Prose: Narration and Point of View

This is Unit Ten of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part two of two. Part one left Conrad's unnamed narrator aboard the Nellie, handing the story on. This part names his type, works Joyce, and gives the exam's questions. Part one's governing idea was that the voice is settled first because its position determines what evidence is available. This part pays it off by setting the four openings side by side: Austen outside and above, Brontë inside and afterwards, Conrad inside and alongside, Joyce outside but pressed against one mind, four positions and four bodies of evidence. First Conrad's frame voice is classified, and the writers who later disputed his account are named without being quoted. Then Joyce's Eveline, third person and yet inside her nostrils, where the choice of a detail is the characterisation. Then the exam's three narration questions, of which attribution is the hard one, and five traps. Then a three-step procedure for any prose opening, with two kinds of mechanical evidence. Last, the record of what the glossary omits and what it does well, the limits of classification, and the close of the first half of the prose band. By the end you will be able to type Conrad's frame and read Joyce's cretonne. To set four positions against four evidence sets. To defeat five traps. To run the opening procedure. And to state the record and carry four things into the next three prose units.

Six entries to start: the frame voice classified without the anchor's colouring, Conrad's respondents named under decision D8, and Joyce's Eveline through her window, her three-word sentence, her mode, and the dusty cretonne.

Minor-character, and no gossip.

AIL 0931 Classifying the Frame Voice

The unnamed narrator is in the events and is not their subject, which makes him the glossary's first-person minor-character type. The glossary's word gossip fits him poorly, which is why part one marked that word as the anchor's colouring rather than part of the definition; the colouring fails this case.

Later writers disputed its account.

AIL 0932 Conrad and What Followed

Heart of Darkness has been answered at length by later writers who dispute its account of Africa. Under decision D8 those responses are named and not quoted, their authors being in copyright. The frame invites a reader to weigh the teller, and later readers took the invitation; named, not quoted, under D8.

Third person, inside her senses.

AIL 0933 Joyce's Eveline at the Window

Eveline opens that she sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue, her head leaned against the curtains, and in her nostrils the odour of dusty cretonne. Third person throughout, and yet the reader is inside her nose; the pronoun and the vantage disagree with each other.

Her state, her register, no comment.

AIL 0934 "She Was Tired"

Three words, reported flatly, with no explanation and no narrator's comment. It is her state given in her own register. A narrator standing further off would have said why she was tired; this one declines to, and the declining is the technique; the refusal to explain is deliberate.

Limited omniscient, very close in.

AIL 0935 Joyce's Limited Omniscience

The two-question test gives it: not a character in the events, and confined to one mind. That is the glossary's limited omniscient narrator, operating through free indirect discourse so closely that the sentences take her vocabulary as well as her vantage, her vocabulary and not only her vantage.

What she would notice, selected.

AIL 0936 The Dusty Cretonne

Cretonne is a cheap furnishing fabric, and the odour of it dusty is a detail only someone in that room and used to it would register. Free indirect discourse works by selecting what the character would notice, so the choice of detail is the characterisation; detail selection is characterisation.

Three entries on the four positions and the exam: the openings side by side, the three question shapes, and the test for whose opinion a sentence carries.

Four positions, four evidence sets.

AIL 0937 Four Passages, Four Positions

Austen stands outside and above, Brontë inside and afterwards, Conrad inside and alongside, Joyce outside but pressed against one mind. Four different positions, four different bodies of available evidence, and the exam's prose questions turn on which one is in force; here the governing idea pays off, since the position fixes the evidence.

Identify, attribute, infer.

AIL 0938 How the Exam Asks About Narration

Three shapes appear: identify the point of view, decide whose opinion a sentence carries, and infer something the narrator has not stated. The second is the hardest and the free indirect passages are where it lives, because ownership of a judgment is genuinely ambiguous there; attribution is the hard one.

Could the character say this.

