Re: Third person


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Previous # Next ] [ Start New Thread ] [ TarBoard ]

Posted by Jon on October 12, 2007 at 13:16:06 from 199.159.117.116 user Jon.

In Reply to: Re: Third person posted by Joy on October 12, 2007 at 10:21:19:

I think it's the same reason as why there are so few (especially successful) one-character plays, and even fewer dramatizations of first-person books which remain true to the original. Handling a narrative in the first person as one person is difficult enough, since you need to resort to some form of third-party storytelling to catch you up on what happened while the narrator wasn't present. Finding a smooth way to shift among multiple first-person narrators, while maintaining a convincing separation of their personalities, will be very taxing. A failure to ensure a smooth transition among the narrators gives a work that rapidly sinks out of sight. And long periods of expository narrative are death to a dramatic work.

Further, even some "first-person" works drift into the third person to dodge that bullet. For instance, Three Men in a Boat (I almost hesitate to say) drifts between first and third person, and while nominally a "first person" work, actually is more of a recapitulation of something that already happened than it is an ongoing series of events. There's a certain inevitability in this, since when a tale is told in the first person there's a certain inevitability in the story line. Robinson Crusoe wouldn't be narrating the book unless he was discovered (likewise the Swiss Family Robinson). Moby Dick couldn't be told by Captain Ahab without changing the ending. The story had to be told by a third party, even in the first person. Huck Finn, up front, acknowledges he's recapping something that's already happened rather than presenting the action as it happens. In a sense, even though these use the first person, they're still "third person" to admit scene changes beyond the immediate purview of the narrator.


Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
Eel-Mail:

Existing subject (please edit appropriately) :

or is it time to start a New Thread?

Comments:

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL:

post direct to TarBoard test post first

Before posting it is necessary to be a registered user.


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TarBoard ]

Courtesy of Environmental Science, Lancaster

space