzzles the same way that we see narrative storytelling or narrative games where we experience the narrators’ values, beliefs, and other underlying motivations. […]

I need help. I have an examination tomorrow on Narrative Essays. What should I do?

Hi Tariemi, it’s already the day of your exam so this is probably reaching you a little late. Good luck! I hope you remember to breathe, take your time, and read through the questions twice (and flip over the question sheet in case – I once finished an exam 15 minutes early and wondered why everyone was still writing and only 5 minutes later turned over the question sheet to see there were more questions on the back 🙂). I hope you ace it.

I’m studying for GCSEs, again, and I’ve noticed that the website I bought the English course from uses exactly what you’ve wrote above word by word. I was wondering if you work for them? Since you don’t mention them and they don’t mention you.

Hi Anna, that’s concerning. Could you perhaps share the link? Every article here on our blog is original, we don’t repost others’ full pieces (but there are websites out there that post what I’ve written word for word that I’ve come across, often without permission). Education service providers have asked to properly license my articles for republication, so it may be one of them. Thanks for letting us know (and good luck with your GCSEs!).

Hi Jordan. I double checked and the education service provider gives you credit for the information they’ve used. Great material by the way. Quite explicit hence very helpful. Thank you 😊

Hi Anna, I’m glad to hear that 🙂 Thank you, I’m glad you liked this article and found it helpful (and thank you for letting me know about the citation).

Hello can i ask when was this made? Need it for giving proper credits in my homework!

Hi Cakeri, it was published August 2nd 2018, good luck with your homework!

Hi jordan.thank you i’m glad you helped me to do homeword. Thank you very much

Dear Farah, So pleased you found the blog useful. Thanks for reading and commenting.

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Narrators in Literature: Types and Definitions

Introduction.

The style of writing, plot perspective, or even characters' attributes depend on the narrators.

Narrators in literature have an essential purpose to offer. If we can identify different narrators in literature, it will be easier to understand the perspective. Narrators are the backbone of fictional literary works. This tutorial will assist in getting the essential details on narrators in literature.

Who is a Narrator?

A narrator is a person or voice who tells a story or narrates a literary work. The story or the literary work is described from the narrator's point of view. A narrator can be part of the text. But it is not mandatory for the narrator in literature to be part of the text. The presence of narrators is found in fictional stories, novels or even narrative poems. The narrator may or may not be present in the events narrated in the literature.

The narrator's different perspective on narrating an event or character discloses many facets of the narrative. The readers get some space to think and summarise their conclusion on various parts of the literature. So, the narrator is not only a describer but also a guide. It guides the reader to get the correct knowledge from the literature without getting lost among the characters and the plot.

In the novel by Robin Sharma, 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari,' the narrator is John. The whole story is known to the readers mainly by the conversations between John and Julian Mantel, who eventually changed his perspectives about life.

Types of Narrators

If you understand the importance of the narrators in literature, it will be easier to understand the message the writer conveys. There are primarily three types of narrators present in English literature, and the idea of pronouns helps you to understand the role of narrators in a better way.

First-person narrator

It narrates using the pronouns 'me', 'our', 'I', 'ours', 'we', 'us', and 'mine' . The narrator gets involved with the reader directly by narrating from the first-person point of view. The first-person narrator is the part of fiction or literature.

In the novel 'The Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger, we see the first-person narrator. Everything the reader experience is from the character Caulfield's perspective.

Second-person narrator

The second-person narrator narrates, addressing the reader. It uses the pronoun 'you', 'your' and 'yours to narrate any fictional story or novel. The second-person narrator is not popular in the literature. The reader becomes confused with the second-person narrator because it does not specify if the reader is getting a part in the narrative.

'Ghost Light' by Joseph O'Connor is a novel that shows the ups and downs of the life of an Irish actress, Maire O'Neill or Molly Allgood. This impactful novel is an incredible example of the second-person narrative. We see the growth and fall of the relationship between the characters John Millington Synge and Molly Allgood through the second-person point of view.

