First person narrative. Naming the narrator

[Octavian]

Herman Melville did it in the first three words of his novel, ‘Moby Dick.’ ‘Call me, Ishmael' immediately established the identity of the narrator.


Here are two other ways it can be done. These are the opening paragraphs from two stories I’ve yet to finish. So far I have got to…well this stage, really.

The Big Noise

I looked at my face in the mirror only too aware that I was now beginning to look my forty years. I was already quite a big noise in the city. Not yet a Concorde taking off from Kennedy Airport, but much more than a twin engine Cessna. Maybe a plane with three engines, or even a jumbo jet with one engine shut down because of a bird strike, which can happen from time to time, and may yet become more commonplace if these animal protectionists have their way and make it harder for the airport authorities to control the wildlife that tends to attract such birds, although that is not such a problem in the winter when they tend to migrate, or is it hibernate? Where was I? Oh yes, hurtling down the runway of life and being quite noisy.

I went back to my desk. As usual I was the last one to leave. I worked hard, but then I played hard. In fact, I did everything hard, apart from sex that is, where I seemed to have a slight problem, but I digress. It was time to go, time to meet my friends in the bar – or it would have been if I had any friends – time to share my undoubted gifts with public at large. Do you know what really pisses me off? When the same public come up to me and say that I am so lucky to have such a nice Ford Focus 1.4L with the CD option on the radio. I tell them that’s what you get when you work hard, when you do everything hard. I shut my computer down hard, put my empty plastic cup in the wastepaper bin hard and went to the coat stand to retrieve my jacket hard. (No the jacket is not hard – it’s not a suit of armour – I was merely emphasising how I do everything hard, well almost everything.)

I picked up the jacket and noticed the label. I remember my dear Mum, God rest her soul, sewing this very label in this very jacket. I felt my bottom lip quivering as I read it once more. This garment belongs to: Arnold Thompkins, Form 7B.

I put the jacket on, no wonder it was so bloody tight under the arms.


The Church Mouse

We had been trying to get Julie to speak of her own accord since Monday when she joined our company as the office junior. It was now Friday afternoon. She was a demure and unassuming young seventeen year old and this was her first job since leaving convent school. She was a lovely girl and willing to do whatever was asked of her. Whenever she was praised for something or other she invariably turned red with embarrassment. She lacked self-confidence, but it was an appealing quality in a world increasingly full of the brash.

She had been introduced to each member of staff but inevitably she could not remember thirty odd names. There was, however, a good chance she’d remember mine. I worked with the public and my identity was on the nameplate on my desk. Sometimes I would glance at her and if ever our eyes met, she would look down at her feet.

She was so shy that office staff were running a sweepstake, the winner being the first member of staff she addressed by name. It looked as if it was going to be carried over to next week. I was leaving early today. I picked up my briefcase and wished her a nice weekend.
“You too, Clarence.”
She had said my name! She had actually said my name. I turned back to her and was rewarded with a soft smile. This soon changed when the saw the angry expression on my face.
“Clarence,” I shouted. “How dare you call me by my Christian name? You are a mere office junior whilst I, on the other hand, am deputy to the assistant paper clip salesman.” I invaded her personal space, my face inches from hers as I raged at her.
“My name is Mr,” I could not have emphasised the ‘Mr’ more strongly, “Snodgrass, and don’t you forget it!”

I left the office pleased with myself for giving her a lesson that would stand her in good stead for the rest of her life. Namely that no matter how small or insignificant you happen to be; there will always be someone smaller and even more insignificant that you will be able to bully.


Octavian
With tongue slightly in cheek.

 

[Weird Harold]

Here are two other ways it can be done. These are the opening paragraphs from two stories I’ve yet to finish. So far I have got to…well this stage, really.

In my best story, I didnt identify the narrator until line 37 of page two. (roughly line 84 of the story.) Most of the first fifty lines were setting up the premise of the story before the "flashbck" to "start at the beginning."

The line the Identifies the narrator's full name is "Which one of you is Gordon Jones" although he's referred to as "Gordi" as the main part of the story begins.

In my first story, I never identified the narrator (narratress?) by name -- at least I don't think did.

The other story I have posted has a third person "frame" for a "bar tale" and the narrator is identified in the Frame instead of in the first person "bar tale."

 

[cantdog]

Never naming the narrator is fun, especially in a novella-length piece.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Never naming the narrator is fun, especially in a novella-length piece.

That's pretty bold

I usually let one of the other characters do it, by calling the person their name or intriducing them or somehting... happens naturally in the flow of the story for me so I've never even really thought about it.

 

[Octavian]

A sense of humour required. Please apply within.

Has no-one here got a sense of humour?

Or is it just that I am not in least bit funny?

Octavian

 

[cantdog]

That's pretty bold

I usually let one of the other characters do it, by calling the person their name or intriducing them or somehting... happens naturally in the flow of the story for me so I've never even really thought about it.

