Thursday 14 May 2009
Help Needed from Smarter People
Filed under Announcements + Books
I’m trying to come up with a list of what I’m belaboringly calling “deuteragonistic narrators”—i.e., first-person narrators who are not the protagonists in their own stories.
Some classic examples:
- Nick in The Great Gatsby
- Jim in My Ántonia
- “we” in “A Rose for Emily”
And that’s all I can come up with. Sorta-kinda DNs can be found in Heart of Darkness, A Good Soldier, and Lolita, though whether all those narrators aren’t pretty much the protagonists of those novels is I think up for debate.
There has to be more. (There have to be more?) Can you help?
2009-05-14 :: dave
14 May 2009 @ 1:27pm
A brief but time-wasting scan through my bookshelves has uncovered Ishmael in Moby Dick—which I haven’t read, and so maybe he is indeed the protagonist and not Ahab—and the hemp-dresser and curé in George Sand’s The Country Waif, which I may be completely misremembering.
And then sorta-kinda one in Atonement, though by that logic we may also have to include The Ice Storm, right?
14 May 2009 @ 2:13pm
Well, I don’t have the book in front of me, but as I recall the Heart of Darkness narrator is actually a guy on a boat listening to Marlow’s story, yes? So like the narrator is technically someone, presumably Conrad, listening to Marlow who is mostly talking about Kurtz. Small distinction, I guess, but also sort of the ultimate example of a narrator without a role.
Buy, yeah, The Good Soldier doesn’t seem to count as the narrator is certainly a major character even if he is passive.
I’ll keep thinking about it.
14 May 2009 @ 4:51pm
Watson in Sherlock holmes. Adso in the name of the rose. Actually the latter is an homage to the former.
15 May 2009 @ 7:59am
Watson is the narrator for every Holmes story? And like: Hound of the Baskervilles? That’s very interesting.
And lo: The Name of the Rose. For some reason my not having read any Umberto Eco bothers me more than my not having read a lot of other writers.
17 May 2009 @ 5:52pm
In Joan Didion’s _Democracy_, Joan Didion is the fictional narrator and Inez is the main character.
Chief is the narrator of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_, but I think an argument could be made that McMurphy is the main character.
John Wheelwright is the narrator of _A Prayer for Owen Meany_, and I think Owen is as much the main character as Gatsby in Gatsby.