Third-person narrator

The third-person narrator narrates with the pronouns he, his, she, him, her, they, them, hers and theirs .

There are two types of third-person narrators used in the literature.

Third-person Limited Narrator: It narrates everything from the third-person point of view using the pronouns mentioned before. And such a narrator can be the part of the event intruding on the narration.

It can also stay outside of the incidents in the narrative. Such narrators comment on the characters too. The narrator is 'limited' because such a narrator does not have the authority to comment on the characters outside a story's scenes. When this narrator is present around the characters, it can comment on these.

Among the most popular series of novels, we must mention Harry Potter's series of J. K Rowling has the 'third-person limited point of view'. For example, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets shows Harry's thoughts but mainly focuses on the events related to the characters with the third person limited point of view.

Third-person Omniscient Narrator: This narrator explains and narrates staying outside the narrative and its events. Such narrators cannot be the part or character of the narrative. It is called a 'third-person omniscient narrator because the narrator acts like knowing everything or being aware of everything that happens.

The narrator's presence is felt everywhere in the text by the readers. And the narrator acts as the omniscient God who knows all. This type of narrator is usual in stories and novels or fictional narratives.

Jane Austen's famous novel Pride and Prejudice is an example of the third-person omniscient narrative point of view. The narrator is aware of the incidents and thoughts of the character and acts like an omniscient presence.

It discloses the characteristics of the characters too. Like, the narrator comments on Mrs Bennet's nature, mentioning her as "a woman of mean understanding". The narrator's point of view is similar to Elizabeth Bennet's point of view in the novel.

Significance of Narrator's Point of View

The narrator's point of view builds a psychic connection between the narrative and the reader. It mentors the reader to get a clear idea of the characters, plot and incidents behind the characters' dialogues.

First-person, second-person and third-person points of view work differently to establish the respective points of view. Apart from these, there is the dramatic point of view or no point of view where the narrator is absent.

It is essential to understand the narrator's purpose in the narrative. It helps to unfold the vital perspectives of the narrative.

A narrator's role is like the visible or invisible guide to the readers.

Q1. What do you understand by the word 'narrator' in literature?

Ans. A narrator is like a storyteller's voice, sometimes a character in a narrative or the writer itself. A narrator may or may not be part of the narrative.

Q2. What are the primary types of narrators?

Ans. The primary three types of narrators are

• First-person
• Second-person and
• Third-person narrator.

Q3. What is the first-person narrator?

Ans. The first-person narrator narrates the literature (story, novel or narrative poems) from the first-person point of view. The first-person narrator narrates with me, our, I, ours, we, us and mine.

Q4. How are narrators important in literature?

Ans. Narrators play an essential role in narrating the facts and views on the characters, plot and incidents. And narrators connect the reader with the narrative.

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The Five Types of Dystopian Narrative

March 22, 2024 | by J.M. Berger

News Stories

Why do some dystopian narratives mobilize people to commit political or terrorist acts, while others do not? 

Dystopian narratives are descriptions of a fictional or real society as corrupted thoroughly and beyond redemption due to one or more specific problems. Due to its totalizing nature, the dystopian fiction genre has traditionally appealed to extremist ideologists. But the radical dystopian corpus is staggeringly large, and only a handful of works can be said to have influenced political outcomes, extremist or otherwise.  

While some factors are difficult to quantify, including an author’s writing talent and the effect of an especially timely theme, certain narrative patterns can be seen in the genre as a whole. The type of struggle depicted in any given text helps shape the nature of reader engagement and subsequent mobilization. 

Dystopian struggle narratives can be sorted into five categories:

1. Pre-emptive victory: Preventable dystopias  

Dystopian narratives are often presented as cautionary tales, meaning that they emphasize the fact that the future they describe is preventable. This sentiment is often plainly stated in the text, as seen in   A Journey in the City of Amalgamation , the first American dystopian novel, published in 1835 and describing a time traveler who witnesses a potential future of forced miscegenation.   

