Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Narration
Narration is the act of telling a sequence of events, often in chronological order. The narrator is the speaker who is telling the sequence of events. The narrator is not necessarily the same as the author, especially in fiction. The narrator may be from 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person point of view. A 3rd person point of view may be limited or omniscient. Narrators always have a type of bias. If the bias is large enough, the narrator may be considered unreliable.
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1st person narration is the type of narration told from the " I" perspective. For example, " I saw John walking down the hallway, I despise him." 2nd person narration is told from a " you" perspective. For example, " You may, dear reader, wonder what then happens to Tommy the cat?" . The 3rd person perspective is one told from a " he" or " she" point of view. For example, " What a pretty bow tie,' Jim thought. ' I would very much like to buy one.;" 3rd person narration can also be either limited or omniscient. A limited narration is when the readers sees the story only through the narrator's eyes. An omniscient narration is when the narrator narrates from all perspectives and not just limited to a single one or a few.
ReplyDeleteNarrators, if they speak in first person, always have bias. This bias comes from their point of view and opinion, so it is unavoidable. Sometimes, third person limited narration also has bias because they tell the story from only one character's perspective. Third person omniscient, on the other hand, usually has very little bias because they see everything and are able to tell the story from a neutral point of view.
ReplyDelete1st Person: Biased, told from an "I" perspective.
ReplyDelete2nd Person: Less Biased, told from a "You" perspective.
3rd Person Omniscient: Least biased, knows everything.
3rd Person Limited: Most biased, knows only from given.
The narrator of 1st person point of view may be biased enough to be unreliable. In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator was considered unreliable since he claimed that an innocent old man had an evil eye, which would harm people. The narrator was so paranoid that he suffocated the old man and hid the corpse. The truth was that he murdered the old man, despise his excuse. Since the story is told from 1st person point of view, the readers can merely view the story from the narrartor's perspective, which may be unreliable.
ReplyDeleteThe 2nd person point of view is in the form of "you." This point of view is usually not that common in fictions. It would be an unique fiction if the point of view was in the 2nd point of view all the way throughout the book. This 2nd person point of view may appear in magazines, articles, or blogs that describe a scenario for the readers and let them imagine by themselves.
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ReplyDelete!st person narrative told from "I" perspective. It tells more about the feeling and opinion so it sometimes contain bias. For example, "I show my new iPhone to my classmates." 3rd person narrative told from "he, she, or they" perspective. The person who narrate the story usually doesn't participate in the story.
ReplyDeleteIn narration, there are two ways to order the events. The first one is by the chronological order, which is arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. This is like a timeline. The other way is to use flashback, which is interject events or scenes back in time from the current point the story.
ReplyDeleteAn unreliable narrator can be told from either a first person point of view, but also from a third person point of view. Typically, should the narrative be from a third person point of view, it would be a limited point of view, rather than omniscient, because an omniscient narrator would be able to see everything. An unreliable narrator can set the mood and possibly alter the way the reader predicts what will happen.
ReplyDeleteIn a narration, the story can either be told from 1st person, or 3rd person (rarely is it ever 2nd person). The First person point of view is told from the protagonist him/herself. Therefore, the story would be told from an "I" perspective. This mode of narration tells the readers exactly what the protagonist is thinking, but can also be biased. For example, in "The Catcher in the Rye", the rebellious teen many times decried as an "antihero", is considered an unreliable narrator. A third person point of view may include "limited" or "omniscient". The "limited" point of view includes only ONE person's inner thoughts, etc. The "omniscient" point of view includes most, if not all, of the characters' inner thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThere are three types of point of view a narrative of a story could have, which is first, second, and third person point of view. In a first person point of view, the narrater refers to him or herself as "I." And in the second person perspective, it's written talking about another person, where the narrater refers to the main character as "you." The third person point of view is separated into two types, limited and omniscient. An omniscient point of view tells the reader everything that's happening in the story, whereas a limited point of view tells only the feelings of one character and all the other character's are seen externally.
