Writing Great Fiction

Lecture 16: I, Me, Mine—First-Person Point of View

$W ¿UVW JODQFH LW PLJKW

seem as if Marlowe is just

a recording-eye narrator,

but if we listen to his voice

carefully, we realize that he

is passing judgment on a

world that doesn’t share his

strict sense of morality.

z A more complex version of

the heroic narrator is Huck

Finn, a classic example of

the GRXEOHFRQVFLRXVQHVV of

D¿UVWSHUVRQQDUUDWRU:LWK

this technique, a skilled

writer can simultaneously

evoke the beliefs and prejudices of his narrator while letting the reader

see through the narration to what’s really going on.

o This double consciousness manifests itself at the moral climax

of Huck’s book, when he must decide whether to allow Jim

to be sold back into slavery or to help Jim gain his freedom.

Everything about the moral code of Huck’s world tells him

that letting a slave run away is a kind of theft, and Huck truly

believes that sanctioning this theft will send him to hell. But

then, he recalls the way he and Jim looked after each other as

WKH\ÀRDWHGGRZQWKHULYHUDQGKHVD\V³$OOULJKWWKHQ,¶OOgo

to hell.”

o In this episode, Twain allows us to revel in hearing Huck’s

reasoning in his unique voice—staying true to the character—

but Twain himself also peeks through the character, letting

readers know that Huck is doing the right thing, even if Huck

doesn’t know it for himself.

The Retrospective Narrator

z With retrospective narration, the narrator recalls events from a distance

of many years, looking back on a time when he or she was younger. In

The distance between the author’s view of

the world and that of the heroic narrator,

such as Raymond Chandler’s Philip

Marlowe, is not very great, allowing both

the author and the reader to live through

the narrator.

© decisiveimages/iStock/Thinkstock.