This approach can be effective for stories that mobilize extremists, including   The John Franklin Letters   (1959)   and  The Turner Diaries   (1978),   first-person narratives in which a protagonist describes a regime that is clearly attributed to the failures of the past, implicating the reader’s complicity in those failures. Both stories feature narrators or characters who explicitly consider how the reader’s complacency led to the dystopian outcome. 

Most dystopias include some degree of cautionary message, whether explicit or implicit, meaning that preventable dystopias tend to overlap with the other four categories described here. Simply by their futuristic nature, most dystopias are technically preventable, but some dystopian authors go out of their way to emphasize this point. For instance, Floyd Gibbons, author of the anti-miscegenation dystopia   The Red Napoleon (1929), opens the book with an inscription: “DEDICATED TO THE HOPE THAT IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.” 

2. Conventional victory: Systems that can be resisted and overcome  

This category most often overlaps with the first, as in  The Turner Diaries , which not only condemns readers’ passivity but offers concrete steps the reader can take to fight back against “the System.” In addition to  Turner and  Franklin , narratives about dystopias that can be resisted and overcome include   The Spook that Sat by the Door (1969) and the Patriot movement’s   Enemies Foreign and Domestic   (2003, 2006, 2009)   trilogy. These stories mobilize readers by showing that successful resistance is possible even in extreme circumstances, becoming especially effective when the text includes guidance on how to resist.  

Mainstream dystopian narratives that depict successful resistance, such as   The Hunger Games (2008), sometimes gain traction among both extremist and non-extremist activists who may find them useful as metaphor, slogan, or aesthetic. Another example, the graphic novel   V for Vendetta (1982), popularized the use of the Guy Fawkes mask as a visual inspiration for activists such as (but not limited to) the  Anonymous and  Occupy movements.  

3. Conditional defeat: Systems that can be resisted but not overcome  

The doomed struggle to maintain one’s values in the face of overwhelming oppression can make for very compelling art, but it doesn’t necessarily spur people to action. Some classics of the dystopian genre describe regimes that can be resisted but cannot be overcome, such as   Escape from New York (1981),   Rollerball (1975) and   The Prisoner   (1968) ,  in which protagonists are able to carry out meaningful acts of personal resistance but are unable to defeat the system itself—or at least they are not clearly seen to do so.   These stories may inspire individuals to stay true to their values in the face of certain defeat, but they may convey the idea that resistance is doomed or pointless.  

These narratives are often characterized by ambiguous endings, and the meaning of “resistance” may also be ambiguous. For example, the 1985 novel  The Handmaid’s Tale does not offer a clear resolution for its protagonist’s deeply personal acts of resistance against the misogynist theocracy in which she lives. In contrast, the TV adaptation of  The Handmaid’s Tale (2017) is much less ambiguous and much more revolutionary, depicting meaningful resistance and perhaps even teasing a conventional victory. (The final season has not yet debuted.)  

While there are no examples of terrorism inspired by  The Handmaid’s Tale , the story’s aesthetic has proven very effective for political protestors seeking to emphasize violence against and oppression of women, especially in the context of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.  Protestors have at times dressed in the characteristic garb of the novel’s oppressed “handmaids,” and the dystopian regime’s name of  Gilead has become shorthand for theocratic aspirations.  

4. Pyrrhic victory: Systems that cannot be overcome but can be catastrophically destroyed  

Some dystopian stories adopt an accelerationist narrative, depicting a world where the dystopian system cannot be rescued but can be destroyed, presumably to allow a fresh start. One memorable example from popular culture is   Escape From L.A.   (1996) ,  the nihilistic sequel to  Escape from New York .   Caesar’s Column , an anti-Semitic novel published in 1890, ends with a literally pyrrhic victory—a mountainous mass grave of smoking corpses. The book was extremely popular in its day, but one would be hard pressed to cite any real social or political impact.  