You do have to think about it to avoid someone using the name, or to avoid having someone call his mother "Mrs. So-and-so." Sometimes a little contortionist action is involved. It's fun.

 

[Kassiana]

I take it no one else here has read Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" series, eh? He has a first-person perspective series with a detective who is never named to the readers. He does occasionally say things like "She said my name reprovingly," but never says what the detective's name is.

To my knowledge, that's the only well-known author who's done this and gotten away with it. I could, however, be wrong.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

She looked in the glass. That Octavian had impresssed her. Even now, hours later, the slowly congealing juices on her inner thighs bore witness to their tumultuous encounter. The blood and seminal juices staining the tawdry motel sheets.

As she gunned her SUV into life, she smiled wickedly.

He would never know the identity of the broad who had kicked his thread into life.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I take it no one else here has read Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" series, eh? He has a first-person perspective series with a detective who is never named to the readers. He does occasionally say things like "She said my name reprovingly," but never says what the detective's name is.

To my knowledge, that's the only well-known author who's done this and gotten away with it. I could, however, be wrong.

H. G. Wells, "The Time Machine." Only three characters are named. The narrator and the time traveller are not.

 

[BlackShanglan]

In my best story, I didnt identify the narrator until line 37 of page two. (roughly line 84 of the story.)

My "personal best":

11 pages / 8200 words for the narrator's name.

5 pages / 3400 words for an even more basic pieces of information.


Shanglan

 

[R. Richard]

What is the fuss about naming? Remember "the man with no name" westerns?

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I slide betwen the covers and change your view of the universe,

It's an effective but overused literary devive. But what the heck, I'm a third person fan.

 

[pop_54]

Has no-one here got a sense of humour?

Or is it just that I am not in least bit funny?

Octavian

Ah now there's something that's in short supply these days.

 

[NoJo]

Ah now there's something that's in short supply these days.

You could make money hiring yours out for weddings and funerals, like Austin Reed does with suits.

 

[cantdog]

Can't buy one, Everard used to say.

 

[Softouch911]

Dr. Octavian's monster

This place reminds me, he thought, of that bar in Iowa where everyone talked Yankees all the time. Mick's Place, they called it. Well, this place reminded him of that.

Little as it is, it was big enough for an idea to get lost.

He walked up to one of them and asked: "Did Stephen Crane say "none of them knew the color of the sky?"

what fuckin' kinda narrator is that? Anyway?

She said: "You got the box score for the Yankees?"


Hey, Octavian, this is going to qualify for "most pointless thread on Lit" ... and you gave it life!

Softie -- British humo(u)r does not require laughter, even in a sentence with 5 "u"s.

 

[jfinn]

To my knowledge, that's the only well-known author who's done this and gotten away with it. I could, however, be wrong.

Daphne DuMaurier never named the narrator in Rebecca, except for the obvious Mrs. DeWinter after she married Maximillian.

Jayne

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Nah, you can do it. That's one of the charms of the medium I'd like to try out sometime. Being a living observer as you're telling the story, filling in detail with foreshadow and backflash. But I'm lazy so I stick to third person, omniscient most of the time to have a nameless observer.

 

[DJHyrrikhayne]

I didn't name the narrator in my novella "Rites of Passage" until chapter 4... the guy's name just never came into play until then!

 

[elsol]

There's one story where I didn't name the narrator... it simply never came up and it worked because I was trying to write from the perspective of THIS is what a guy thinks... ANY guy or at least ANY guy that works in this way.

I didn't realize I hadn't given him a name, until I did a rewrite of it for Lit.

For the most part in my other stories and I write predominantly in the first person, the name doesn't come up until the first conversation or in an 'errant' thought that the narrator has about what someone else thinks of him.


Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I envy you guys who write so well in first person. I need the easy option of third person to switch POVs and read minds.

Am I missing something in this thread? Surely, as soon as you've said 'I' you've given the narrator a name?

 

[elsol]

Am I missing something in this thread? Surely, as soon as you've said 'I' you've given the narrator a name?

I is an identity that could apply to any one of the following:

a) The writer
b) The narrator
c) The narrator's image of him/herself (contending against the reader's image of them)
c) The reader

There is nothing yet that 'distinguishes between these entities'; a name does not necessarily achieve that either, but it can begin, aid, or complete the separation.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Kassiana]

DuMaurier AND Wells, hm? Interesting.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

DuMaurier AND Wells, hm? Interesting.

And you can add that wonderful writer Rider Haggard and 'She' with his African Queen.

 

[Kassiana]

I'd have thought it'd be more unusual, honestly, given the reaction I heard to the Pronzini series. Maybe it's just that Pronzini is more likely to be read these days, eh?

She continued typing to her friends on the porno site, never realizing that I stood behind her, watching her every move. I hope she doesn't look behind her because when they do, they tend to scream and move around.

I like it better when I can surprise them, when my first kiss of the knife is the last thing they ever feel.