Mile High Musings - On Narrative

As a child I was fortunate enough, thanks to my father, to be regularly invited to join the Captain and Co-Pilot in the cockpit of numerous passenger aircraft whilst in flight. Often perched upon an uncomfortable jump seat, I gazed in astonished wonder at the bedazzling range of knobs, switches, levers, pulsing lights and gauges before my eyes as the aviators piloted their Jumbos and DC 10’s through the skies.

The sedulously professional air of the pilots was at utter variance with my own highly animated incomprehension and fascination. The technology which overwhelmed my senses was, to the adults in front of me, an entirely navigable world. This childish wonder, now finds equal delight in marvelling not at pilots, but at authors as they skilfully manipulate the infinite range of literary tools at their creative disposal. My rudimentary understanding of such techniques only serves to deepen my appreciation of authorial prowess and perhaps makes me more responsive to it.

The narrative as an architectural literary device, consists of interdependent and co-supportive elements which provide our literary aviators with the ability to tell their stories, just as the pilot’s instruments and choices enable an aircraft’s flight. The analogy is of course imperfect, for the act of writing cannot be reduced to a procedural check list, however expertly followed! Let’s face it, a pilot can be trained and I’m not remotely convinced that this holds true of a great author. However, manipulating a vast array of “controls” expertly is common to both the pilot and author, so it’s at least a serviceable way for me as a reader to approach how literature and in particular the novel is formed. That said, I would be far happier in the hands of a less than able author than than those of an incompetent pilot!

Writers can present information in one of four classical rhetorical modes – Narration being one of these. It is the means by which an author communicates their moral, cultural, political and intellectual perspectives and tells a story. Exposition, Argument and Description are the alternative methods available to an author. Simply put, Exposition explains and analyses an idea, Argument seeks to persuade the reader to a particular viewpoint and Description does what it says on the tin.

Other types of narrative include the Historical, which is used in biography, autobiography and historical sub genres. This style shows historical process linking causation from event to event as a chain reaction. The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy is an example of this method. Authors can use a linear narrative which tells things in chronological sequence, bringing realism to their fiction, or as Will Self said “the texture of lived life”. Non-linear narratives present events out of chronological sequence and tell stories with related arcs or themes unfolding in very different places or times. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) is spread across numerous epochs, settings and characters and uses non-linear narrative to great effect.

Narrative forms come in many guises. George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) expresses its author’s political opinions and is a provocative example of narrative as political satire. Narrative verse is poetry written in a narrative style and Edmund Spencer’s ‘Faerie Queen’ (1590) serves as an excellent example. The thriller or suspense narrative sets up an event, orbiting it in order to explain it. Charlotte MacLeod’s The Withdrawing Room uses this type of narrative to great effect. Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel Cervantes is, on one level at least, a parody of sixteenth century Romance narratives, the conventions of this form being exploited to achieve its author’s creative objectives.

The range of narrative styles is extensive and yet more fecund technical ground for an author to plough. Straying too far into labels risks conflating narrative with genre, but the above examples demonstrate the versatility of this authorial mechanism.

The narrative as a literary entity traditionally has five mutually engaged elements. These are plot, setting, character, conflict and theme. The manner in which these components are assembled together, or orchestrated, fundamentally conditions how the author communicates to the reader and with what effect. Each element offers the author a myriad of technical tools to choose from and each of these is capable of infinite personalisation. That flight deck I alluded to earlier is starting to look a tad basic!

Plot is of course the thread of events that occur in a story - setting, the location of these events in time, place or cultural context. Character usually signifies the people who drive the plot or are affected by it and includes bystanders to the plot. Conflict refers to the problem faced or requiring resolution. Theme, paradoxically, is the least explicitly revealed of these elements, but often the element most critical to a novel’s intellectual weight and worth. Themes can range from the trite to the profound, as heterogenous as life itself. It is the unique expression of these fundamental structural buttresses that enables an author to support and convey their creative imperatives.

An author’s narrative choices are as infinite as they are unique and this scintillating truth is, for me, the bedrock upon which the sublime beauty of literature sits. Understanding the range of these structural choices and their effects certainly allows the reader to divine or be sensitive to the author’s artistic intent. Literary criticism often focuses upon the narrative and its components in an attempt to understand a work and indeed evaluate its author’s virtuosity, or lack of it! As readers, we all have precisely the same opportunity.

So, having established the basic structural elements of a narrative, let’s look at narratorial voice and point Of view. Authors decide who tells the story and how they do so. A narrator may be a direct participant in the plot or a voice not involved, but simply telling or observing the story. Narratorial point of view may be presented in the first, second or third person, each allowing the author to influence how the reader respond to the story. First person narration is the account given by a character directly involved in the story, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) being an illustration. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is another example bringing intimacy and realism to his novel. Herman Melville uses the same narratorial technique in Moby Dick, giving Ishmael the role of telling the story and providing the reader with a moral anchorage from which to interpret the unhinged actions of Captain Ahab. Faulkner’s short story, A Rose For Emily is an example of first person plural exposition using “We“ as an unspecified collective voice.

Second person narratorial point of view is uncommon and addresses the reader directly, or invites the reader to become a character in the plot. Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City (1984) uses it to superb effect. Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller (1979) and Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches – December (1854-1855), which was the source of War and Peace, are other fine examples. The technique calls for the reader to suspend disbelief, but can be vicariously potent.

Third person narratorial voice allows the author to let the reader know everything about the characters and respond to the plot with manipulated understanding. Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) are wonderful illustrations of this form. At the risk of technical pedantry, this narratorial voice may be broken down into three distinct categories, each servicing specific authorial goals. ‘Omniscient’ gives us an all knowing narrator as in The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne and E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910). ‘Limited Omniscient’ presents the point of view of only one or two characters with the author as an unvoiced presence. Katherine Anne Porter’s short story The Jilting of Granny Weatherall ( 1929) is typical of this form. Lastly, ‘Objective narratorial’ voice is seen in journalism in that we are given bald facts unfiltered and without interpretation.

Authors can also allow us to directly listen in on a character’s thoughts and conscious reactions to events perceived as a continuous flow. “Stream Of Consciousness” was a phrase coined by William James in his Principles of Psychology (1890) and first used by novelist Mary Sinclair to describe the novels of Dorothy Richardson. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust have used this challenging narrative form to stunning effect, albeit not to everyone’s delight!

Finally, an author can give us an unreliable narrator! Aristophanes in the The Frogs is perhaps the first example of this sneaky bedevilment. William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and Vladimir Nabokov’s disturbing Lolita (1955) exploit the technique masterfully. Essentially, the reader is being told a story by a voice which might be lying to itself or the listener, and forcing us to question what is being said, or the beliefs underpinning an account.

So, authors have more levers to pull and knobs to turn than any aviator and what’s more, when they do so with great dexterity, we often have far more than a pleasant flight. Every time I read a novel, that small boy in me remembers his time up in the sky and now considers writers to be far cooler than pilots!