Pyrrhic themes are often seen in religious dystopian stories.  The Lord of the World (1907) depicts the Catholic Church facing an existential challenge from widespread atheistic and socialistic corruption that can only be redeemed by the end of everything. The book has been and continues to be influential on the thinking of Catholic elites, including the last two popes, but it would be hard to quantify any mass mobilization related to its content.  

More concretely impactful, the 1944 apocalyptic dystopia   When? A Prophetical Novel of the Very Near Future   depicts a world corrupted by Jewish people, which can only be saved by the onset of literal Armageddon.  When?  is best-known as the earliest expression of  Christian Identity , a White supremacist ideology. By virtue of its introduction of toxic ideological elements to a targeted audience,  When? almost certainly played a major role in shaping the Christian Identity movement, which later became violent. The book itself has not, however, been directly implicated in a specific act of extremist violence.  

The last two works are best understood as ideological influences, rather than as calls to action. In both cases, the end of the world is divinely ordained and inescapable, similar to views expressed by some nonfiction accelerationist writers such as  Julius Evola , who describes a cosmic cycle that will inevitably conclude in destruction and rebirth, regardless of what his readers choose to do with their lives. Mobilization may be desirable for various reasons, but it’s less imperative when events are fated to take a certain course

5. Comprehensive defeat: Systems that cannot be resisted or destroyed  

The final category of dystopian narrative describes systems that cannot be destroyed and cannot even be resisted. By far the best-known and most-consequential example of this narrative group is George Orwell’s   1984 , which was published in 1949 and depicts a totalizing and all-powerful dystopian regime that crushes any imaginable act of resistance, even when that resistance is purely symbolic, silent, and/or internal. In  1984 , the system eradicates hope, leaving little inspiration for a mobilized response. The book’s social impact stems from its incisive description of fascist power dynamics rather than from any prescription toward action. Movies like   Soylent Green (1973) and   Brazil (1985) present conclusions that are nearly as bleak, capturing the public’s imagination but not obviously influencing the course of society.  

While a narrative about the futility of resistance may not obviously encourage mobilization, extremists frequently employ total defeat narratives in order to catastrophize and stoke fear about immigration. Starting in the late 1870s,  a series of lurid novels depicted American society collapsing under a wave of Chinese immigration, characterized as a figurative or literal invasion of the United States, with subsequent iterations focused on England and Australia.  

Although the enemies have shifted over time, the genre of racist novels about immigrants conquering the White Western world has proven remarkably durable. One of the most influential,   The Camp of the Saints ,  a 1973 French novel, offers a racist vision of comprehensive defeat for White Europeans at the hands of an onslaught of non-White migrants. More recent entries include   Submission , a 2015 French novel about a Muslim takeover of France. For the most part, these books resonate strongly with mainstream anti-immigrant political forces.  

The utility of narratives  

Each type of dystopian narrative establishes a different relationship with the reader.  

The “pre-emptive victory” theme is one of the most prevalent in the genre, although it often remains tacit in the text. Generally speaking, the entire point of the dystopian genre is to warn readers about how current trends may lead to horrific outcomes. Many authors are content to simply issue the warning, but those who also provide a template for action—such as William Luther Pierce in  The Turner Diaries or Sam Greenlee in  The Spook Who Sat by the Door —are more likely to mobilize readers.  

Conventional victory stories are similarly received by readers, although their language and aesthetics may be more suited to inspiring rallying cries than blueprints for revolution. 

While  pre-emptive and conventional victory narratives hold obvious charms for politically minded readers, they are not the end of the story. Pyrrhic victory scenarios are particularly suited to ideological reification, marrying apocalyptic religious conceits to more political dystopian commentary, as seen in  The Lord of the World and  When?.   

These narratives are more ideological than simple apocalyptic content (eschatology, prophecy, or scripture) because they link the coming apocalypse to a particular strain of dystopian system—socialist and humanist in the former, Jewish and non-White in the latter. Some form of apocalypse is an article of religious faith for many people, extremist and non-extremist, existing in a form completely independent of an extremist ideological argument. Linking the two can imbue an extremist ideology with an aura of religious legitimacy, creating a magnetic future crisis that can be easily incorporated into an extremist  system of meaning .  