ReplyDeleteFirst person narrator often contain biases, which are prejudice or oblique opinion towards certain events, objects, person. When the narrator of the story is unreliable, it means we can't trust what the author is telling us, because what the author is saying may be falsed. Third person is usually less bias, and I don't know how a story can use second person as a narrator?
ReplyDeleteFirst person narration is normally being told by using the word "I", which means the narrator is referring to himself. Second person narration is being told by using the word "you", which is the least seen type of narration in normal readings. Third person narration is being told using words such as "he" or "she". Making it easier to understand you can say that the narrator is talking about somebody else's story. Third person narration can be splited into two branches, limited point of view and omniscient point of view. When it's limited point of view, the narrator only know the thoughts and feelings of one character. On the other hand, omniscient point of view is when the narrator knows all the feelings and thoughts about every single character.
ReplyDeleteThe story can be told from 1st person, 3rd person or rarely 2nd person point of view. For the first person point of view, the story is told with the word "I", so the narrator is actually referring to himself or herself in the story told from 1st person point of view. For the third person point of view, there are two types, limited and omniscient. In limited point of view, it only tells the act or feeling of one character, and it usually tells less about the feeling or act of the other characters. In omniscient point of view, it tells the reader mostly everything, so the reader don't get limited information compared to limited point of view. For the 2nd person point of view, it's quite rare, and it's told from "you" perspective.
ReplyDeleteIn a narrative, there are a series of point of views that could have been used, including: first, second, and third person point of views. In a first person narrative, the narrator is the character that the reader is reading about. Therefore the character would refer to itself as "I", or "me". In a second person narrative, The character the reader is reading about is written as another perspective. Therefore the story would be referring to the character as "you". Lastly, in a third person narrative, it is separated into two parts, Limited and omniscient. In an omniscient narrative, the reader would know everything about the character, but in a limited narrative, the reader would only comprehend what the character think and feels.
ReplyDeleteA third person limited narration can be sometimes bias and include a lot of not real things, therefor became unreliable. They see things through their subjective eyes, and often insert self emotions, the experience they are telling often bases on their own experience and will be told in a special way. On the other hand, omniscient third person narration see things through a objective way, its telling all the story that was happening, however, it doesn't mean that it is always reliable. It's hard to say whether that person is kind or evil and sometimes, we have to know the motivation about his or her behavior to judge them.
ReplyDeleteexamples-
ReplyDeletefirst person: My father is a priest; I am the son of a priest.(BY THE WATERS OF BABYLONby Stephen Vincent Benét)
second person: "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go."
(Dr. Seuss, Oh! The Places You’ll Go! 1990)
third person:"It is a very nice day," Miss Strangeworth said, as though she had only just decided that it would do after all.(The Possibility of Evil)
first person narrative is usually unreliable, because everyone is bias.
DeleteSecond person narrative uses "you".
third person narrative uses "He, she, it"
Limited knows limited things, and omniscient knows every thing.
Allen, I will count this for full credit, but next time post your own comment instead of replying to someone else's comment.
DeleteFirst person narrative: Uses the "I, me, we" form to talk about the story. Usually biased and unreliable because each person will have their own opinions and they will talk about things that they know, which isn't everything. It would be unfair for other characters.
ReplyDeleteSecond person narrative: Uses the "you" form to talk about the story. It is also biased because it is also coming from one person's mouth and usually is happening in a dialogue.
Third person limited narrative: Uses the "he/she/it" form to talk about the story. Biased because he/she only knows part of the story.
Third person omniscient narrative: Uses the "he/she/it" form too. It is normally more reliable but still has some bias, but it knows everything and talks about everything from different point of views, so it is more reliable.
First person would be from the narrator, or the story teller's own point of view, usually the most biased. Second person would be from a you perspective. A third person would be from a person that is not you(the reader) or the I(the narrator), it is from someone else's perspective.
ReplyDelete