How to identify the narrator in a story

By J.T. Bushnell, Novelist and Oregon State University Senior Instructor of Literature

Table of Contents Show

The narrator is the storyteller
Determining the Narrator
Relating the Narrator to the Story

So, in real life, we run into stories all the time, and it’s usually pretty easy to tell who the narrator is. Maybe your friend tells you a story to explain why she got grounded. Okay. Your friend is the narrator. She’s the one narrating the story. Afterward, maybe your friend’s grandfather sits you both down and tells a story from his childhood to teach you some valuable life lesson. Who’s the narrator? Easy! The grandfather.

But what if the situations aren’t so straightforward? What if your friend tells your grandfather’s story? What if she makes her voice deep and husky, like her grandfather’s, and starts using words like “whipper-snapper” and “jalopy.” What if she even starts saying the things that happened to him, happened to “me.” What if she did it on stage for a talent show, and it was all so perfect that it didn’t even seem like a joke. Or to take it a step further, what if she wrote it all down. In other words, what if she tells her grandfather’s story while pretending to be her grandfather. Who’s the narrator then?

This is exactly the confusion many students run into when they read a story on the page. You know the author wrote the story, but is the author the one narrating it? In fiction, the answer is almost always no. The narrator is the fictional construct the author has created to tell the story through. It’s the point of view the story is coming from.

Think of it this way. In fiction, we like to let ourselves be tricked. We try to stop seeing our friend on the stage and focus on the performance. When that happens, it’s like we’re actually listening to the grandfather. And so when he says, “I tied up that whipper-snapper and threw him in the trunk of my jalopy”—or whatever he says—we know it’s the grandfather telling the story. He’s the narrator. Your friend is just the person putting on the act.

Well, it’s the same in a book. In the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” for example, Harper Lee is the author. She’s the one putting on the act. Part of her performance is to tell the story using the voice and perspective of one of the characters, a little girl named Scout. So when the novel states, “I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t think I’d go to school any more if it was all right with him,” we know that’s Scout speaking. Scout is the narrator. She’s the one narrating the story.

Now let me ask you a question. Say a little girl comes up to you, six or seven years old, and starts telling you a story about the maniac who lives across the street. She says he’s six-and-a-half feet tall and dines on raw squirrels and cats, which is why his hands, by the way, are always blood-stained, because if you eat a raw animal, you can never wash the blood off. Oh, and when people’s flowers freeze during cold weather? It’s because this man has snuck out at night to breathe on them.

You believe her?

Probably not—unless you’re six or seven yourself, in which case, the obvious response is to go peek in his windows. For the rest of us, the story shows us more about how the little girl’s mind works than it does about her neighbor. The same is true in a written story. We don’t trust the narrator, Scout, to interpret everything correctly. But we do trust the author, Harper Lee, to show us Scout interpreting things incorrectly, like she does with these descriptions of Boo Radley. It’s all just part of Harper Lee’s act, and she gives a virtuoso performance. And it’s one reason why distinguishing between the author and the narrator is so important in understanding how to interpret a story.

Further Resources for Teachers

Sherwood Anderson's short story "Death in the Woods" offers a great opportunity for students to distinguish between the narrator and the author. In that story, the narrator consistently interrupts his story about events in his childhood to ask how he knows certain details of the story that he couldn't possibly have known. These moments call attention to the fact that Anderson is "playing" the narrator here, and this distinction means that the story is really two stories in one--one story about a woman in the woods and another about a young boy (the narrator) who confronts death and sexuality at the same traumatic moment.

Interested in more video lessons? View the full series:

The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms

Narrative writing is a type of writing in which the author narrates the chain of events. Narrative writings and texts are more interesting and entertaining to read. This is the reason why many kindergarten stories are written in a narrative style. Using this method children develop a special bond with the story. They pay more attention to it. They focus on the details and eventually learn more from the story. However, young minds do not always have the tendency to differentiate between the narrator and other characters of the story. Often times, the narrator is a character from the story. Here are a few ways through which the child can identify the narrator.

The narrator is the storyteller

In order to identify the narrator, one must know who the narrator is and what job does he perform. A narrator of the story is a person who explains the setting and characters of the story. The narrator also describes the chain of events, conflict, and the crisis in an interesting way that grasps the reader's attention.

There are three ways with which a narrator can tell the story. You can ask yourself the following questions to identify the style of the narrator.

Q1. Is the narrator a character from the story? Q2. Is the narrator only an observer? Is he narrating the story from the outside?

Q3. What pronouns is the narrator using?

The answers to these questions depict the point of view of the narrator. The three-point of views of the narrator are as following.

1st Person

In the first person narration, the narrator talks about himself. He often uses the pronoun "I", "we", "us" etc. to depict that he was directly involved in the story.

2nd Person

The 2nd person point of view is not that famous, but it uses the pronouns "you" and "yours".

3rd Person

The 3rd person point of view involves pronouns such as "she", "he", "they", etc.

Transcript

When reading a story or even watching a show or movie, there is sometimes a character that retells the narrative through their own point of view. This character is known as the narrator. Today, we are going to look at the narrator’s role in a story, how to spot different types of narrators, and how the narrator makes an impact on the story.

Determining the Narrator

When reading a narrative, readers must first ask “who is the narrator?” This is important because who the narrator is can shape how we receive the information in the story. Is the narration taken from an intimate, close up first-person point of view where they use language like “I said” or “we looked” or is it from a third-person perspective where the narrator is detached from the story and uses words like “they saw”, “she thought”, or “he asked”.

Readers should also take note of the narrator’s different backgrounds. A narrator can be a child with the story being told from their point of view. Some stories take the perspective a step further by making sure the narrator uses language that matches their background—for example, if a narrator is a child they might use only simple language and have a whimsical or limited point of view of serious events happening in the story. A narrator that is an educated adult might use higher language and elaborate sentence structure.

Relating the Narrator to the Story

Once the reader has figured out who the narrator is, they should look to see who the narrator is in relation to the rest of the characters in the story. Is the narrator a character in the story that other characters interact with, or is the narrator an “all-knowing” (or, omniscient) voice retelling a story that they are observing? If the latter is true, we then must ask: “Is this narrator being objective when telling the story or are they sharing their opinions about what is going on?”

A narrator that is simply sharing their opinions, especially polarized ones about the story or the characters within, may not be the most reliable source of information about the events taking place. A great example of the unreliable narrator can be found in the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. It has been debated whether or not this story is fiction or nonfiction because in the story, the first-person narrator who is supposed to be the main character, admits that he made up a few details about his experience being drafted into war. However, he only admits this after the reader has already read that arc of the story and he doesn’t explain what parts were true and what parts were embellished. For the rest of the story, the reader must question what was true and what was made up.

In some stories, there are multiple narrators. The story may shift from character A in one chapter and then shift to character B in another chapter. Realizing these distinctions is important when reading or watching a narrative arc to not only keep track of the sequence of events but also determine if some narrators play a greater role in the narrative than others.

All in all, the narrator of a story plays an important role in driving the story forward, but knowing who the narrator is and their opinions, if any, can influence how we interpret the narrative.

Thanks for watching, and happy studying!

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by Mometrix Test Preparation | This Page Last Updated: February 18, 2022