Conditional defeat narratives may be cited by extremists, but they are not especially impactful in that space. Several factors may contribute to this. Conditional defeat may be seen as noble, but it can also be understood to render the protagonist’s struggle pointless. In addition, conditional defeat stories often end on deeply ambiguous notes, as in  The Prisoner and  The Handmaid’s Tale , where viewers and readers are left to question the nature of the outcome.  

Extremist ideologists seek to   resolve uncertainty . Conditional defeat narratives tend to  provoke uncertainty, leaving readers unsure about whether and how to resist. Some accelerationist ideologues, such as Julius Evola, argue that acts of futile resistance serve a higher purpose for individual moral development, but this is a pretty tough row to hoe.  

In light of that, one might think that comprehensive defeat narratives would also prove problematic for extremist mobilization, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Conditional defeat raises a series of questions for an audience, but an aggressive narrative of comprehensive defeat is more likely to convey certainty about imminent peril. Comprehensive defeat narratives do not offer a prescription for action in the same way that  Turner does, because all the actions taken by protagonists in the story ultimately fail. Instead, by stoking high levels of fear, they make a non-specific case for extreme, urgent and  systemic action. Comprehensive defeat can only be prevented by comprehensive action by the whole of society.  

Thus, these scenarios are most often deployed in the service of  lawful extremism . Anti-Chinese dystopias played an important role informing debate around the passage and revision of the  Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. More recent examples include  the citation of  The Camp of the Saints by ideologists behind the Trump administration’s anti-immigration efforts, including its attempt to ban Muslims from entering the United States.  

Understanding the classes of dystopian narrative can inform efforts to counter extremism by clarifying the kind of argument posed by any given text and the type of mobilization it might encourage. Too often, extremist texts are treated as enigmatic objects of power that work mysteriously on the minds of readers, or on the other end of the spectrum, dismissed as being relatively unimportant. The truth lies somewhere between.  

Finally, it’s important to note that dystopian narratives are not confined to fiction. Extremist ideologists, and their allies and advocates, including  mainstream politicians , may employ dystopian narratives in rhetoric that is meant to be understood as non-fiction (regardless of its actual veracity). These efforts employ the same narrative types found in fiction, with a heavier emphasis on prospects for pre-emptive or conventional victory, since such rhetoric typically presents a desired political outcome as the solution to the problem.  

Dystopia is not simply a literary genre; it’s a prism for viewing the world and how to live in it.  

J.M. Berger is a writer and researcher focused on extremism as a Senior Research Fellow for the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS). Views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of CTEC or MIIS. A commission is paid on sales made through some links to books and movies in this article.   

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10 Greatest Fictional Movie Narrators of All Time

Narrators assume a crucial role in modern storytelling where characters share thoughts with the audience that cannot be expressed to the other characters in the filmic world. There is a classical charm to a film which opens with the ‘once upon a time’ effect. However, films have evolved from having the conventional reliable narrator, mainly focusing on the exposition of a story.

Today, narrators can be unreliable and may even talk directly to the audience as they vent out their unfiltered thoughts. Some retain the old-time effect of speaking from a retrospective point of view, while others tend to be experimental. Here are 10 narrators in films who made the audience feel immersed in the film.

Red from Shawshank Redemption

It is fitting to begin this list with Morgan Freeman, as the actor’s deep voice has been attached to several great works of American Cinema. The Academy Award-winning actor is mainly known for portraying reliable and calm figures in films, such as Ellis Redding in Shawshank Redemption , Nelson Mandela in Invictus, and Eddie Dupris in Million Dollar Baby. Ellis Boyd Redding, aka Red, is a prison contraband smuggler in the Shawshank State Prison who gives a first-hand account of his prison experience and Andy Dufresne’s escape.

