Quote:
Originally Posted by TGS
I think one of the mistakes that we often make is that, if there isn't a character doing the narration then we think there isn't a narrator. A well known narratologist, Mieke Bal, argues that any story whatever has a narrator. Even a simple story such as, "John put his jacket on", has a narrator - the consciousness that is relating the event of John putting his jacket on in this case.
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I have also read a similar argument in writing books - that if you're trying to write from an omniscient viewpoint, you need to actually construct the narrator as a distinct personality, even though he does not actually appear in the story, and might have God-like qualities.
I suppose a good example is The Book Thief, where Death narrates the story, though even if Death hadn't been named, his particular personality would have influenced the reader's understanding of the events.