AIL 0939 Whose Opinion Is This Sentence

Ask whether the vocabulary and the judgment could belong to the character. If both could, the sentence is probably free indirect and the opinion is the character's. If the judgment exceeds what the character knows or would say, it is the narrator's; vocabulary and judgment are both tested.

Five entries on the traps: taking the narrator's word, first person as unreliable, omniscient as authoritative, confusing character with narrator, and the detail read as neutral.

Read one paragraph further.

AIL 0940 Trap: Taking the Narrator's Word

Austen's first sentence is the standard case: a narrator appearing to state a fact that the text immediately attributes to someone else. Read one paragraph further before treating any general statement as the narrator's own position, because general statements are often reported rather than asserted.

Interested is not untrustworthy.

AIL 0941 Trap: First Person Means Unreliable

A first-person narrator is interested, which is not the same as untrustworthy. Jane Eyre's account is not undermined by her book. Unreliability has to be demonstrated from the text, and an option asserting it without textual grounds is asserting more than the passage gives; unreliability must be demonstrated.

Access is not authority.

AIL 0942 Trap: Omniscient Means Authoritative

The glossary's godlike phrasing invites the assumption that an omniscient narrator is to be believed. Austen's is ironic throughout. Access to every mind says nothing about whether the voice is being straight with you, and the exam can test that distinction; the anchor's phrasing invites this error.

Both can be true; one is responsive.

AIL 0943 Trap: Confusing Character With Narrator

In free indirect passages an option may correctly describe the character's view and be offered as the narrator's, or the reverse. Both statements can be true of the same sentence and only one answers the question. Check which the question names before choosing between two true statements.

No detail is neutral here.

AIL 0944 Trap: The Detail Read as Neutral

In a close third-person passage, no detail is neutral, because the narrator chose which details the character would notice. Treating the dusty cretonne as scene-setting misses that it was selected. Ask why this detail and not another, and ask why this detail was chosen.

Three entries on procedure: pronoun, minds, judgment before any question is read; what to do when no pronoun appears; and tense as evidence of the narrator stepping out.

Pronoun, minds, judgment.

AIL 0945 A Procedure for a Prose Opening

Find the first pronoun referring to the teller. Count the minds entered. Look for one judgment and ask whose it is. Three steps, and they give the point of view and the attribution habit before any question has been read, three steps done before the questions.

Read on; the pronoun arrives.

AIL 0946 When No Pronoun Appears

A passage may open on pure description with no teller visible, as Conrad's does for two sentences. Read on: the pronoun arrives, and the description was the objective narrator's precise but detached setting-up that the glossary describes; description first is a known opening.

A tense change marks the step out.

AIL 0947 Tense as Evidence About Position

Past tense throughout with occasional present-tense generalisation marks a retrospective narrator stepping out to comment. Brontë's bracket about Mrs. Reed is that step. Watching the tense is a mechanical way to find where the two time-frames divide, mechanical evidence once again.

Thirteen entries to close: six omissions and one strength in the glossary, the frame read sceptically, what narration does not settle, period and nonfiction, what to carry, the four authors' return, the extract not the book, prose under time, and the handoff.

Six terms, one of them central.

AIL 0948 What the Glossary Left Out Here

This unit supplied third-person narration, free indirect discourse, unreliable narrator, stream of consciousness, narrative distance and frame narrative. Six terms, and free indirect discourse is arguably the single most examinable prose technique on the paper. The gap is recorded, and free indirect discourse is absent.

Five types, finely divided.

AIL 0949 What the Glossary Does Well Here

Its five narrator types are more finely divided than most short glossaries manage, and splitting first-person into major and minor character is a genuinely useful distinction the exam can test. The taxonomy is the strongest part of the anchor's prose vocabulary, so credit where the anchor is strong.

The apparatus turns on the frame too.

AIL 0950 Reading a Frame Sceptically

Conrad's frame asks the reader to weigh Marlow, and the same apparatus can be turned on the frame itself. Unit twenty takes that up under decision D8, working the technique on public-domain texts and naming later responses without quoting them; unit twenty takes this up properly.