The narrator’s dramatic yet matter-of-fact narration style adds a pull to the film that can humanize a character’s complex journey with unpardonable choices. As the film’s supporting character, Red’s narration seeks empathy for the guilt-ridden prisoners whose life revolve around the prison walls and are dehumanized by the prison warden.

Related: The Best Movies to Master Voiceover Narrations, Ranked

Renton from Trainspotting

Trainspotting starts with its protagonist, Renton, running from two men in black suits as he narrates his frustration with life and society’s expectations. This is metaphorical to what the film stands for as Renton and his friends choose a life of substance abuse instead of responsibilities. The characters in the film are in dissent with conventional life as they battle addiction, poverty and chronic aimlessness. Ambitions, career, and life in suits are a trap for Renton, but his chosen life as an addict is not helping him either.

Throughout the film, Renton narrates his honest opinions on friendships, failure with women, and disappointing his family. His narration bares open his defenses of using substance. The film did not glamourize drug culture nor antagonize the characters. Renton’s narration gives a sardonic yet empathetic account of why there is no good reason to consume drugs, and it is hard to find the right reason to come out of it from an addict’s point of view. The narrator’s hard-hitting catharsis has gained cult status over time for speaking the bitter truth about neglected youth.

Karen Eiffel from Stranger Than Fiction

The Award-winning actress Emma Thompson has worked as the narrator in several fiction and non-fiction projects. The actress’s work as a narrator shone out in Stranger Than Fiction , where she plays Karen Eiffel, a novelist who controls her new character, played by Will Ferrell , who hears her voice in his head. Thompson adds a comedic touch to the novelist trying to come out of her writer’s block as if parodying the act of narrating a story. Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a mentally unstable IRS auditor and the lead protagonist of Eiffel’s novel, who does not initially pay heed to the voice that narrates every mundane action of his life. However, when he discovers he exists as a figment of her imagination and may die as she pleases, Crick fights for his life.

The film was lauded for its inventive storytelling and for incorporating magic realism in exploring themes of character agency and writer’s block. Similar themes were explored in the film Ruby Sparks, which explored how men write women in novels and female agency, which can be viewed as a response to Stranger Than Fiction, where a female novelist explores male agency.

Frank Sheeran from The Irishman

Frank Sheeran is the voice of retrospection, guilt and unresolved trauma from The Irishman . Martin Scorsese directs the gangster film , adding to the filmmaker’s celebrated filmography involving the American Mafia. The Irishman stands out from Scorsese’s filmography by adding the perspective of ageing criminals reflecting on devotion to unethical loyalty and backstabbing faithful friendships.

The story is narrated by Sheeran, played by Robert De Niro, a war veteran and a truck driver. He meets mobster Russell Bufalino, played by Joe Pesci, who recruits in his Pennsylvania crime family, where Sheeran becomes a coveted hitman. Sheeran meets Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pacino, who grows in prominence as a union activist close to the mob.

The film follows the conflicting dynamics of loyalty and betrayal between Sheeran, Buffalino, and Hoffa, which ends with Sheeran burying his conscience to save his life. The film is based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses, written by Charles Brandt, and itremains loyal to the book’s voice in capturing Sheeran’s guilt.

The Narrator from Fight Club

The unreliable narrator from Fight Club is a state of mind. That may be the reason why director David Fincher did not bother naming the character. The narrator, played by Edward Norton, is exhausted with his materialistic life and suffers from insomnia. He is unhappy in his professional and personal life and is existential about his life. He meets Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, a mysterious soap salesman who shares a bleak worldview about consumerism, capitalism and the American society. They form an underground club with other frustrated men with strict guidelines to keep the community a secret. They engage in fist fights venting their anger with life. When everything seems to work well, a support group crasher named Marla, played by Helena Bonham Carter, exposes who Tyler really is.

