Introduction
The first-person narrative is used in literature to describe the events from the perspective of one of the characters. It can take different forms, depending on the author’s intentions, and has its strengths and weaknesses in terms of storytelling. Generally, the first-person narrative increases the reader’s involvement in the story while confining them to one perspective. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Joyce’s short story “The Boarding House,” and the Scottish poem The Demon Lover, the first-person narrative is used differently to achieve the authors’ objectives and create a comprehensive picture of the events.
First-person narrative
A first-person narrative is a way of storytelling when the author describes the events from the point of view of their participant, using the first person. It may be a protagonist, a witness, or a re-teller, who reveals their own experience and feelings pertaining to the story. The technique allows the reader to see the events from the character’s perspective and provides a stronger sense of involvement. The weakness of the first-person narrative is that it only describes the events from one person’s knowledge. The narrator is influenced by their own background and attitude, is unable to see the full picture, and may pursuit their own goals, hidden by the author for the purpose of the narration. An unreliable first-person narrator is emotional, ignorant, or biased, is personally involved in the story, can lie and make mistakes, or does not fully comprehend the events. In some stories, the author switches between different narrators to provide a broader perspective and create a comprehensive picture.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the events are described from the perspective of Nick Carraway. He is a young man who comes to New York from the Middle West and rents a bungalow next to the estate owned by millionaire Jay Gatsby. Nick gets acquainted with him and his friends and becomes an observer of the events that form the plot of the story. While Jay Gatsby is the novel’s protagonist, Nick is the narrator, who is only partially involved in the events and can describe them from a witness’s perspective.
The story is narrated in the first-person from Nick’s point of view. He uses the word “I” and describes events as he experiences them. At the beginning of the book, he presents himself as a tolerant person who keeps his opinions to himself and is inclined to reserve all judgment, vaunting himself as a reliable narrator. Due to his personal qualities, Nick becomes a confidante of the story’s main characters, earning their trust and keeping their secrets. It gives credence to his narration, making him able to portray and interpret other people’s feelings and motives.
However, Nick cannot be considered a truly reliable narrator, and the first-person perspective, while enhancing the story, also poses some limitations. Nick is involved in the events and brings his own biases into the situations. He is not omnipresent and does not know the thoughts and feelings of other characters unless they tell him. He tries to be as truthful as possible and determinately tells the reader that he should be trusted, but his judgments still affect his presentation of the characters. Nick is very fond of Gatsby and describes him enthusiastically, explaining the unappealing aspects of his personality by passion rather than character flaws. The reader only learns about the events that Nick knows about them and does not get a comprehensive picture, having to separate Nick’s judgments from the facts.
James Joyce’s “The Boarding House”
“The Boarding House” is a short story written by James Joyce and included in his collection Dubliners. It tells the story of the inhabitants of a boarding house owned by Mrs. Mooney, a determined divorcee who left her alcoholic husband. The main characters are Mrs. Mooney, her daughter Polly, and Mr. Doran, a thirty-something man employed in a Catholic wine merchant’s office, who lives in the boarding house and has an affair with Polly. Mrs. Mooney learns about the affair and waits for some time before she intervenes, intending to make Mr. Doran marry her daughter or risk an open disclosure. The events are narrated in the third person from the points of view of the three main characters.
Although Joyce does not use the first person, he presents the events as they are experienced by each of the participants. The story begins with an introduction of the characters, and the climax is narrated successively by Mrs. Monroe, Mr. Doran, and Polly, with each of them providing their insights into the situation. Mrs. Monroe is anxious to get her daughter married and deliberately tries to trap Mr. Doran by not intervening in their affair and then manipulating him into the marriage. Mr. Doran is afraid that his relations with Polly will become public and feels guilt and anxiety after talking to the priest. He does not love Polly and despises her lower-class background and vulgar manners but inclines to marry her as a reparation for his sins. Polly is young and dreams of escaping her mother’s house, with her behavior, as described by the author, suggesting that she has seduced Mr. Doran to achieve her goal. The story ends with Polly being called downstairs to speak with Mr. Dolan, presumably to receive his marriage proposal.
The author uses an omnipresent third-person narrator to describe the feelings and intentions of each of the characters. It does not speak in their voice directly but rather tells the story from different points of view. In this way, the story becomes multi-dimensional, and the reader can see how each of the characters manipulates or is being manipulated. The emotional impact of the story is achieved through the multi-faceted representation of characters and the masterful narrative style.
The Demon Lover
The Demon Lover is a medieval Scottish ballad that tells the story of a woman approached by her former lover, who wishes to renew his vows. He entices her to leave her husband and two children and sail with him on his ships laden with treasures. Upon leaving the haven, she begins to regret her decision, but he does not soothe her. The woman notices a bright hill in the distance, and her lover tells her that it is the heaven where they are not destined. He points onto a dark coast instead and says that it is hell where they are heading, and then breaks the ship, drowning her in the sea.
The poem is written in the form of a dialogue between the woman and her lover. The narrative is in the third person, and the voices of the characters provide the first-person perspective. At the beginning of the poem, the woman is resistant to her lover’s pleas, then she starts to hesitate, and then becomes scared and desperate after realizing that she has made a mistake. Her lover is passionate at the beginning of the poem when he tries to convince the woman to travel with him, and then his voice becomes grim and menacing as he tells the woman where they are heading. The first person is used to portray the feelings of the characters and reveal their personalities. It is not a first-person narrative in the traditional sense, but it helps to see the events from the point of view of both characters and understand their motives.
Conclusion
The first-person narrative in the traditional sense uses the first person to tell the story. In Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the narrator is the character who is partially involved in the events but mainly observes them from a witness’s perspective. It allows him to understand and adequately describe the main characters’ feelings and motives but makes him an unreliable narrator because of his judgments. In James Joyce’s short story “The Boarding House,” the events are told from the points of view of the three main characters. The author uses a third-person narrator, but each characters’ intentions are described from the first-person perspective. It allows the author to create a multi-faceted picture of the events and vividly portray the characters. In the Scottish poem The Demon Lover, the dialog is used to add the first-person dimension to the story. Overall, the three works use different techniques to avoid the disadvantages of the first-person narrative while creating a comprehensive first-person picture of the events.
References
Bowen, E. (2010). The Demon Lover and Other Stories. Jonathan Cape.
Fitzgerald, S. F. (2019). The Great Gatsby (Wordsworth Collector’s Editions). Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
Joyce, J. (2014). The Boarding House. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.