The Art of Reading : Narrators: their voices and their visions.

- Distinction First and third person narration:

A first person narrator is an I narrator:
This type of narrator is usually one of the characters, a participant or at least a close observer of the action.

A third person narrator is a he or she or they narrator:

This sort of narrator tends to stand outside or above the characters, reporting their actions and moving in and out of their minds. They know all and they eventually tell al, hence the title third-person omniscient. They usually remain nameless, ageless, and sexless.

There are pros and cons to each kind of narration. There are things you can do with a first-person narrator that you cant do with a third-person narrator (at least not easily).

- Advantages of a first-person narration: Poes Tale-Tell Heart

- One of the big advantages of first-person narration is that it can make a very powerful first impression. This type of narration tends to capture the readers attention and they create a strong sense of immediacy and intimacy. - The use of a first-person narrator often forces the reader into a more active role. Besides, first person narrators almost always raise the question of motivation for story telling. Those are the sorts of question we confront in the first person narratives:

Why do we tell stories in the first place? What are we hoping to accomplish with those stories? Is story telling an act of confession or is it rather some sort of rationalization? Can it ever be both at once? Note: the tradition of the first person narration goes all the way back, at least to Chaucers Canterbury Tales (each of the Canterbury Tales is narrated by a different Pilgrim) and extends down through Henry James, Joseph Conrad, F.M Ford, and Gram Green. Cf; The Quiet American (1955) The Remains of the Day (1989)

- Advantages of a third-person narration: Hawthornes Young Goodman

Brown - With a third person narrative theres a loss of immediacy and intimacy: If the author wants to create a sense of distance, keep the reader from getting to close to the major characters, then third person narration is probably the way to go.

Is there any way to enjoy the advantages of both forms at the very same time?
When a third person narrator begins to borrow little bits of language from one or more characters. Those words dont have to be set in quotation marks. This device is called Free Indirect Style/Discourse is associated with authors such as James Joyce, Jane Austen and beyond. But its mostly linked to Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame de Bovary (1857) and A Sentimental Education (1869).

FID allows us to be both inside and outside of the character at the very same time.

Other alternatives?
It is possible to shift from first to third person as Dickens does in Bleak House (1852-53) It is also possible to shift from different first person narrators as Faulkner does in the Sound and the Fury or in As I Lay Dying.

Next time you are in the first 10 pages of a novel ask yourself: Is this in first person or in third? How it would be different if it were the other way around? What happens as a result of this particular choice? What possibilities are created, what effects are achieved when you commit to one narrator instead of another?