The narrator from Fight Club is what Renton from Trainspotting feared would happen if he gave into corporate life. In many ways, the narrators from both films have a similar tone and disdain about life and express the Gen X angst of growing up in a consumerist world. However, the narrator from Fight Club suffers psychologically, and the film depicts his stress metaphorically through his alter ego in Tyler.

Deadpool from Deadpool

Ryan Reynolds plays the titular character in Deadpool , where he breaks fourth wall and narrates the character’s unfiltered humorous commentary of his mission. The character as a narrator adds an innovative spin to a convention superhero arc . Wade Wilson turns into Deadpool after an evil scientist’s experiment goes wrong. This gives him healing powers but is left with a disfigured face. The character uses his superpower and his dark sense of humor to disarm his enemies as he hunts for the man who destroyed his life. The narrative constantly winks at the audience with rib tickling one-liners and a meta-commentary of being an underappreciated character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Narrator from The Big Lebowski

The beauty of The Big Lebowski lies in its self-awareness of being a story. That is where the film’s narrator, played by Sam Elliot, plays a crucial role in adding an old-timey charm to storytelling. This Coen Brothers directorial is about a laid-back slacker, Jeff Lebowski, who spends his time bowling and taking life slow. He liked being referred to as the Dude and takes pride in having no ambition in life. However, things get too intense for Lebowski when he is mistaken for a millionaire sharing his name and is trapped in a deceptive case of kidnapping, spiraling into the underworld.

The film keeps its motives vague with the characters and, in the end, they return to the point where the film starts: the bowling alley. This is where the narrator breaks the fourth wall and summarizes the whole film to the audience, adding closure to the senselessness of the plot. The narrator juxtaposes the tale of a middle-aged slacker from the '90s with the commentary of an old Mark Twain narrative blending comedy and classic literature in an absurdist mood piece like The Big Lebowski.

Woody Allen in Annie Hall

Woody Allen plays Alvy Singer, a comedian, struggling with his break-up with Annie, a struggling nightclub singer, played by Diane Keaton. Annie Hall is known for the lead characters playing a version of themselves or a fictional representation of themselves. Allen was a comedian and had a relationship with Keaton, which inspired the film. Singer is the film’s narrator and breaks the fourth wall to explain his anxieties after his relationship with Annie .

The monologues by Singer resemble Allen’s stand-up routines and share the self-deprecation, wit and neuroticism that Allen is known for. Singer’s narration can be interpreted as his intrusive thoughts as the film reflects on the relationship from his point of view. One can interpret the narration as how a comedian copes with heartbreak oscillating between his comedic material and real life, which is definitive of Allen’s relationship with his artistry.

Henry Hill from Goodfellas

Goodfellas , directed by Martin Scorsese , is based on the book Wiseguy, written by Nicholas Pileggi. The film chronicles the life of mobster Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, who narrates the film. The film opens with Hill murdering a man in a trunk of a car along with James Conway, played by Robert De Niro, and Tommy DeVito, played by Joe Pesci. He then narrates his ambitions of being a gangster. His tone as a narrator reflects how he worshiped the mob and was ready to climb up the ladders to enjoy a life of power and luxury. It reflects his blind ambition to be a crime-lord which ultimately ended with substance abuse and his eventual downfall as a mobster.

Most of Scorsese’s gangster films are book adaptations and incorporate narration. This helps to contextualize a story with more events that may remain irrelevant to the plot but is important to the zeitgeist of the criminals. The director also used photographs to convey the same.

Related: 10 Movies Where the Main Character Narrates the Story (And it Works)

Juno from Juno

The narration in Juno by the titular character is conversational, quirky and intimate. Juno, played by Elliot Page , is a teenager who is impregnated by Paulie Bleeker, played by Michael Cera. The film portrays how she is supported by her family, friends and Bleeker, as she braces to keep the baby and place it for adoption. Juno is genuinely funny and narrates how she interprets her life full of simplicity and silly mistakes. The narration captures the essence of adolescence and the character’s imaginative world, almost like a page out of a journal or a diary, which keeps the audience asking for more of Juno’s irresistible humor and honesty.