Irvine Valley College

Online Creative Writing Workshop

Writing 10 - Introduction to Creative Writing

Spring 2012 - Ticket # 64580

Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, Instructor

 

Week 9 and 10:

Online Lecture for Point of View III.

Point of View is the most important tool of the Writer. 

Point of View III.

Much of the fiction we read is written in the First Person or in the Third Person - "I" or "he, she. they" -- but in modern and contemporary fiction we tend to see experiments with Multiple Narrators.  Sometimes, of course, we find that there are inadvertent multiple narrators - a result of the fact that the author is sloppy with Point of View and hasn't realized that the Point of View has shifted!

In general, Multiple Narrators work better in longer fiction - novels for example.  Occasionally you see a short story that has effectively integrated several points of view.  Unfortunately, my search for a short story for you to read on-line that uses Multiple Narrators was fruitless - much of the modern and contemporary literature is simply not reproduced online because of copyright issues.  You can read Fibonacci's Daughter, a short hypermedia story that I published (as M.D. Coverley, my pen name)  with New River - it will give you a very structured and clear idea what multiple narration is all about.  I also have assigned a link to a discussion of Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury which discusses the four points of view in the novel and gives examples.

Multiple Narration can be constructed in several ways.  In a classic modern novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz, by Carlos Fuentes, we have a multiple narration by one character.  Artemio Cruz lies dying.  As he rests in his bed, he ruminates on his current life - using the "I" pronoun.  When things are very quiet, he thinks about his adult career - and since he is not entirely proud of all of his deeds, he uses the pronoun "You" (a rare and interesting use of the Second Person).  In moments of reverie, he thinks back to his life as a very young man, romantic and full of hope:  this part is narrated in the Third Person, "he."  In the way that the time frame is situated, this is a particularly interesting use of the three pronoun forms to indicate the interior, self-understanding of Cruz.  I recommend this book if you are thinking of doing a multiple narrator novel!

William Faulkner is probably the modern writer who taught us the most about multiple narrators.  His novel, As I Lay Dying is written from the Point of View of 17 separate characters (and it is very short!!).   As I Lay Dying, though, gives us our first lesson about multiple points of view.  We do have all of the characters weighing in, but the story they tell is very short.  You could almost summarize it in 50 words or less:  Addie dies and the family takes her home to be buried.  Yep.  That's it.  The reason the actual story is so short is that multiple points of view cannot be used to tell multiple stories or parts of the plot.  In order for the reader to have a sense of continuity, each of the voices must have considerable overlap.  The rule to remember is:  the more narrators, the shorter the story has to be.  Multiple narrators need to be telling the SAME story from different angles - that is the only justifiable use of multiple narrators!!

Now, in The Sound and the Fury, which you have read about, you can see that the story starts out with the narration of Benjy - the "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury."  

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went through the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.

Benjy is 30 years old yet has the mind of a child.  His narration is Unreliable (we have seen the Unreliable Narrator before!) - most particularly in the realm of Time (Benjy isn't even clear about which generation he is remembering).  The Benjy section is the first section of the book, and then we go on to section 2, narrated by Quentin Compson (arguably a Manic narration of sorts).  Quentin is full of erudite philosophy and book learning, but he has no idea what time it is, really, either!  The third section, by Jason, is right-in-the minute - he sees things as they are (his narration is shaped by his shame and anger).  The last section is narrated by Dilsey - who always knows what time it is, even without a clock to consult!  Dilsey is the most reliable narrator about the Compson family, even though she is the cook.

The Sound and the Fury gives us access to the second feature of multiple narrations - they should be used for a purpose.  It's sometimes tempting to drop into another character's Point of View in order to reveal part of the plot or character development - but there is always a way to do the same thing in the Main POV if you fool with the text a bit.  If the story is about One Character - and that character's journey toward understanding - then it is cheating to have revelations by other characters (except as they might tell something to the Main Character).  Our sense of sympathy for the character and coherence of the perceived world is broken when the author switches POV.  So, therefore, it should really only be done when the "main character" is larger than one character.  In both of Faulkner's mentioned above, the "main character" is not any one of the narrators, but rather the "family" itself - the evolution of the family, its dissolution, its failure to perceive the passing of time.  

Sometimes, the main character is a community.  This is the case in Louise Erdrich's novel, Love Medicine.  In alternate chapters we hear from Marie, Lipsha, Nestor, etc.  But none of the narrators, again, is the main character, rather the history of the interaction of the Tribe members is the subject.  In this case we need to have an overarching Authorial Presence to unite the voices.  In both Erdrich's works and in Faulkner's, we do not actually see the Authorial Presence in the text, but these books are part of a whole series - and together, as Malcolm Cowley pointed out with Faulkner, they make the case.  Faulkner's work was almost totally out of print when Cowley revived his reputation by showing that Yoknapatawpha County, was, in fact, the "main character" in his work.

Many multiple narrator stories, however, such as Fibonacci's Daughter, do have a Narrator who is in a position to give us several voices.  I hope you have fun with the exercise of trying this on your own!  

 

Next week:  Defaults  

Return to Week 9.

 

 

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Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, your Instructor, is a Professor of English in the School of Humanities and Languages

Irvine Valley College, Irvine, California