It gives the evidence, not the answer.

AIL 0951 What Narration Does Not Settle

Identifying a point of view tells you what evidence is available, not what the passage means. That is the same limit the poetry units placed on metre, figure, form and structure. Establish the voice, then read; do not let the classification stand in for the reading. This is the fifth statement of one rule.

Weak evidence, held lightly.

AIL 0952 Narration as a Period Clue

Ironic omniscience suggests the late eighteenth or nineteenth century; close third person with free indirect discourse suggests the modern period. Like form in unit eight this is weak evidence, useful for ordering expectations about diction and never for settling a claim, the same caution as with form.

An essay has a voice as well.

AIL 0953 Narration in Nonfiction

An essay has a speaking voice too, and it can be a persona rather than the author. Swift's proposer is the standing case from unit four. Unit twelve takes nonfiction properly, and it uses this unit's attribution habit rather than a separate apparatus; unit twelve reuses this apparatus.

Two questions, five types, one rule.

AIL 0954 What to Carry Forward

Carry the two-question test, the five types, the free indirect recognition rule, and the habit of asking whose judgment a sentence carries. Those four answer the prose narration family, and none of them requires having read the novel the passage came from; no prior reading is required.

The same four carry three later units.

AIL 0955 These Four Return

Austen and Brontë carry unit eighteen's nineteenth-century band, Conrad and Joyce carry units nineteen and twenty. The passages worked here are the same ones those units build on, so the narration reading is done once and reused three times; read once, reused three times.

Answer the extract, not the book.

AIL 0956 A Paragraph Is Not a Novel

The exam prints a passage, so every claim must be supportable from that passage alone. A narrator reliable across four hundred pages may look doubtful in one paragraph, and the paragraph is what you have. Answer the extract, not the book; the passage is the whole evidence.

More evidence, if you read it.

AIL 0957 What Prose Makes Easier

Prose passages are longer than poems, so there is more evidence for an attribution claim and more room for a narrator to reveal a position. The extra length is an advantage if it is read, and a liability under time pressure if it is skimmed; length helps only when read.

Two sentences close, then pace.

AIL 0958 Reading a Prose Passage Under Time

Read the first two sentences closely for the voice, then the rest at pace for the sense, then return to any sentence a question points at. The voice is established early and rarely changes, so the close reading is worth spending at the start; the voice is established early.

The foundation for three more units.

AIL 0959 The First Half of the Prose Band

Narration and point of view are the foundation the rest of the prose work stands on. Character, scene and style come next, then nonfiction and rhetoric. All three of those units assume the voice has already been settled by the method in this one; each of them assumes this one.

Next: character, scene, and style.

AIL 0960 What the Next Unit Does

The next unit takes character, scene and style, working Dickens and Austen, and it has a defect in the anchor to disclose: the glossary treats flat and static as one term and round and dynamic as another, collapsing two independent distinctions into one. A fifth anchor defect waits there.

That is Conrad classified, Joyce worked, the four positions, the exam's questions, five traps, the procedure and the record, with the governing idea paid off across four openings. You can type Conrad's frame voice as minor-character without the anchor's gossip, name his respondents without quoting them, and read Eveline as limited omniscience pressed so close that she was tired needs no comment and the dusty cretonne is the characterisation. You can set Austen, Brontë, Conrad and Joyce as four positions with four evidence sets, name identify, attribute and infer, and ask whether the character could say this. You can read one paragraph past a general statement, keep interested apart from untrustworthy and access apart from authority, check whether the question names character or narrator, and ask why a detail was chosen. You can run pronoun, minds, judgment, read on for a missing pronoun, and watch the tense for the step out. And you can state six omissions and one strength, turn the apparatus on a frame, keep classification apart from meaning, answer the extract not the book, and read two sentences close then the rest at pace. Unit eleven takes character, scene and style.