witness narrator

Literature

2022

We explain what the witness narrator is, its characteristics and examples. Also, the main narrator and the omniscient narrator.

The witness narrator tells what happens to others.

What is the witness narrator?

The witness narrator or metadiegetic narrator (that is, within the diegesis, which is the world in which the narrated events occur) is the narrative voice that tells the events of a story, of which it has not been the protagonist but of which can bear witness. That is, it is about an observer within the story, who tells what happens to third parties, whether he does it in the first (I) or third (him) grammatical person.

This type of narrator is easily differentiated from the protagonist, who is the one to whom the things of the story happen, but still recounts the events as if he had witnessed them first hand. This allows him to tell the story from different perspectives: tangentially involved in the plot, observing the protagonist closely, observing it from afar as an eventual witness, or even through third-party references.

Depending on it, we can classify the witness narrator as follows:

  • An impersonal witness, who limits himself to telling what he sees, almost always in the present tense, just as the camera would in a film. It is impersonal because it does not have personalityHe never says "I" and limits himself to referring to the events he witnessed.
  • A personal witness, he generally recounts the events he once witnessed in person, sparing no information as to who he is and how he came to know what he knows. Generally the story depends on your memory, or your ability to deduce information from what he witnessed.
  • An informant witness, is the one who "transcribes" the facts in an official report or document, press release or report of some kind, presenting them as authentic and giving us the impression of being part of the narrated fictional world.

The witness narrator is one of the most common in the modern Western narrative tradition, along with the protagonist narrator. It is found especially in stories that play with the fidelity of their memories (poor narrator), or with hidden agendas in the narration (unreliable narrator).

Characteristics of the witness narrator

In general, every witness narrator is characterized by the following:

  • It tells the events that make up the story from a unique perspective, corresponding to a character of the plot that serves as a witness, or an entity not involved in the plot, but present when the events are carried out.
  • The witness narrator is never the protagonist of the story.
  • It has a limited amount of information, which can be greater, equal or less than that available to the protagonist, but always identical to that available to the reader.
  • At the same time, he is immersed in the story, so that he rarely accesses information outside of it, nor can he anticipate things as he would. omniscient narrator.
  • You can narrate in 1st (I) or 3rd (he) grammatical person.
  • You can disguise your voice as if it were text inputs: press clippings, official documents, testimonies, etc.

Examples of witness narrator

Here are some examples of each form of witness narrator:

  • Impersonal witness narrator: "The Assassins" by Ernest Hemingway.
  • Personal witness narrator: “Esbjerg, on the coast” by Juan Carlos Onetti.
  • Informant witness narrator: “Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges.

Main narrator

Unlike the witness, the main narrator is the main character of the story, who tells his story in the first person. We always know everything that happened through him, either in the present moment or through the recesses of his memory.

In both cases, we know only what he could know instantly, or perhaps what he later understood from his experience. We are limited to what he can tell us, always.

An example of this type of storyteller is found in the short story "The Vulture" by Franz Kafka.

Omniscient narrator

Also known as "directing narrator", it is a narrator who does not belong to the world of history, but who is present in all moments and places of it, as if he were a god.

It is ubiquitous, it sees everything, it knows everything, it has information that the characters do not know, and it can jump from one place to another, and even from one time to another, at your convenience. He also knows what is in the heads of the different characters, not only the protagonist, since he has a total point of view.

An example of this type of narrator can be found in Guy de Maupassant's "Ball of tallow".

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