person narration. A character’s thoughts may be indicated by italics or
quotation marks, although those treatments may not be appropriate in
all cases.Objective Third Person
z In the objective or remote third person, the narration simply describes
what the characters do and say without giving the reader access to their
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main story relates the events. But there’s a crucial difference: With the
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consciousness, who often passes judgment or makes educated guesses
as to what the other characters are thinking.
o Nick Carraway is not central to 7KHUHDWDWVE\, but he views
the story of Gatsby and Daisy from a particular point of view—
as Daisy’s cousin and Gatsby’s friend—and his take on the
events of the novel colors the reader’s understanding.
o We can compare this with the remote third-person narration
in Dashiell Hammett’s 7KH 0DOWHVH )DOFRQ, which watches
everything the characters do but doesn’t give us direct access
to their thoughts and feelings. This kind of third person keeps
us at arm’s length from its characters, which helps to build
suspense but at the cost of a certain iciness.z The opposite of this remote and noncommittal third person is what
we might call the engaged or judgmental third person, in which the
narration has a strong opinion about the events it relates, even though
that opinion doesn’t come from an actual character in the story. This
type of third-person narration is commonly found in the novels of the
18 th and 19th centuries, when authors often passed judgment on the
follies of their characters.
o This kind of voice works especially well with comic or
picaresque novels, such as 7RP -RQHV, by the 18th-century
English writer Henry Fielding.