author Sabrina Achilles (1995), where transformation into the third
person sometimes subverts the continuous flow of the first person, and
vice versa.
The knowing narrator
The narrator can control not only our ethical attitudes towards the story
but also our degree of knowledge and awareness of the progress of the
narrative. In this sense, as well as many others, the narrator ‘holds
the cards’. The narrator can forewarn us of events or withhold information
(see Exercise 4). Sometimes the reader knows more than the characters
(or some of them), sometimes less. Sometimes the narrator drops hints
about the outcome, note the end of this next example:
Example 5.8: Narratorial foreshadowing
Sophie’s position as director of the gallery was now in jeopardy.
Nobody on the board was supporting her. Her desire to move the
gallery in a progressive direction, and to include much more
contemporary art, was looked on with disdain by many of the board
members. She was a good financial manager, the gallery had thrived
under her, but her primary agenda was creative development, not
profit and loss. Her propensity to say this, and her blunt style, annoyed
the suits and ties who wanted to think of the gallery simply as a
company with shareholders. There was also a lot of in-fighting: the
board wanted more power, and two of the artists who were sitting
members and might have been expected to back Sophie didn’t, because
they wanted a director who would support their work more readily.
There were also a number of agendas held by the members of the
board about dealing with a woman, which Sophie was later to discover
had a profound impact on the outcome.Such hints are usually just enough to make us want to read on and find out
what happens.
In some instances the narrator knows more than the character. In such
cases, the narrator gives the character’s perspective, while hinting that
there is more to the matter than meets the eye, and that this may prove
critical in the outcome of the story:
Example 5.9: Narratorial foreshadowing
Sophie kept looking at the new board member and wondering
where she had seen him before. He looked so familiar and yet she
didn’t know his name. Perhaps he just looked like someone else?94 The Writing Experiment